Category Archives: cleveland cavaliers

Top 10 NBA Rookies This Season (So Far)

The NBA season kicked off in October, but many don’t pay much attention to it until around Christmas (or when the NFL season ends).

This year’s rookie class has been fun to watch and we already have a tight race for the Rookie of the Year award.

This year’s class looked top-heavy early, but players like Orlando’s Franz Wagner and Oklahoma City’s Josh Giddey are jumping up the leaderboard.

Here are the top ten NBA rookies (so far) this season.

1. Evan Mobley – Cleveland Cavaliers (Picked #3) – Mobley and Barnes have been the two-best rookies so far and have jockeyed between #1 and #2 so far. I wouldn’t put up a fuss if you think Barnes is better, but Mobley has improved every month. His ceiling is really high, and once the Cavs group of young players are 100% healthy next year, they could be a really fun team to watch. He may even lead the Cavs to a playoff berth this year.

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reDRAFT – 2011 NBA Draft

It’s been a few years since I added to our reDraft series. I like the ten-year mark to look back at a draft class and assess the talents. I used to do them after six or seven years, but if you go back and read some of those, they feel dated now due to some players peaking early.

In 2011, Kyrie Irving was drafted first overall by the Cleveland Cavaliers. He was arguably the consensus best player in the draft at the time. The drop-off after Irving was steep and few people thought anyone else should have been the top pick in that draft.

The Cleveland Cavaliers had two picks in the top-five. They selected Irving and power forward Tristan Thompson. Things could have been much different had they selected the players we pick in our reDraft.

We look back at the 2011 NBA Draft and reDraft based on their careers so far.

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2018-19 NBA Season Wins Over/Under – Eastern Conference

The NFL has pushed all other sports news off to the side, so some may not realize the NBA regular season starts on Tuesday.

It’s not too late to throw some jellybeans on a few NBA prop bets. Prop bets have become individualized so much that you can bet on a specific person’s assists per game for a season. I just like to stick to a vanilla approach to NBA props. My favorite NBA prop bets are regular season over/unders.

The Cleveland Cavs are without LeBron, again. Do they have enough talent left to eclipse 31 wins?

Here are our 2018-19 NBA over/under season wins total picks for the Eastern Conference.

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Sportsbooks Dominate NBA ‘Season Wins’ Prop Bets

We love posting season win over/under picks for the NBA, MLB and NFL. Sportsbooks are often very close to the actual win totals, which makes it hard for a bettor to win. They do have bad years, but the 2017-18 NBA season was very good for sportsbooks.

Out of the the 30 NBA team’s season win totals this preseason, the sportsbooks were +/- a single win for nine of them. That’s an insanely good year prognosticating the NBA this season. I guess the betting public also had a say in it as well.

People think sportsbooks try to guess the exact total of wins in a season or score of a game. That’s actually not the case most of the time. They try to get bets on both outcomes as evenly as possible. This is why lines move as a bet becomes lopsided. A lot of novice bettors may not understand that either.

Here are where the sportsbooks picked the NBA teams over/under season win totals and how many wins each NBA team had this season.

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What are the Playoff Expections for the Indiana Pacers?

The Indiana Pacers come into the weekend winners of six of their last seven games. They have three games left to play in the regular season and can be no worse than the fifth seed in the Eastern Conference playoffs.

As the Pacers surge towards the postseason, the same could be said for the Cleveland Cavaliers and Philadelphia 76ers. The Cavs have won nine of their last ten games and the Sixers have won twelve-straight games. Even though the Pacers have been playing great, they have barely kept up with them. They still have a shot at the third or fourth seed if either team loses the next two or three of their remaining games.

Sportsbooks currently have the Pacers odds of winning the Eastern Conference at 50 to 1 and even longer odds of 175 to 1 of winning their first NBA Championship.

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2018 NBA Second-Half Dark Horse Betting Picks

We went a perfect 3-0 with our betting picks for the NBA Saturday Night skills competition. We didn’t go with a favorite in any event and made out like a bandit. Our only regret is that we didn’t put them in a parlay.

