NBA Expert Tips and Best Bets | April 25

With a trio of game three’s to analyze, we’ve got you covered with our best bets of the day. We start by backing Detroit to handle business at home against the Knicks and take a 2-1 series lead. Then, we pivot to the West where we like OKC to continue to win big over Memphis and the Nuggets vs. Clippers to once again come down to the wire.

Pistons ML | $1.94 @ Betright

Detroit and New York have split the first two games of their first round series one game a piece. However, the games themselves do not reflect a tied series. Aside from a disastrous fourth quarter in game one, the Pistons have seemed the much better team over the first two games. They’ve outscored the Knicks 191-177 without that quarter taken into account. The playoffs are a different beast than the regular season, and young inexperienced teams like Detroit often stumble early - which they did. With that out of their system, and the series turning to Detroit where the crowd is sure to play a factor, we like backing the Pistons to win the game.

Thunder -8.5 | $1.91 @ PlayUp

As many predicted, this has been the most lopsided series in the NBA playoffs thus far. The top-seeded Thunder thumped the Grizzlies by 51 in game one and 19 in game two. They did this with Shai Gilgeous-Alexander having two ‘off’ games by his standards. The bigger picture numbers point towards the Thunder as well, as they were by far the best team in the NBA this season at covering spreads, doing so at a 67.9% clip. NBA betting sites have the line hovering around 9 points, which seems far too low given the Thunder’s history ATS and the way this series has gone thus far. With OKC at -8.5 on PlayUp, we love this pick.

Nuggets +5.5 | $1.85 @ Betfocus

On the opposite end of the spectrum to the Thunder vs. Grizzlies series we just touched on lies the Clippers vs. Nuggets. It has easily been the most competitive series as the two sides split a game a piece with Denver winning by two, then the Clippers by three. Given this, the 5.5 line seen consistently across NBA betting sites is a little confusing. These two sides have shown that there is very little separating them from one another. Yes, the series is moving to Los Angeles. But, the Nuggets are a playoff proven side and there’s no reason to think a hostile atmosphere will make them implode. With that, we think +5.5 is too high of a line and we like Denver to cover that number.