NBA Best Bet of the Day: Denver Nuggets cover Game 1 vs. Los Angeles Lakers
Game 1 of the Western Conference Finals between the Denver Nuggets and the Los Angeles Lakers tips off at 9:00 p.m. ET, Friday, in the Orlando bubble. The Lakers beat the Nuggets in their last game on August 10, 124-121, thanks to a go-ahead three from SF Kyle Kuzma in the final seconds. Los Angeles extended its season series lead to 3-1 with the win.
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Nuggets +7 (-110) vs. Lakers
Denver is one of the more memorable NBA postseason runs in recent years. They are the first team to come back from a 3-1 series deficit to win the in two straight series. The Nuggets’ (+7, -110) Western Conference Semifinals upset over the Los Angeles Clippers shocked the NBA and gambling community.
Denver is powered by a center-guard combo in Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray, who’s playoff production puts each player into another tier moving forward. Jokic is putting up 25.4 points, 10.8 rebounds and 6.0 assists per game on .515% field goal and .440% three-point shooting.
Murray has two 50-point games and two 40-point games in this postseason, including a 40-point game in Game 7 of Denver’s previous series. Hopefully, Jokic and Murray’s play carry over into this series because they’ve struggled this season against Los Angeles.
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Speaking of struggling, the Lakers -7 (-110) have dropped both Game 1s of their two previous series coming into the WCF. This is a bit of a recent trend for Lebron James teams who’ve lost six of their past seven Game 1s in a playoff series.
My theory is LeBron likes to see the lay of the land and how his supporting cast stakes up against the opponent. Also, Los Angeles finished off the Houston Rockets in their second-round series this past Saturday so there’s an outside chance the Lakers need to knock off a little rust.
Los Angeles is losing the size/big man edge it had in the first two rounds. Obviously Denver has Jokic but PF Paul Millsap has incrementally played better throughout the playoffs and had a True Shooting percentage of 71% against the Lakers in the regular season. Also, backup C Mason Plumlee at least has the size and athleticism to compete with Dwight Howard and JaVale McGee.
I’ll throw out the multi-season trends between Nuggets-Lakers because this is the first legitimately good Lakers team in years but Denver has covered two of the four games this season. Denver has the wind at its sails and is playing with house money.
This should be a competitive series and Denver is getting too many points in Game 1. TAKE NUGGETS +7 (-110). New to sports betting? A $110 bet on the Nuggets +7 (-1100 returns a $100 profit if Denver wins or loses by six or fewer points.
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