The NBA season continues on Tuesday night with five matchups, and our analysts Joe Dellera, Jessica Gridiron and Dylan Wilkerson have a four best bets for you to tail.
Dellera is backing a Nikola Vucevic prop against the Heat as he will see frequent switches onto smaller defenders while Wilkerson is backing Quentin Grimes prop against the Warriors as the books try to adjust to his recent increase in playing time.
Find their expert picks, predictions and best bets for Tuesday below.
NBA Odds & Picks
Chicago Bulls vs. Miami Heat
Joe Dellera: The Bulls head to Miami to take on the Heat in a showdown between two underperforming teams in the East. The matchup between Nikola Vucevic and Bam Adebayo down low will be particularly compelling and where I focus my attention.
Vucevic’s rebound line is set at 9.5 (-125 at FanDuel), and even though he has only hit this in two of his last 10 games, I love the over.
Vuc has faced off against Bam in 16 games during his career and has excelled on the glass in these matchups. He has averaged 11.5 boards with 10+ rebounds in 12 of 16 games. Looking at just the games he has played as a member of the Bulls, he still has 10+ boards in five of six games.
I think much of this is matchup specific due to Bam’s versatility. He often finds himself outside of the paint as a screener on offense and takes several midrange jumpers in the lane, which leave Vucevic in prime position to clean up his misses.
Defensively, Adebayo is one of the most switchable players in the NBA and often finds himself on guards on the perimeter while Vucevic is boxing out smaller players inside.
Chicago Bulls vs. Miami Heat
Jessica Gridiron: These two teams matched up earlier in the season, as the Chicago Bulls walked away with a 116-108 win. This Bulls victory came without superstar Zach LaVine in the lineup while the Miami Heat were at full strength and at the soon-to-be former FTX Arena.
Miami is entering this game on a four-game win streak, most recently knocking off the San Antonio Spurs. Chicago on the other hand, stumbles into this one on a four-game losing streak and looking for some sort of consistency on the court.
On offense, Chicago is averaging 113.2 points per game and they are shooting 48.1% from the floor. This is the 15th-most points scored per match-up and the seventh-best shooting percentage. The Bulls are shooting 36.5% from deep, which is the 10th-best 3-point shooting percentage in the league and are dominant at the charity stripe, as they own a 82.1% free throw percentage, which is the third-best in the NBA.
On the defensive end of the court, the Bulls need to improve significantly. They are currently allowing a 55.7% defensive effective field goal percentage (fourth-worst) but own a 113.2 Defensive Rating (13th) this season.
There is a silver lining with that discrepancy on defense. Where the Bulls struggle to defend is the arc, where they are allowing their opponents to shoot 37.9% from deep, which is the second-highest 3-point shooting percentage allowed in the league.
Thankfully, the Heat take the seventh-highest 3-point attempts per game at 42.1% but only convert at a 34.3% rate, which is the seventh-worst in the league. If the Bulls can improve on their defense behind the arc and bait Miami into multiple misses from deep, they have a real shot to win this game outright.
My model shows this as a 4.2 point win for Miami so I would feel comfortable taking this down to +4.5 for the Bulls.
Golden State Warriors vs. New York Knicks
Dylan Wilkerson: The Warriors have been on the wrong side of injury luck as of late. Aside from Stephen Curry's left shoulder injury, it seems that Andrew Wiggins will be out for this game, and two other players are also uncertain to play. This is a great time to snatch a Knicks player prop at a great price.
Golden State is allowing opposing shooting guards to grab just over seven rebounds per game, which are the most allowed to shooting guards in the league. Jordan Poole is averaging just over two rebounds per game, so it doesn't seem like Quentin Grimes will have much competition when it comes to grabbing those boards.
Grimes has tallied five or more rebounds in four of his last five games and seven out of his last 10 games. He has seen a consistent increase in minutes since Nov. 20 as he has averaged over 30 minutes per game and 4.5 rebounds per game since then.
This is a great time to get in on Grimes props while books may still be adjusting to his newfound usage on the Knicks. Plus-money odds are always a nice bonus!
Memphis Grizzlies vs. Denver Nuggets
Jessica Gridiron: I faded the blazing hot Memphis Grizzlies in their last game against the Oklahoma City Thunder (which paid off) and I am doing it again. The best opportunities in sports are fading the public trendy team and tonight I'm doing so in a game that most people expect them to bounce back from after an awful performance against the Thunder.
The Denver Nuggets come into this game with the 2nd best Western Conference record at 18-11 but are only 12-17 against the spread. I expect this poor ATS record to have a positive regression to the mean, and as an underdog this season, the Nuggets own a 2-3 record ATS while the Grizzlies are 3-6-1 as road favorites.
The Grizzlies, as a whole, do the majority of their damage at home, where they own a 11-3-1 record ATS while on the road they are 3-10-1. The Nuggets on the other hand are 6-6 at home but 6-11 on the road. All of this lines up to a "the Nuggets are a better home team than away and the Grizzlies are worse on the road than at home" scenario for me.
Moving into my model suggestion, my projections have Denver winning this one by 3.7 points. This projection factors all 3 questionable players potentially sitting (Murray, Caldwell-Pope, and Green) and with Jokic playing.
Considering the significant difference between the Vegas line and my model projections even without key players for the Nuggets missing, I'll gladly take the points with Denver and expect an outright win for them.
