NBA Best Bets: Trade Dust Settles and Value Appears

Mar 26, 2021

4for4 Illustrations/Doug Houvener

The trade deadline has come on and gone in the NBA. Perhaps we didn’t get the blockbuster deal we wanted or as many trades as we had hoped for, but a few teams got meaningfully better. There’s one, in particular, I’m going to place a futures wager on today.

I know this is a regular-season-focused piece, but you should place a half-unit wager on the Miami Heat to win the Eastern Conference at +1200. Miami effectively swapped out Kelly Olynyk and Avery Bradley for Victor Oladipo, Al-Farouq Aminu, Nemanja Bjelica and LaMarcus Aldridge (at the time of writing this, Aldridge has not officially signed, but there are strong reports he will sign with Miami). That is a marked improvement and if Oladipo can be 75-80% of what he once was, Miami will have the pieces and coach to slow down the Nets.

Risk: 0.5 units on the Miami Heat to win the Eastern Conference at +1200 on FanDuel or DraftKings to win six units.

Now, let’s move onto things happening today.