The second-half of the NBA season is set to start later this week. There are still plenty of regular season and postseason NBA future bets that still have some value.

There are a few bets that are now only two-man races, like Ben Simmons and Donovan Mitchell are by far the favorites to win Rookie of the Year. It would take a miracle for a guy like Dennis Smith Jr. or Jayson Tatum to surpass those guys. There isn’t a single dark horse worth throwing some jellybeans towards.

Can a surprise team come out of the Western or Eastern Conferences and make it to the NBA Finals?

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2018 NBA Trade Deadline Recap

The 2018 NBA Trade Deadline really kicked off when the Los Angeles Clippers traded superstar power forward Blake Griffin to the Detroit Pistons late in the night. The Clippers got a king’s random in return. Many thought DeAndre Jordan would be next to leave the Clippers, but he stayed put.

Other big trades that happened in-between the Griffin deal and today were Nikola Mirotic going to New Orleans for a mess of veteran and picks. I also think Charlotte’s acquisition of center Willy Hernangomez could be huge. He’s a talented guy, but was stuck behind some talented bigs on the Knicks.

Today’s trades didn’t disappoint as much as previous years’ trade deadlines. There were a couple really nice trades and a ton of depth trades.

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2017-18 NBA Season Wins Over/Under – Eastern Conference

The NFL has pushed all other sports news off to the side, so some may not realize the NBA regular season starts on Tuesday.

The Boston Celtics boned up their roster this offseason. Can they win more than 54.5 games and hit the over?

Here are our 2017-18 NBA over/under season wins total picks for the Eastern Conference.

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Which Team Will Land Paul George?

As a fan of the Indiana Pacers, I knew this day was coming, but I wasn’t ready.

Paul George made it official, he wants out of Indianapolis. He wants to head back home to Southern California and play for the Los Angeles Lakers. Pacers new general manager Kevin Pritchard has a huge issue on his mind. Do they let him play next season, hope he makes the All-NBA team, so they could offer him much more money than any other team, or do they trade him now for some picks and/or another established star?

In 2010, Pritchard lost his job in Portland for a few dumb moves (and drafting Greg Oden over Kevin Durant). I’m sure he assumed a day when he needs to figure out the George problem would come, but probably didn’t think the news of George wanting out of town would leak before the 2017 NBA Draft.

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How Did We Do?: 2016-17 NBA Season Wins Over/Under

It’s time to pop the champagne, guys!

Before the season began, we picked the NBA Season Wins Over/Under totals. We wrote out picks for the Eastern Conference and Western Conference before the 2016-17 season started.

We’ve always done really well with our NBA Over/Unders in the past and our results were solid this year.

We went 16-13-1 on the year. We hit on all the sleepers, but missed horribly on the Houston Rockets (I wasn’t sold on their depth). Vegas definitely cleaned house on a few teams since a handful of totals were won and missed by only a 1/2 win.

We list all the teams and what their over/under win totals were at the beginning of the 2016-17 NBA season. See which ones we hit and missed on this year.

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NBA: Season Wins Over/Under – Eastern Conference

The NBA preseason just kicked off and the regular season is not too far away.

If I had to describe the NBA offseason with one word, the word would be MONEY.

It goes without saying that a lot of bad contracts were signed. A ton of money exchanged hands after the salary cap shot up to $94.143 million, an increase of roughly $24 million. I have a feeling NBA owners will want another ‘amnesty clause’ in the next CBA to bail themselves out from some of these deals.

The Cleveland Cavaliers won the Eastern Conference last season and are early favorites to repeat this season. Any sleepers out there worth a bet?

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Updated NBA Title and Conference Championship Odds

NBA training camps opened this week and the betting lines have bounced around since they were released soon after the start of the NBA Free Agency period.

It’s no surprise that the Golden State Warriors are the favorites headed into this season after signing megastar Kevin Durant. The defending champion Cleveland Cavaliers aren’t far behind, but then there is a huge gap between those teams and the rest of the field.

There isn’t much juice left on the bone if you feel that either Golden State or Cleveland will win the NBA title. There is place where you can still find some bets with some juice, the division battles.

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