NBA Multi bet of the Weekend | Feb 8

Saturday is not exactly the most enthralling day of basketball, with the most intriguing of the seven games probably the Pistons hosting the Sixers in a showdown between a couple of mid-table teams in the East. But of course, that doesn’t mean that there is no value on offer, and we think we’ve found a few decent legs to put together our weekend multi. Kicking off with that aforementioned Sixers vs Pistons clash, take a look at our player prop based multi below.

Saturday 8th of February, 11.35am AEDT, Little Caesars Arena

Tyrese Maxey was mighty unlucky not to be selected for this season’s All-Star team, and in what has already been a terrific season for the 24-year-old guard, he is in the midst of perhaps the best vein of form of his career. Maxey has scored 30 points or more in a massive seven consecutive games, but even more impressively than that, he has scored at least 28 an incredible sixteen games in a row. That is a consistency that very few, if any, players in the league are matching at the minute, and while betting sites have certainly adjusted his lines to reflect that form, he does still look like value at better than even money to score 30 points given how often he has been either getting to that number, or going very close. There is one caveat; Joel Embiid is back. The star big man has missed virtually every game during Maxey’s fantastic run of form, and his return will clearly take a few shots away from the guard. But Embiid played a couple of games ago and was very active in that clash against Dallas, playing 36 minutes, taking 23 shots and scoring 29 points (to go with 11 boards and 10 assists). But even with his All-Star teammate back, Maxey still took 22 shots and scored 33 points. This will be the first game in some time in which Maxey, Embiid and Paul George have all shared the floor together, but George has regressed significantly this season and in his first game back from a finger injury a couple of days ago, took just 11 shots. Even with every member of that trio on the floor, Maxey will take on a heavy offensive load and can get to 30 points for the 8th time in a row.

Saturday 8th of February, 11.35am AEDT, Barclays Center

Kel’el Ware didn’t exactly set the world on fire through the first half of his rookie season, but three consecutive 20+ point games in mid-January saw him suddenly skyrocket into Rookie of the Year favouritism. Ware has been starting for the Heat over the past couple of weeks and as a result has been getting more opportunity for production, but that streak of form is looking increasingly distant in the rearview mirror. Ware has had a couple of good games since, but he has failed to score more than 7 points in four of his last six games and is not playing a particularly big role on offence in most games. Two games ago, Ware score 17 points on 8-12 shooting, but in the three games around that one he scored 5, 6 and 0 points, taking 6 shots or less in each of those games. His latest outing was that 0 point game, in which he took just three shots. Ware is feast or famine at the moment, but more often than not it’s the latter, which makes the 11.5-point line set by NBA betting sites look too high. If Ware does pass it, there is every chance that he will do so comfortably – any time he has gone into double figures since he’s been a starter, he has gone close to 20 points. But this is a win or lose bet – if we lose we lose and it doesn’t matter by how much, but based on recent performance there seems to be a far better than 50/50 chance that Ware fails to get to double figures. We don’t bet often on the under, but it looks like a good bet here.

Saturday 8th of February, 2.05pm AEDT, Footprint Center

Having one under in our multi is rare enough, but two of them? You wouldn’t read about it, but that’s where we find ourselves this weekend, and Lauri Markkanen is our second target. The Finnish sharpshooter has had an up and down season, but his 19.3 points per game is well down on his output from the past couple of seasons and in recent times he has been particularly unproductive. A couple of niggling injuries have certainly not helped – after missing four games in a row, he played three, missed another, played three more, and then missed another. But in those six games that he has wedged into that timeframe, he has averaged only 15 points per game and has failed to score more than 19 in a single game. Despite that, betting agencies have set his line at higher than what he is averaging per game this season, even while he is in a slump and returning from injury. That line is set at 20.5, which is even more appealing when you consider the fact that they are 8.5-point underdogs against the Suns. Phoenix is not exactly a defensive juggernaut, but there is every chance that they will win this easily which adds in the possibility of Markkanen not having to play very much in the final quarter. All in all it appears far more likely than not that the Jazz power forward once again fails to hit his season average in this game, and with another extra point buffer given to us for seemingly no reason, his under looks like a great way to hopefully finish off our multi for the weekend.