NBA Expert Tips and Best Bets | Feb 11

There will be ten games taking place across the NBA on Tuesday, but the eyes of the basketball public will be squarely fixed on the last one of them. The Lakers host the Jazz in what would otherwise be a relatively mundane matchup, but with Luka Doncic listed as questionable there is a good chance that the most talked about new lineup in recent memory will take to the floor together for the first time at 2.30pm AEDT. With so much interest in that game, we’ll get our bets out of the way before it tips off, with a couple of player props bookending what we hope will be a low-scoring game between two, well, flat out bad teams. Take a look at our three best bets of the day below.

Trae Young to score 30+ points @ $2.40 with PlayUp

Trae Young is perennially hovering right around the All-Star cutline, having made it in 2020, 2022 and 2024, and missed out on all the years in between – including this one. He was considered one of the bigger snubs by most pundits – though as usual, it’s a hell of a lot easier to complain about why one player missed out than to justify why they deserved a spot over someone who actually made it – but regardless of what side of the fence you sit on, there is no denying his form since missing out on the squad. Combined with the frustrations he no doubt feels personally at missing out, there has been plenty of reason for Young’s production to increase, with the hyper-talented Jalen Johnson out for the rest of the season as of a couple of weeks ago, and potential Sixth Man of the Year Deandre Hunter traded a couple of games ago. The result has been a more aggressive Young, and his current purple patch presents us with plenty of value. Young averages 23.5 points per game this season, but over his last five that number is up to just a tick under 32. He’s scored at least 32 points in all but one of those games, and what’s more, he hasn’t been unsustainably efficient in those games either – he’s just taken a hell of a lot of shots. Not that he’s been inefficient; his efficiency figures are up on what they usually are, but still – he’s still shooting 46.8% from the field and 33.9% from three during this period, not exactly mind-blowing numbers. That should give us plenty of confidence that this run of form will continue for the time being. Young has taken at least 21 shots in four of those last five games, and more so than pure points scored, that is something that is generally relatively predictable from game to game. There is no reason to think that Young won’t again take a high number of shots in this one – Johnson is still out, Hunter is still gone, and the Hawks’ point guard needs to be more aggressive as a result. Having hit the 30-point mark four times in his last five games, at comfortably better than even money odds he looks like great value to do it again against the Magic.

Under 212.5 total match points @ $1.92 with QuestBet

It’s safe to say that neither of these two teams is exactly an offensive juggernaut. They sit in 27th and 28th in the league for offensive rating, while the Nets are the slowest team in the league by pace and the Hornets are the 8th slowest. That sets up for a slow, half-court kind of game between two teams that are very bad at scoring, and there will not likely be a great deal of points scored as a result. The Nets of late have very rarely been going past the 212.5-point total set by betting sites for this game – in fact, just one of their last ten games has yielded more than that number, with half of their games in that time failing to even crack the 200 mark. The evidence is not quite so damning for the Hornets; in fact, they’ve actually passed that 212.5 number more often than not in their past ten games, but aside from a couple of exceptions, those games have not passed the number by much. Against a team like the Nets, which won’t score a lot themselves and which will limit possessions by playing really slowly, it’s safe to assume that the Hornets’ expected score – and that of their opposition – should come down a whole lot in this game. These two teams actually played only a couple of weeks ago, and on that occasion the score was a measly 104-83 in favour of the Nets for a game total of just 187 – not even close to the line set for this game. Based on that, we’ve got plenty of room to breathe before this one gets up towards 212.5. Lamelo Ball will likely return for the Hornets after not playing a great deal in recent times, but he doesn’t increase the game’s likely score anywhere near like what you might imagine. Certainly he is a talented transition player, but the Hornets still don’t exactly run the floor with him at the helm. What’s more, Ball will take a massive proportion of their shots, and he won’t likely be particularly efficient with them – in his last two full games he has shot 9-26 and 9-21, for reference. The 187 points scored between these two teams last time they met is very low and this one should go over that, but they need another 26 between them to go over the line, which seems unlikely.

Bobby Portis to score 20+ points @ $3.10 with Unibet

Bobby Portis has been a really solid contributor primarily off the bench for the Bucks for some time now, and when handed an opportunity to play an increased role he has generally taken it with both hands. Giannis’ Antetokounmpo’s latest injury has done exactly that, and as usual Portis has responded. Antetokounmpo has now missed four games straight and will remain out until the All-Star break, and as a result Portis will go from a 25-minute-per-game player to into the 30s, and when he is on the floor he will have greater responsibility too. He missed the first of this latest run of Giannis-less games, but in the three games since he has been terrific, putting up averages of 22.3 points, 15 rebounds and 5.3 assists in at least 30 minutes per game. There were a few statistical categories in which the over looked tempting even though NBA betting sites have adjusted his lines a little, but points looked to me like the one with the most value on offer. Portis’ points line is up on his season average of 14 points per game, but just barely. It’s been set at 15.5, which looks incredibly low considering he has scored 23, 26 and 18 in his last three games in an increased role which he will once again take on in this game. The over itself looks like a really solid bet, but given how comfortably he has been clearing it and the fact that he will likely once again take upwards of 15 shots, this looks like a great opportunity to find a little bit of value. Portis is paying over $3 with some betting agencies to score 20 points, which he has done relatively comfortably in two of his past three games and just missed out in the other. As the Bucks’ second-best offensive player behind Lillard with Giannis missing, Portis should be getting plenty of looks and appears to be a much better than 3-1 chance of notching up 20 points.