NBA Best Bets Thursday January 18th
Will Siakem make an immediate impact?
Another winning Wednesday! I hope everyone is tuning into The Advantage on these pod-only Wednesdays as I deep dive every game and for that reason, likely have my strongest sense of the board. But that doesn’t mean on the other nights I aint still one of the sharpest tools in the shed! Let’s roll onto Thursday!
Pacers +8 (0.75u)
Pacers +270 ML (0.25u)
It is truly poetic that the Kings and Pacers face off in the first game after the Siakem trade. For the last 2 seasons, the Haliburton-Sabonis deal is revisited about 700x per day in NBA discourse, and now the Pacers reacquire a star PF and the Haliburton-Siakem combo may be taking on the Fox-Sabonis combo. I say may because Haliburton is still questionable, but early line movement and money shows this to be the sharp side. Grabbing the +8 is great because of our key numbers, and if I am playing the dog, give me the ML escalator at this value.
Knicks -10 (0.5u)
Wolves -12 (-115, 0.5u)
One write up for two small bets on big spread favorites. Both of these teams are home and face reeling and weakened opponents. I am ok playing either a half unit on the spread, or a full unit on the ML and taking home just a smaller return. Both are sharp sides, gaining CLV, and likely to close ahead of the market… but the numbers are still steep. The Wolves had -115 available on the -12 line and a -12.5 with a -110 vig, I chose the -115 on the -12 because the 5c extra of vig is worth it to acquire 12 as a push instead of a loss. 12 Point games occur over 4% of the time in the NBA, and even moreso when the spread is priced at 12. For around a 5% increase, the insurance was valuable vig to pay.