This massive four-team trade just kicked off the NBA trade deadline
The NBA trade deadline is officially upon us, folks. We’re starting off the final day of this thing with an absolute bang.
We got not a two, not a three but a four team trade as the first deal completed a few hours ahead of the deadline.
The Milwaukee Bucks moved Donte DiVencenzo but got Serge Ibaka back. The Kings finally got rid of Marvin Bagley III. The Pistons got another project for the future. The Clippers saved themselves a whole lot of money.
There were a lot of moving parts to this thing. But don’t you worry — we’re going over all of them here and grading each one.
97 bets over two nights gave us wild results and a dizzying viewing experience.
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Today we’re taking a deep dive into the Max Under theory. In the most simple terms, the strategy calls for taking all available alternate line under props and creating a single game parlay for each NBA player. And we mean each and every player. This is not a strategy where you pick and choose which players you want to bet. If you’re deploying the Max Under, you take every player you can.
The vast majority—if not all—of these bets will fail, miserably, which is why Max Unders call for reducing your typical units to a fraction of what you’d normally wager. The goal is to hit on one, maybe two, and more than cover your losses.
BetFTW tested this theory out on two different nights in mid-January and included results below. Here’s how it worked out and everything else you need to know about playing Max Unders.
In September of 2020, HoopsHype polled 15 NBA talent evaluators and asked them to rank their top five Under 25 players to build around. We have repeated the exercise with 17 NBA executives this time. There was no change at No. 1, but quite a few after that.
Dallas Mavericks star Luka Doncic remains the first choice, though he’s no longer the consensus pick after a somewhat disappointing first half of the season in which he’s still playing himself into shape.
Boston’s Jayson Tatum barely retains No. 2 with half the share of the vote of last season while Ja Morant moves up to No. 3.
LaMelo Ball and Trae Young went from no votes to cracking the top five.
In our scoring system, the top player received 10 points, the second received seven points, the third received five points, the fourth received three points, and the fifth player received one point for each ballot.
Looking into how one bettor earned more than $81k on a 4-leg parlay.
We’ve all pieced together parlays that have a tremendous payout but relatively no chance to hit. That’s likely what this one bettor did on Thursday night when he was able to bring in more than $81,000 on a $15 NBA bet.
The ticket consisted of four different NBA players (Blake Griffin, Landry Shamet, Justin Holiday, and Daniel Theis) that would need to tally at least 15 points on the evening. Not a single one of the four players average more than 10.0 points per game on the season.
Holiday, the highest-scoring of the quartet (10.0), made his way to 15 points by the opening minutes of the fourth quarter in Indiana’s win over Detroit. His total (17) was the least surprising of all — Holiday had scored 15 points or more in three of the prior seven games.
Next up was Blake Griffin, who statistically was the least likely of the four players to score 15 points. Why? Well, Griffin had been completely out of Steve Nash’s rotation recently until COVID hit the Nets hard and brought Griffin back into the mix. A late three-pointer with 1:13 left simultaneously put a dagger in the visiting Philadelphia 76ers while keeping the bettor alive.
The Theis prop was drama-free. He would only need three and a half quarters to make his way to 15 points for just the third time all season. The ticketholder had to wait patiently into the night to see if Landry Shamet would be the final piece to his $81k payout. For a while, it didn’t look promising.
I can only imagine the stress the bettor felt as Shamet sat on 10 points with just under five minutes of garbage time remaining. Alas, Landry connected on two three-pointers down the stretch of the blowout. And while Shamet doesn’t care about everyone’s parlays, he’s making at least one man a bit wealthier.
HoopsHype’s Michael Scotto and Bleacher Report’s Jake Fischer discussed the latest rumors regarding Jaylen Brown, Ben Simmons, Russell Westbrook, Jerami Grant, Terrence Ross, De’Aaron Fox, Buddy Hield, Joe Harris, Nicolas Claxton, and more on the NBA trade market in the latest edition of the HoopsHype podcast.
For more interviews with players, coaches, and media members, be sure to like and subscribe to the HoopsHype podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and anywhere else you listen to podcasts. Listen to the podcast above or check out some snippets of the conversation in a transcribed version below.
With the NBA season more than a quarter of the way complete, teams are finally starting to understand their rosters and if changes are required. There hasn’t been a trade in two months but discussions should begin to pick up soon as most players that were free agents in the offseason will become trade-eligible on December 15. The trade deadline is also two months away, so transactions should start occurring soon. Here are some players that are set to become eligible next week:
We are more than three weeks into the NBA regular season and most teams have settled on their rotations. Some aren’t fully healthy and will have tinkering to do when key players return, but some others have some rotation players that are not playing.
Here are some players consistently getting DNP-CDs despite being healthy who could become candidates for a trade.
Cade Cunningham was the number one overall pick in the draft for the Detroit Pistons, but it wasn’t a consensus pick.
The Pistons were mulling the decision to pick Cunningham number one up until just the night before the NBA draft. Why? Basically, because Jalen Green was just that good. And that’s why he went second overall to the Rockets just a pick after Cunningham went to the Pistons.
So, of course, when folks saw these two were matching up against one another for the first time in NBA Summer League, everyone was excited.
And the matchup absolutely lived up to its billing. They went right at each other.
Green and the Rockets got a 111-91 win over Cunnningham’s Pistons. The Rockets’ rookie scored a cool 25 points on just 11(!!!) shot attempts. He went to the free-throw line 11 times.
But Cunningham wasn’t bad, despite the blowout. He scored 20 points with 4 rebounds, 2 assists, 3 steals and a block. And, though he only had 2 assists, it felt like he was setting up a bunch of guys for looks they just missed. He played a great game and made his teammates better.
The matchup was so fun. They were really going at each other. Cunningham absolutely slides Green out of the way with this crossover.
And it was pretty spectacular to watch it play out. They were literally going at one another play after play after play. It wasn’t a one-on-one matchup, but at times it certainly felt like it. That’s how good they both were.
There was clearly a competitive spark between the two of them. And it’s one that isn’t going away anytime soon.
The next decade or so of this is going to be extremely fun.
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Y’all. Mason Plumlee belongs on the And-1 circuit, apparently. Who knew that this man had a dribble package?!
Granted, Plumlee is one of the better ball handlers at center. He can definitely pass well and bring the ball up the floor in a pinch. But if you have to rely on him to do that? You’re probably in a bad place as a team.
But, apparently, that wasn’t the case on Friday.
He really shook Timothé Luwawu-Cabarrot during the Pistons game with the Nets on Friday night. He faked a pass and turned it into a dribble after catching the ball and Luwawu-Cabarrot just had no idea what was going on.
Now, to be fair, it looks like he stumbles on his teammate’s foot a bit. But a move is a move. And that doesn’t happen without Plumlee’s….trickery. Which, who knew?!
From everything to Alex Caruso appearing on the list to Jerami Grant turning into a star.
The second round of NBA All-Star ballots are in and the returns are pretty wacky so far.
Of course, the leaders look right so far. You’ve got LeBron James with 4.3 million votes and Kevin Durant with 4.2 million votes as your leaders in the East and West respectively.
They’ve also got big names following them. Stephen Curry, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Nikola Jokic, Joel Embiid, and that rounds out the top six vote getters.
None of that is particularly surprising about this. What is surprising, though, are some of the names you see as you start to move toward the bottom of the list.
Just take a look.
Lakers’ LeBron James and Nets’ Kevin Durant continue to be leaders in second round of NBA All-Star Game fan voting. Warriors‘ Stephen Curry and Wizards‘ Bradley Beal leaders at their position too. pic.twitter.com/rCe7VBQp1z
