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⚡ Back Our 12/1 NBA 24/25 Outright Requested Treble with Betfair (Was 9/1)
📉 Under 20.5 Washington Wizards Wins
🏀 James Harden to average 22+ points per game
📈 Over 48.5 Cleveland Cavaliers Wins
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The NBA returns in the early hours of Wednesday 23rd October, and our expert is all over the new campaign, picking out their five favourite outright tips for you to follow along with throughout the 2024/25 NBA regular season.
NBA Outright Tips
📉 Under 20.5 Washington Wizards Wins
While another year has passed, the Washington Wizards still appear to be the likely strugglers of the Eastern Conference. With the second overall pick in the draft, they brought in rookie 19-year-old center Alex Sarr, who struggled mightily averaging just 5.5 points per game, the lowest scoring average of any first-round pick who played at least four games in Summer League.
He only shot 19% from the field and 11% from beyond the arc, showcasing all the offensive limitations scouts were worried about. This will be a developmental year for the prospects, not one where they make an immediate impact on the win total.
Additionally, Washington traded forward Deni Avidja, their only clear success story from last season, who finished sixth in the Most Improved Player award race. They got back the 13th pick in the draft which was used on another 19-year-old college freshman in Bub Carrington, who looked promising but likely won’t contribute much early on.
This was already the youngest roster in the NBA, and they traded away talented pieces in search of franchise cornerstones. This is not a roster built to win, it’s a roster built for them to get right back in the lottery next season.
Washington only won 15 games last season, and the roster objectively got worse in the offseason. Jordan Poole and Kyle Kuzma proved last season that they can’t sustain a legitimate NBA offense, and they have even fewer pieces around them as they attempt to pile on some more wins. The Wizards are the favourites to finish with the worst record in the league for a reason.
📉 Under 20.5 Washington Wizards Wins
🏀 James Harden to average 22+ points per game
James Harden is my favourite choice for a player prop pick here, as he heads into his second season with the Clippers. In the offseason, we saw franchise cornerstone Paul George pack his bags and head to Philadelphia, leaving this team to be led by Harden and Kawhi Leonard. If you’ve paid attention to basketball in any capacity over the last couple of years then you would know there is no player less reliable to play a full season than Kawhi Leonard.
Even if Leonard somehow does manage a full workload, we still saw Harden vastly improve his scoring in the absence of George. He averaged 21.1 points last season and 21.0 points in 64 total Clippers games without PG. Add in the games he played without Kawhi Leonard, who, even without any injury issues, is sure to be load-managing throughout the campaign, and he once again averaged over 20 points.
We’ve seen James Harden play a more reserved scoring role over his last two stops with the Nets and Clippers, but that’s also because he’s been surrounded by some of the best scorers on the planet in Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving, Kawhi Leonard, and Paul George.
He’s not far removed from his dominant scoring days in Houston, and I expect a much bigger scoring load to be placed on him this year. George’s production has not been replaced, so Harden will have to step up to the plate if the Clippers are to have any hope of competing for a title this season.
🏀 James Harden to average 22+ points per game
📈 Over 48.5 Cleveland Cavaliers Wins
This wins line looks generous, especially when considering that Donovan Mitchell, Darius Garland, Evan Mobley, and Jarrett Allen only played 28 games together, yet the Cavaliers still managed to win 48 games last season. While that season may have been fairly affected by injuries, we did see some high-level efforts from Donovan Mitchell in the absence of his backcourt mates.
Darius Garland showed a lot of promise but was slowed down by an injury that held him out for a lot of last season, his increased development alongside Mitchell will be extremely important to the success of this team. We already saw strides with both his playmaking and scoring, and having a true threat alongside one of the best scorers in the NBA would be huge.
While they did bring the same core back together, it’s with new leadership under head coach Kenny Atkinson. Despite all the talent in the world, this roster has looked a bit stagnant over the last couple of seasons, so hopefully a more offensive-minded head coach will help get them moving back in the right direction. We already know the talent is there, and that they can even sustain some pretty serious injuries and still be a competitive playoff-caliber team.
If they get any injury regression this season they should be able to sail over this number pretty comfortably. While I think some of their frontcourt offensive weaknesses will be exploited in the postseason, the combo is extremely strong on the defensive side of the ball, and we haven’t seen the lack of floor spacing punish them much until the playoffs.
📈 Over 48.5 Cleveland Cavaliers Wins
⭐ Los Angeles Lakers to make the West Play-In Tournament
Another year in the books with LeBron James and Anthony Davis means another opportunity to fade this team in the regular season. Both James and Davis are two of the top candidates in the league to miss extended periods, and somehow we always find ourselves just hoping they are healthy by the postseason, giving up on building that important regular-season chemistry. If those guys can’t play full seasons, then you’re putting a lot of confidence on players like D’Angelo Russell, Austin Reeves, and Rui Hachimura, who are all role players.
In addition, you’re adding a ton of variance to this team with new head coach J.J. Reddick. Known for his basketball IQ and having built up his profile post-retirement, becoming one of the most popular basketball media figures, he’s now been thrown into his first coaching gig on the biggest stage possible. With the Lakers dealing with a first-year coach trying to work with a veteran-heavy locker room, I see some growing pains along the way.
The Western Conference is only getting more and more competitive from top to down, with teams like the Grizzlies getting healthy and Ime Udoka’s Rockets attempting to crack the top 10 once again. The Nuggets, Thunder, Mavericks, Suns, and Timberwolves are likely to dominate the top of the conference, so the Lakers will in all likelihood be fighting for those final two playoff spots for the third straight season.
After back-to-back Play-In Tournament appearances, I expect this team to once again find themselves having to battle through at least one elimination game to book their spot in the postseason in a very competitive Western Conference.
⭐ Los Angeles Lakers to make the West Play-In Tournament
⛔ Golden State Warriors to Not Make the Playoffs
An extremely stacked Western Conference playoff race means backing against the Golden State Warriors is a smart play. Coming off a season finishing 10th in the west, the Warriors haven’t made any real personal upgrades to this roster. Stephen Curry and Draymond Green aren’t getting any younger, and we just saw an extremely disappointing season from Andrew Wiggins.
Even with improvements from Jonathan Kuminga, this team is going to need a lot of unexpected production from role players if they want to compete this season. When Stephen Curry was asked about expectations for this season, he didn’t mention a path to the Western Conference title or NBA finals, rather just getting back to relevancy.
He admitted he was part of the crew attempting to lure All-Stars like Paul George and Lauri Markkanen trades, to no avail. They ended up signing De’Anthony Melton and Buddy Hield in an attempt to cover up the loss of one half of the Splash Brothers, Klay Thompson, heading to the Mavericks.
Additionally, this will be another year that the Warriors will be an extremely undersized team at the center position, adding 6’8 forward Kyle Anderson to a room with 6’9 Draymond Green and 6’9 Trayce Jackson-Davis. This size disadvantage is especially tricky to overcome in the West where you are facing skilled 7-footers like Nikola Jokic, Victor Wembanyama, and Domantas Sabonis regularly.
⛔ Golden State Warriors to Not Make the Playoffs
Andy’s Bet Club is the best place for expert betting predictions, which includes a regular stream of NBA predictions throughout the season.
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If you enjoyed our NBA outright picks, why not keep across our other American sports coverage? We will have NFL acca tips and NFL predictions available throughout the regular season and the playoffs, from the start of the regular season until the Super Bowl in February.
* All odds displayed correct at the time of publishing *
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