NBA Expert Tips and Best Bets | Apr 24

The NBA Playoffs are officially underway, and on Thursday we will see three series head to Game 2. Each of the Magic, Heat and Rockets will be trying to recover from double-figure victories in Game 1, but they have tough tasks against the Celtics, Cavaliers and Warriors respectively. The action kicks off at 9am AEST when Orlando heads to Boston as do our best bets, and you can take a look at all three of our NBA tips and predictions for the day below.

Under 197.5 total match points @ $1.87 with QuestBet

This is not going to be a high-scoring series. The Magic are strong defensively and limited offensively and have been all season long, while the Celtics are an elite defensive team that will only get better in the playoffs. Virtually every player on their team is an excellent defender, and it showed in Game 1 against the Magic – as it has for most of their last few games. Orlando scored just 86 points in that game, meaning that in five of their last six games the Celtics have held their opponents to 94 points or less. Boston won Game 1 comfortably, putting up 103 points themselves for a grand total of 189 in the match, and importantly that low total was not purely the result of poor shooting. In fact, both teams shot at a decent level from three in particular – the Magic went at 42% from the field and 37% from three-point range, while the Celtics were at 45.1% from the field and 43.2% from long range. The pace of the game, however, was as expected extremely slow. In fact, the pace of the game was just 87, making it the slowest Round 1 series in the league. But while that number is substantially below what both teams played at during the regular season, it’s a sustainable number. Pace often slows down in the playoffs and there are plenty of other series just above that number, and with a slow game style combined with both teams’ defensive capabilities – particularly that of the Celtics – and the struggles which Orlando will no doubt continue to have in finding scoring options outside of Franz Wagner and Paolo Banchero, expect the Magic to continue putting up low scores and the Celtics not likely going far beyond 100. The line set by betting sites for this game is relatively low, but this one still looks likely to be going under.

Ty Jerome to score 15+ points @ $3.00 with PlayUp

Ty Jerome has had a really solid season off the bench for the Cavaliers, averaging 12.5 points in around 20 minutes at 51.6% shooting from the field and 43.9% from long range, while also dishing out 3.4 assists. That’s been good enough to earn him a spot in the nominees for Sixth Man of the Year, but even those averages are not a patch on what he has been doing lately. After missing a few games, Jerome returned on the eve of the playoffs and has been scintillating ever since, scoring at very close to a point per minute in his last four games. In each of those games, the point guard has scored at least 18 points, averaging 22.5 per game on nearly 14 shots per game. There is no doubt he has been hot and won’t be able to sustain the efficiency with which he’s been scoring in that time forever, but his percentages aren’t that out of the ordinary – he’s going at 62.5% from the field and 59% from three-point range. Clearly those are better than his season averages, but with the number of shots he is taking he could still regress to the mean and continue to put up more than 15 points per game. NBA betting sites have not really adjusted to this burst of form at all, having set his line for the game at just 11.5 points – less even than his season average. Considering that he is getting a few more minutes than usual, taking more shots in that time than he has been throughout the season, and is clearly feeling his shot at the moment, that line seems far too long. Jerome’s odds look like a great opportunity to find some value – more than $5 for him to score 18+ points for a fifth consecutive time with PlayUp also looks like a great bet, but we’ll settle for the $3 on offer to hit the 15-mark.

Jimmy Butler over 23.5 points @ $1.95 with Unibet

It’s no secret that Jimmy Butler grows another leg in the playoffs – he’s been doing it for years. That was certainly the case in Game 1 against the Rockets when he scored 25 points and dished out seven assists, though that wasn’t exactly an outlier relative to his recent performances. That extra leg appeared a few games prior to the postseason this time around, with Butler hitting some great form over the Warriors’ last few games of the regular season. In fact, in their last four games prior to the playoffs, their new recruit averaged 30 points per game and was extremely aggressive on offence, taking 20 shots in two of those games and in the other two, scoring in the double figures at the line. The Warriors have been dramatically improved since he arrived in Golden State, and their hopes of a deep run at the playoffs appear to be resting largely, on the offensive end at least, on the one-two punch of Butler and Steph Curry. While Butler is 35 years old and had a tumultuous time towards the end of his tenure in Miami, he has proven over the last few games that he still has that ability to transform himself into a top ten or fifteen player in the game when he needs it most. Having averaged 18 points per game for the Warriors, his line of 23.5 set by betting agencies might look high, but it is a number that he has now passed in five consecutive games, often easily. Butler has taken 20, 20 and 19 shots in his last three games en route to 30, 38 and 25 points, and he hasn’t even been scoring at an unsustainably efficient rate in that time. He will likely take a similar number of shots in this one, and as long as he has a half-decent game from an efficiency perspective he should be scooting past this number once again.