We had a winning start to the new NBA season in the small two-game slate on Wednesday, hitting on 3/4 of our bets overall to finish +1.36 units.
The first big slate of the 2022-23 NBA season is on Thursday where there are 12 games scheduled for play. Here, Jake Smit takes you through his three best spread bets as well as some quality player prop bets!
Also, be sure to check out our best futures tips article, as well as our NBA tips page where you will find our best bets for multiple slates each week!
NBA Betting Tips: Thursday, 20th October
Washington Wizards at Indiana Pacers
Gainbridge Fieldhouse, 10am AEDT
Two poor Eastern Conference teams from a season ago will look to get their 2022-23 campaigns off to a good start when they meet on early Thursday morning (AEDT).
The Pacers shipped off most of their key veterans in the back half of last season and are obviously focusing purely on the future, which will be led by young stud Tyrese Haliburton.
The Wizards are also a relatively young roster, but still have two talented veterans who can put up big numbers this season in Bradley Beal and Kristaps Porzingis.
The Wizards are clearly still in win-now mode, at least to begin the season. If they get off to a bad start in the first couple of months, you’ll likely see them pack it in and look to secure themselves a top draft pick.
For now, the Wizards are the better team on paper in this matchup and should be able to use their experience to get themselves off to a 1-0 start.
Washington Wizards H2H
$1.77 (2 Units)
Denver Nuggets at Utah Jazz
Vivint Arena, 12pm AEDT
There’s going to be a number of teams trying their best to lose as many games as possible in hope of landing Victor Wembanyama with the #1 pick in next year’s draft - the Jazz are one of them.
They traded away both of their All-Stars in Donovan Mitchell and Rudy Gobert and will likely offload the rest of their good players as the season progresses.
In contrast, the Nuggets get one of their best players in Jamal Murray back from injury, which helps their prospects of getting out of the Western Conference immensely. Michael Porter Jr. also missed a large chunk of last campaign and will be fit to take his place in the starting line-up.
Back-to-back MVP Nikola Jokic will be fit and firing to start the season after playing a lot of international ball in the off-season. He’ll be looking to become the fourth player in NBA history to win three straight MVP’s.
The Nuggets will be at full-strength to start the season and get a very easy kill first up. They should be winning this by double-figures.
Denver Nuggets -7.5
$1.85 (2 Units)
Portland Trail Blazers at Sacramento Kings
Golden 1 Center, 1pm AEDT
My favourite bet of the day will come from the last of 12 games, featuring the Trail Blazers and the Kings at Golden 1 Center in Sacramento.
The Blazers welcome back Damian Lillard after missing most of last season due to injury. Former Piston Jerami Grant is the key signature they secured in the off-season while Josh Hart is a nice addition as a glue guy.
There’s a sense of optimism surrounding this Kings roster for the first time in a long time. They have by far the longest playoff drought of any team in the league, but there’s firm belief among many pundits that their streak could be broken this campaign.
The Kings had some fantastic results in the pre-season and made some savvy signings in the off-season, adding plenty of outside shooting with the like of Kevin Huerter, Trey Lyles, Malik Monk coming across from different teams. #4 pick in the draft, Keegan Murray also looks a serious prospect and should have an immediate impact once out of H&S protocols, which will see him miss the opener.
Sacramento won all four of their pre-season games and three of those were by a whopping 30 points or more, one of which was against the Blazers. While you can’t take those results too seriously, I did like the energy they were playing with and believe it will translate to the early part of the season.
The Kings should be shorter in the market here and look fantastic value to get the win at home on Thursday.
Sacramento Kings H2H
$1.80 (3.5 Units)
