The DraftKings NBA Team Specials have long intrigued me. On the one hand, they are one-way parlay markets, you almost couldn’t draw up a bet type more predatory and likely to be EV negative.
HOWEVER, year after year, I talk myself into a few of them, and I genuinely do believe that if you can be picky about the ones you play (don’t just blindly hammer the full lot for your favorite team), I do think they can actually be EV positive.
Last year, we gave out two mid range shots and two lonnnnnnggggg shots. There were two Hawks bets which went up in flames with their historically bad ATS season.
However, the other two were definitely directionally correct, with the Wolves arguably the breakout team of the season (Ant saw a bump ppg but not nearly enough), and the Magic 40+ games and Paolo 23+ ppg came within a whisker of hitting at +600 (Paolo averaged 22.6 ppg).
This year, I actually found seven plays I like in this section. More than half of these are because of a team and a player (not on that team), who I am irrationally high on. There are no bets here as long as the longshots from last year, but we have bets ranging from +425 all the way to +4500 — a nice range for bettors at all levels of risk.
LaMelo Ball: 3.5 Threes Per Game
Hornets 35+ Wins (+425)
I actually am far from the high man on Charlotte this season, but this popped as just a really bad number. Over the past two seasons, Ball has only played 58 games, but in those games (a few of which were interrupted by injury), Ball averaged 3.7 threes per game. ON our recent Buckets episode, Joe made LaMelo threes one of his favorite season-long props.
On the Charlotte side of this, this bet is priced around +210 in the market, which means the books have these two are basically no correlation. If Ball plays enough to qualify for this and is making this number of threes (basically his 50th percentile outcome), the two should definitely be treated as correlated.
Darius Garland: 20+ Points Per Game
Cavaliers 50+ Wins (+800)
For Garland, this is more about taking a step back to where he was, rather than any sort of progression. Last year—in a season from hell—he averaged 18.0 ppg, a far cry from the 21.7 and 21.6 he averaged the two seasons before that. Still just 25 years old, I’m willing to write off last year as an aberration, especially when I can pair it with a bet on the Cavs—a team I want to be in this season. Markets are treating 50 wins as right around their 50th percentile outcomes, and I personally have them projected for just over 50.
If Garland is able to get back to his old self, it will be great news for the Cavs, who weathered all sorts of injuries to finish with 55 pythagorean wins last season.
James Harden: 20 Points, 10 Assists Per Game
Clippers Playoffs (+1300)
I genuinely cannot believe that I feel like I am now the high person on the Clippers. Before I went to see what the market was like, I had the Clippers as a potential mega fade team. However, the market overcooked that idea.
This Clippers team won 51 games (with a Pythag to match) last season, and while they will be without Paul George (and to a much lesser degree, Russell Westbrook) this season, Ty Lue has proven time and time again that he is able to make something out of nothing with his teams.
Harden is saying all the right things this preseason (far from guaranteed with him!), and historically when he is even semi engaged, he has slept-walked to 20 and 10. His numbers were easily the most impacted by PG during their shared time on the court last season, and if he can keep them even in the play-in range while Kawhi misses games here and there, if they can get to the postseason with Kawhi semi-healthy, they’ll be massive favorites once there.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander Lead The League In Points Per Game
OKC Thunder: Western Conference Winners (+2000)
Isaiah Hartenstein 8+ Points, 8+ Rebounds Per Game
OKC Thunder: Winning The Title (+2500)
Meet your 2024-25 NBA champions, the Oklahoma City Thunder. At +700, they are my favorite preseason bet, so naturally I love these two bets.
The big remark about the Thunder this preseason seems to be: I need to see it first.
You know who else folks said that about? The 2023-24 Boston Celtics. The 2022-23 Denver Nuggets. The 2020-2021 Milwaukee Bucks.
We are in a new era in the NBA where talent is more spread out and teams that head into seasons “unproven” turn out to really just having been hitting checkmarks in previous seasons. And while last season was a massive jump for the Thunder, there are reasons galore to see that season as the first big checkmark.
The question marks last postseason were rebounding (cue Hartenstein), three-point shooting regression (cue quiet late game clutch three shooter Alex Caruso) and inexperience. They were a hair from making it to the Western Conference Finals last season, where I believe they also would have dispatched the Wolves like the Mavs did. They are borderline matchup proof with the depth of talent they have, and the vast majority of their roster are in peak age breakout ranges.
I am betting the Thunder just about every way possible this season (Shai MVP; Shai to lead league in PPG; Jay Dub MIP; OKC best regular season record), so this is just two more fun ways at longer numbers than you can get since the market mostly agrees on just how serious we should be taking the Thunder.
I referenced Shai’s points per 100 possessions with Josh Giddey on/off the court last season on Buckets, but the case for iHart centers around him moving to a team that plays at a far faster clip than he played last season when he averaged 7.8 points and 8.3 rebounds per game in around 25 minutes—right around what I’d expect to see from him again this season.
Victor Wembanyama Lead The League In Rebounds Per Game, 25+ PPG
Spurs 35+ Wins (+1500) | Spurs Division (+4500)
We go from the team I am highest on to the player who’s ceiling I absolutely want. Another player and angle I have talked about during these preseason Buckets podcasts, from the end of February out, when the Spurs started increasing his minutes, Wmeby was right around the 12 rebound per game mark—and now he’s bulked up, with every reason to see those minutes remain, if not jump.
You can pump the: “Last year was to learn; this year is to win” quotes directly into my veins, because the future is Wemby and the future is now. I’m interested in the Spurs winning the division straight up at +2800, and there’s no way they do it in a world where Wemby doesn’t average 25 ppg, so this basically a free odds boost on that ceiling bet on this team.
Here’s to a Thunder and Wemby centric 2024-25 NBA season!
