Russell Westbrook is being called “out” for tonight’s season-opener against the Golden State Warriors, which is a blessing in disguise for those on the East Coast who need their sleep. For those in the wagering world, it has kicked the focus to the early game: Boston-Philadelphia.
Last spring, the Celtics caused matchup nightmares for the Sixers in the second round of the playoffs despite Boston being without Kyrie Irving and Gordon Hayward.
Tonight, both will be back wearing green and white. And the favorites to win the NBA’s Eastern Conference (-175) are 3 1/2-point favorites against the visiting Sixers …. which is the line everyone is looking at.
Wagering opportunities with bigger payoffs are there to be had, both in the short term and the long term. Like the Celtics a lot? Or vice versa for the Sixers? An alternate line is available with the Celtics giving 10 1/2 points, with those really, really believing in Boston able to get a +235 payoff if they think Brad Stevens’ team will win by 11 or more.
Prop bets abound, too, at BetDSI.com, on individual player performances tonight.
The over/under most intriguing above is points for Hayward, who broke his leg in the season-opener a year ago after leaving Utah to sign with the Celtics. (He scored 2 points in 5 minutes in that fateful game). Scoring more than 13 points was never much of a problem for Hayward with the Jazz, and if you go back and look what he did at the end of the 2016-17 season, the over starts looking like a no-brainer.
Hayward scored 25-29-33 and 12 in the 4-0 sweep at the hands of the eventual champion Golden State Warriors, and he averaged 23.7 in the previous series — a seven-game victory over the Clippers in which he failed to score fewer than 19 just once.
Go back to the last full regular season that Hayward played, and he scored 14 or more in 61 of 73 games.
The other drop dead lock would appear to be the over/under on Ben Simmons’ assists – a mere 7.5.
But then you start to take a closer look. In the playoffs last season, he failed to reached double digits against Boston in all six games after averaging 9.0 in the first round against Miami and hitting double digits in 10 of Philadelphia’s final 17 regular season games.
He will likely be defended by Kyrie Irving, which could be a blessing. The Celtics’ defensive schemes confounded him in last season’s playoffs, and his own mental mistakes were a huge contributing factor to Philadelphia’s ouster.
Boston’s over/under win total is 58, and Philadelphia’s is 53.
For those thinking long term, the following wagers are of interest:
Irving is 20-1 to win MVP — a precipitous drop from the numbers over the summer. Simmons is 40-1 for the same award. Embiid is 18-1, Hayward is 150-1 and Tatum is 180-1. Simmons is 18-1 to lead the NBA in assists, and Embiid is 25-1 to lead the league in rebounding.
More than anything, here is one thing to remember entering tonight’s season-openers: A year ago, nobody would have predicted at tipoff time that Hayward would be in a hospital at halftime. So you have to expect the unexpected at a certain point .. and place your wagers accordingly.
The Dallas Mavericks recently hired the best NBA gambler around as part of their analytics team, so the wagering profession is getting some respect — at least in terms of folks who can do it well. Hindsight is always 20-20, and the sharp money is usually linked to the top trends that the quant crowd is all too familiar with.
Not everyone can be Bob Voulgaris. But everyone can try.
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