The NBA season won’t tip off for more than two months, but on Sunday the good folks over at the Westgate Las Vegas SuperBook provided us with something to talk about here in the dog days of summer.
With every major free agent signed and most significant trades already made, the NBA win totals for the 2018-19 season could finally be adjusted and posted without fear of a big move altering them. There will undoubtedly be some movement in the coming weeks as sharps and the public begin shoveling money into the SuperBook and they react accordingly, but for the most part these numbers will hold true until the start of the season.
Win total futures are a dangerous game as, for the most part, oddsmakers (particularly somewhere like Westgate) are very good at their jobs and most will fall within a game or two of the projection. That said, there are always outliers and misses by the book, and if you can spot those early there is money to be made. With that in mind, below you’ll find five over/under plays for the upcoming season if you’d like to take advantage of somewhat suspect lines.
New York Knicks UNDER 29.5 wins: The Knicks won 29 games a year ago and had Kristaps Porzingis for 48 of those games before he suffered a torn ACL. This season, they’ll be leaning on just about the same group and might not have Porzingis available until the middle of the season — if even that early. I don’t have a lot of faith in the Porzingis-less Knicks and it may take their young star some time to get readjusted once he is cleared to play. This feels like a 27-win squad, as New York endures one more season of rebuilding.
Cleveland Cavaliers OVER 30.5 wins: The Cavs are still trying to win this season, even though LeBron has gone West. I’m not so sure they’ll achieve their goal of making the playoffs, but with a healthy Kevin Love in the Eastern Conference, I feel like 30 wins is closer to the floor than their average. The part that gives me the most pause regarding the Cavs is if they decide to be major sellers at the trade deadline, but I feel like this is a 35-win team, provided Love can play 70+ games.
Atlanta Hawks UNDER 23.5 wins: The Hawks are bad. More importantly, the Hawks want to be bad. Atlanta won 24 games last year in what was a minor miracle, and at least three of those wins can be attributed to Mike Budenholzer being the head coach. Lloyd Pierce may very well be a good coach, but he is on board with the goals of the front office, which is to play the young guys as much as possible. That wasn’t how Bud rolled — he played a lot of Ersan Ilyasova and Marco Belinelli last year until the front office finally got rid of them — and this should be the worst team in the league by a healthy margin in their quest for another top pick. Swapping Dennis Schröder for Trae Young was the right move for the Hawks in the long-term, but in the short term it likely means Atlanta, somehow, gets even worse defensively at the point guard position. It’s going to be ugly in Atlanta this season, but, hey, the new arena has a Top Golf suite.
Portland Trail Blazers OVER 41.5 wins: It’s really hard to pin down what’s going to happen in the West this season, and the Blazers are a very popular pick to be the ones that fall the furthest from last year’s playoff squads. That might be the case — I don’t see another 49-win season — but I also don’t think this team is eight wins worse than last year. For better or worse, Portland seems dead set on running it back with this same squad at least one more time, and while it might implode next summer in the form of a Damian Lillard finally getting frustrated into a trade request, this group has proven they’re a known commodity in the regular season.
Orlando Magic UNDER 31.5 wins: This team won 25 games a year ago and now they, uh, don’t have a point guard other than D.J. Augustin?! They have a lot of fun bigs though! I just don’t see where the seven game improvement comes from the Magic.
Detroit Pistons OVER 37.5 wins: Someone has to win games in the Eastern Conference next season, and it might as well be Detroit. The Pistons will certainly be trying to win, and even in a fairly disastrous 2017-18 campaign they won 39 games. I think a full season with Blake Griffin and a healthy Reggie Jackson at point guard makes this a 40-win team in the LeBron On The Cavs-less East and they’re closer to sniffing .500 than they are this total.
Phoenix Suns UNDER 28.5 wins: The Suns should be a little better this season. There’s more continuity on the roster and (hopefully) on the bench with a coach that should make it through the entire season. Another year of development should help this young roster. However, this is also still the worst team in the Western Conference and a team that will have to play all those other good teams in the West an awful lot of times. I think this is an improved team that also tops out at about 27 wins.
