NBA Multi bet of the Weekend| December 23

Christmas is almost upon us, which means that so too is one of the best slates of NBA games we’ll get all season. But for the time being, regular programming will continue on Saturday Australia time with a group of six games which isn’t quite worthy of Christmas, but which will still carry plenty of intrigue. These are the three bets which make up our weekend multi for the penultimate Saturday of the year. 

Saturday December 23, 11.10am AEDT, Wells Fargo Center 

It might seem ridiculous to bet anything but the under for a guy whose points line is set at 35.5, but we’re going to do it anyway. Joel Embiid is in the midst of an historic scoring season, treating the best big men in the world like school children as he puts up more than a point a minute en route to what he hopes will be a second consecutive MVP. The line set by betting agencies is, as mentioned, pretty high, but there is good reason for that. He’s averaging 35.1 points per game this season and in his last eight, hasn’t scored less than 34 and is averaging close to 42. I’m not just going for him to hit the over here, I’m going for him to hit 40 at what is relatively low odds for such a bet, but in my view overs given his current form. You can get him at $2.60 to hit the number with PlayUp, and given he has got there in four of his last five games that sounds like pretty solid odds to me. The Raptors have a bit of size about them and it will be Jakob Poeltl, a reasonable albeit unspectacular defender given the undesirable task of guarding Embiid, but it doesn’t really matter who he is playing against at this point in time. His latest outing was a 51-point effort against the best defensive team in the league in the Timberwolves and, more specifically, the raging favourite for the Defensive Player of the Year Award in Rudy Gobert, so against the Raptors he can get to 40 to continue this extraordinary run of scoring. 

Saturday December 23, 11.40am AEDT, Barclays Center 

The Nuggets are back to full fitness and are playing like it, beginning to more closely resemble the team that waltzed through last season’s NBA playoffs for their first championship in franchise history. They’ve now won five of their last six games, the solitary loss coming by just a point against the very impressive Oklahoma City Thunder. The Nets, meanwhile, are heading in the other direction, currently in the midst of a four game losing streak which was kickstarted by the Nuggets a week ago. That game was, granted, played in Denver while this one will take place in Brooklyn, but nonetheless the 23-point margin was indicative of the fact that the Nuggets are a hell of a lot better a team than the Nets. Despite that, NBA betting site have this one pegged as a reasonably close game, with the home team given just a 4.5-point headstart against the reigning NBA champs. That doesn’t seem likely to be enough. With Nikola Jokic continuing to dominate the league, Jamal Murray getting back to something vaguely resembling his best and the rest of the most well-rounded team in the league humming along nicely, the Nugs should be able to cover this line relatively comfortably.

Saturday December 23, 12.10pm AEDT, Toyota Center 

Finally, let’s round out the multi with another player prop this time on a player that the masses love to hate more than perhaps anyone else in the league. Dillon Brooks made himself public enemy number one last season courtesy of his incessant sledging which was almost comically not backed up by his on-court performance. But since making a move to the Rockets in the off season, he has actually become a valuable part of his team’s climb up the rankings. He’s been a typically tenacious defender and far more reliable scorer than he has been in the past, shooting comfortably career highs in field goal percentage and three-point percentage, and in the last four games he’s ramped things up a notch. Brooks has scored at least 16 points in each of those games and is averaging a tick under 20 points per game in that time, and though he’s shooting well, those numbers aren’t courtesy of some unsustainable perimeter shooting. He’s just playing good, solid offensive basketball, and scoring at a decent clip as a result. In what should be a relatively high scoring game against the Mavericks, he’s paying over even money with betting sites to score 15 points for the fifth straight time, and given the way he has been playing of late that looks like a number he should be able to reach.