NBA Best Bets Wednesday November 20th

Tuesday was truly some insane bad beats!

I am not one to cry over spilled milk. I rarely complain about bad beats; but holy moly I have never experienced the horrendous variance that went against me time and time again Tuesday night. Let me vent a bit, then I’ll drop it and move on. Here is what happened:

1. The Boston Celtics -4 was a ticket that closed as -7 as consensus and the Celtics would storm away early with a 26 point lead early in the second half. The Cavs kicked back and ultimately made it tight late. Celtics were up 5 with 10 seconds left, albeit with both a Jayson Tatum missed FT and a Jaylen Brown missed FT in the last two possessions. Donovan Mitchell misses a three, if the Celtics grab a rebound its over. Evan Mobley picks it up and tries to put it up quickly, he misses and if the Celtics grab a rebound its over. The ball trickles with 1 second left to Ty Jerome just outside of the paint with less than a second left, he flips the ball up and it goes in the basket as time expires, the shot attempt did get off, and the score ends as a 3point game. -4 LOSES at the 0.0 buzzer.

2. The Memphis Grizzlies and Denver Nuggets Under 228.5 closed at 223.5 with Nikola Jokic remaining out for personal reasons (he had a kid, congrats to Nikola I know hes an avid reader of the substack 🙃 ). This total was 221.5 when i tuned in with 8 minutes remaining and they proceeded to immediately score 13 points in 50 seconds, and popped the total to 233.5 within 2 minutes of my eyes on the screen. In the end, the Nuggets had the ball with 5.8 seconds left, up 8, with the score at exactly 228, Christian Braun is fouled and given free throws. People will say oh thats because the NBA Cup and scoring differential, maybe, but it makes very little sense. Fouling with 5.8 seconds left and giving the opponent 2 free throws and then having barely any time to run a play and find a decent look actually deters you from catching up. Having been watching it live, it seemed more player instinct who didnt know exactly what to do as there were 3 offensive rebounds on the possession and it was chaotic. Fouling when losing and not having possession without a shot clock is never an incorrect move, so thats what he did.

3. Lakers Jazz Under 236 closes as low as 233.5, and the teams scored 101 points in a very slow first half. However in the second half they would put up a scoring pace of a full game that would end in 282 points! For an entire half, they maintained the highest scoring output we have seen all season. The final dagger on this one came with 10 seconds left as John Collins flipped up a layup off an offensive rebound. If the Lakers got the rebound, they would have dribbled out the clock without being fouled. We could even see it from the game, the Jazz players were instructed to make a 3 and then foul, and forget it if they did not convert. Well they missed the three and Collins put in a quick 2! He should have kicked it back out for another 3, the players were confused on how to handle the situation and let the Lakers dribble for 5 seconds before realizing maybe they should foul (at this point it didnt matter the over was cooked from Collins - but he should not have even taken the shot!)

IT WAS ABSOLUTELY INSANELY BAD BEATS. INSANE! One loss with 0.0 seconds left, one loss with 5.8 seconds left, and a last one with 10.0 seconds. All +CLV positions by multiple points that were in even better positions that their closing line (and that value obtained) midway into the fourth quarter. Then they all started breaking the other way, down to the last second blows.

Tomorrow on the live show I will not go over the finite details of this BOLOGNA and hope to get back on track. I will take a moment to explain 2 strategic points we can learn from bad beats - about taking a day/two off and why that DOES NOT make sense, and how often to expect bad beats.

Of course we will also break down all 8 NBA games on the slate, best bets, line moves, sharp spots, injury updates, playbacks, why these lines are moving the way they are etc. Here is the link to the show and we hope to see you there. I have also included my best bets.

PS: There was no newsletter last week because I was traveling! This week expect some NBA and definitely NFL stuff over the weekend!