NBA Expert Tips and Best Bets | Nov 28

After day four of the NBA Cup, Thursday will see a big slate of typical old regular season games, and with plenty of them there has been a lot of potential betting options to work our way through. We start things off with a bet for a low scoring game between the surprisingly robust Clippers and the Wizards, move to a player prop, and round things out with the final game of the day and what could easily be its best one between the current top two seeds in the Western Conference, the Oklahoma City Thunder and the Golden State Warriors. Take a look at our three best bets for the day below.

Under 222.5 total match points | $1.89 with QuestBet

One of the surprises of the season to date has been the Clippers’ defence. Over the course of their first 19 games, they have conceded just 108.4 points per 100 possessions, giving them the fifth best defensive rating in the league. With their offence at the other end of the spectrum in the bottom ten in the league and their pace not far behind, that has unsurprisingly yielded a lot of low scoring games. In fact, only four of those 19 games have gone over the points total of 222.5 set by betting sites for this game, giving them a pretty undeniable record of 15-4 on the under with this line. Of course, there are two teams playing and the Wizards’ playing style needs to be taken into account. They play really quickly – the fourth quickest in the league – but given that their offence absolutely sucks, that doesn’t always yield a lot of points. They have the second worst offensive rating in the league, meaning it will likely be very difficult for them to put up a decent score against such a good defence even accounting for the fact that they move the ball up and down the floor so quickly. On the other side of the coin, the Wizards have the worst defence in the league so there is always a concern about them conceding big numbers, but as mentioned the Clippers aren’t exactly the team most likely to take advantage of that. To summarise, the Clippers have gone under this number a huge majority of the time while the Wizards are around even money to go over or under it, and with the likelihood that they struggle to get to 100 in this game given the quality of the Clippers defence and their problems with ball in hand, this one looks destined to go under.

Bennedict Mathurin to get 8+ rebounds | $2.80 with PlayUp

Bennedict Mathurin has significantly improved his rebounding output this season, something that coach Rick Carlisle has mentioned as an area of focus for the third year guard. That increased focus has seen him go from 4.1 and 4.0 rebound averages in his first two seasons up to 6.8 in 2024-25, and that is only with a very slight increase in minutes. What’s more, he is only getting better in this regard, averaging nearly eight per game over his past nine outings. NBA betting sites, however, have not really adjusted, still setting his rebounding lines at around his season average. Mathurin can be a little bit feast or famine with his rebounding, sometimes having big, double figure games on the glass and other times only getting four or five, which means that he is a good player to focus on more value selections rather than simply hitting the over, given that once he does go past the rebounding set for this game he generally goes a fair way past. Even backing him to get 10 at really long odds would be a reasonable bet, but at still very decent odds we are going to stick with eight. This is a number that Mathurin has been reaching more often than not of late; he has hit it in five of his last nine games at a rate of better than 50%, but his odds to reach it suggest it’s little better than a one in three chance. If he continues to rebound the way he has of late Mathurin will end up at beyond seven and even close to eight per game, so while betting agencies are still setting his line so low it’s a good time to take advantage.

Thunder -2.5 | $1.94 with Unibet

The day’s action concludes with a top of the Western Conference standings clash between the Thunder and the Warriors, but one of these teams is a lot more likely to stay there than the other. The Thunder are establishing themselves as clearly the favourite to challenge the Celtics for this season’s title, and are the team to beat in the Western Conference. For the moment they are playing without Chet Holmgren, which is a major loss, but the return of Isaiah Hartenstein provides some consolation and the team that they do have has been managing okay regardless, in their latest outing beating the Kings by 21 points. The Warriors, meanwhile, have somehow managed to once again find their way back to the top of the table, but while their start has been impressive and they do look like a genuine potential playoff side, they will likely be overrun by a few teams in the West as the season wears on. Steph Curry continues to defy logic with his shooting while Draymond Green is still a valuable player particularly on defence, and the Warriors have plenty of other nifty little pieces running around too. But realistically it would be a surprise to see them maintain anything like the kind of winning form which saw them end 12 of their first 15 victorious. Already the honeymoon period has begun to wear off for the Warriors; they have lost each of their last two games, first to the Spurs and then to the Nets, both by eight points plus and both to teams substantially worse than the Thunder. OKC, meanwhile, have bounced back from a couple of tight defeats with consecutive double figure victories. They are one of the most clinical teams in the NBA, and while the Warriors always have the capacity to put up a big score with most notably Curry, but also guys like Buddy Hield running around, there is a much bigger difference between the caliber of these two teams than the 2.5-point line would indicate, even in Golden State. This should be a comfortable cover for the Thunder.