NBA Expert Tips and Best Bets | Feb 12

It’s set to be a relatively quiet day in the NBA on Wednesday, with only four games scheduled to take place across the association. Our best bets kick off in an intriguing game between two top-four teams in the East in the Knicks and the Pacers, while later we head west for what looms as another interesting battle between the Suns and the Grizzlies. After missing badly on our player props but hitting easily on an under bet yesterday, hopefully we can bounce back with a clean slate on Wednesday.

Knicks -1.5 @ $1.88 with PlayUp

This is probably the game of the day, with two of the better teams in the Eastern Conference, both of whom are in very good form, going toe-to-toe in Indiana. Both come into the game with very similar form lines; the Knicks have won seven of their past nine and the Pacers seven of their last ten, though each team has dropped two of their last four games. But while the Pacers have been playing really well for some time now, the Knicks are the better team and looking beyond the basic win/loss record, are playing a lot better too. Though they have had a couple of disappointing losses of late – those coming in comprehensive fashion against the Celtics and the Lakers – they have been really impressive aside from those two games, knocking off the Rockets by six points, the Nuggets by 10 points, the Grizzlies by 37 points and the Kings by 23 points. That’s all in their last seven games. The Pacers, meanwhile, have been by and large beating teams inferior to the above list, and particularly of late haven’t been playing all that well. They split their last two games against the two Los Angeles-based teams 1-1, but prior to that they went down by 23 points in a woeful effort against the Trail Blazers, before which they only held off the Jazz by a point. Granted they have been winning more often than they have lost for some time now, but their recent victims have been – along with the aforementioned – the Hawks, Pistons, Spurs and Sixers. Those are all mid-table teams and are certainly not meaningless wins, but the Knicks have been doing it with aplomb against some of the better teams in the league. Just one game separates these two teams in the Eastern Conference standings, but the five-game gap between them is more indicative of where they are both at. The Pacers are a plucky team that could cause some damage in the postseason, but the Knicks are one of just a couple of teams genuinely capable of taking it up to Boston in the East. The 1.5-point line set by NBA betting sites would suggest this game should go down to the wire, and while the Pacers will certainly give it a run, the Knicks should ultimately prove too strong.

Coby White to score 20+ points @ $1.80 with Unibet

Coby White has been one of the biggest beneficiaries of Zach LaVine’s departure from Chicago, with the 24-year-old point guard forced to take on an increased role on offence in the absence of his former teammate. White has played six games since returning from injury, and that timeline has coincided exactly with LaVine’s absence – he missed his last few games in Chicago for personal reasons, before being traded to Sacramento. White averages 18.7 points per game overall this season, but in those six games that average is up to 22. He’s been really consistent, too – in the first of those six games he scored just 16 points, but since then he has surpassed 20 five times in a row. White has generally been taking more shots than usual, with 15 or more of them coming in four of those six games, while he has always been getting to the free throw line with regularity – always a good sign when it comes to a player’s ability to score points consistently. Going forward, White will remain one of the primary sources of offence for the Bulls, and there is no reason to think that this matchup with the Pistons won’t yield a similar output. Betting sites have adjusted his line slightly, but he still looks like good value to hit the 20-point mark given that he has done it five times in a row.

Grizzlies -4.5 @ $1.89 with QuestBet

It’s been a bad few games for the Suns. No one has ever denied their talent, but the Booker/Durant/Beal experiment has so far failed to generate the expected results, and they have been in a particularly bad slump of form over the last week or two. The Suns have lost four of their last five games, but realistically their performances have been even worse than that 1-4 record would suggest. In that time, they have lost twice to the (admittedly improved) Trail Blazers, been pumped by 31 points by the Thunder and 17 by the Nuggets, and their solitary win came in overtime against the lowly Jazz. That doesn’t bode well for their matchup against an in-form Grizzlies team. Memphis is actually coming off a loss, but that was against the Thunder and they’re hardly alone in struggling against SGA and co. Prior to that they had won four games on the trot, beating each of the Raptors, Spurs and Bucks by 13 points or more, and scraping over the line against the impressive Rockets. What’s more, the first couple of those victories came without their best player in Ja Morant, and with their star point guard back on the floor they are objectively a much better team. On paper this looks like a good matchup, but basketball is not played on paper. At the moment, the Grizzlies are simply a far better team than the Suns, and the fact that this game will take place in Phoenix will not likely be enough to get the home team back on the winners’ list. Betting agencies have this pegged as a pretty close game, but the Grizz are a much more cohesive unit than their opponents in this game at the minute, and should be able to win by more than the 4.5-point handicap set for them.