NBA Expert Tips and Best Bets | Feb 28

Friday will be a relatively quiet day in the NBA, but there are a couple of interesting games set to take place. It starts when the struggling Magic host the Warriors, before the Bucks take on the Nuggets and the day concludes with the Lakers hosting the Timberwolves in probably the match of the day. Our bets will include a couple of those games before focusing on a Suns star who has recently enjoyed a change in role, and you can check out all of our reasoning below.

Warriors -5.5 @ $1.88 with QuestBet

The Warriors and the Magic both sit in similar positions in their respective conferences with similar records, Golden State in 8th in the West at 31-27 and Orlando in 7th in the East at 29-31. Their recent form, however, has been poles apart. The Magic hit a rut in January, going 1-9 over a nine-game stretch, and while they have arrested that losing skid to an extent of late, they have not beaten particularly good teams and went down by a whopping 40 points in their latest outing against the Cavaliers. The Warriors, meanwhile, are coming off a 36-point win over the Hornets, and their good form stretches well beyond that. They have now played seven games with Jimmy Butler in their line-up, and have won six of them. And they haven’t just been winning, either – they’ve been winning big. In those seven games, they have an offensive rating of 121.9 – 5th in the league in that time – and a league-leading defensive rating of 104.4 for a net rating of 17.0 – a number bested only by the Cavaliers over that seven-game stretch. Curry, Butler and co are just about the in-form team in the league, and while the extent of their recent dominance will not likely last, they are playing with a renewed vigour and do appear to be a far better team with Butler in the mix. A few weeks ago this would have looked like a close game, but with both teams playing as they currently are, it should be an easy win for the visitors.

Jamal Murray to record 4+ three-pointers @ $3.00 with PlayUp

Jamal Murray is shooting the absolute lights out of late. When he’s hot the Canadian has about as smooth a jump shot as any player in the league, and over his past six games he has been absolutely sizzling. In that time, he has hit 31 three-pointers – more than five per game – converting at a ridiculous 60.8%, hitting at least four of them in all but one of those games and at least six of them in all but two. The one downside to this bet is the fact that Murray does not necessarily bring the same level of aggression to every game, as was evidenced by the solitary failure to hit 4 threes in this recent span when he went just 1-2 from long range. Even last game, after hitting at least 6 threes in three consecutive games, he took only four attempts – but he hit every single one of them. The way he is lacing them, coach Mike Malone will be encouraging him to take as many as he wants and Nikola Jokic will be setting him up with good looks wherever possible. It's always hard to be sure which version of Jamal Murray you will get on any given night, but the odds are well and truly in our favour that he will take quite a few threes in this game given his recent form, and likely hit a whole lot of them. The $3 with betting sites like PlayUp to hit at least four of them looks like great value, but if you want to take a bigger punt at longer odds for him to hit five or six, that would be a reasonable enough move too. Aiding us even further here is the fact that the Bucks give up the fifth most three-point attempts in the league, owing in no small part due to the fact that Giannis Antetokounmpo and Brook Lopez are patrolling the paint and deterring drives. Expect Murray to look to create a lot of his offence from outside the arc in this game, and hopefully continue his hot shooting to give us a longer odds win.

Bradley Beal to score 20+ points @ $2.00 with Unibet

Something really needs to change in Phoenix, and one of the adjustments they have made as they attempt to make a run at the playoffs over the remaining couple of months of the regular season is to put Bradley Beal into the starting lineup. He came off the bench in the first game back after the All-Star break as he has for much of the season, scoring 19 points in 33 minutes in that one – both numbers right around his season average. But three games ago he was moved into the starting lineup, and it has yielded a big uptick in production. In those three games, he has scored 25 points in 38 minutes, 30 points in 41 minutes, and then 24 points in 43 minutes. Admittedly that last one was boosted by the game going to overtime, but even so, the Suns seem committed to starting Beal alongside Devin Booker and Kevin Durant, and since starting this experiment he has played more minutes, taken plenty of shots and scored a whole lot of points. NBA betting sites have not really adjusted his line to account for this new role, with even money available with some betting agencies for him to score 20 points – something he has done with ease in each of the three games he has started. In what will likely be a high-scoring game against the Pelicans, there is no reason to think that Beal will not once again play close to 40 minutes, take close to 20 shots, and more than likely scoot past the 20-point mark relatively comfortably.