NBA Best Bets, Picks | Wednesday Predictions from the ‘Buckets’ Podcast (March 20)

NBA Best Bets, Picks for Wednesday, March 20

By Jay Money

SGA is building his MVP case.

I know he's in second right now and Jokic is the heavy favorite, but anything can change.

SGA has had 49 games of 30-plus points. which is over 75% of his games played. If he doesn't win MVP this year, I don't know when he'll have this good of a chance in the future.

Both he and his team know that, and we can see it in his dip in assists number. You can parlay 30-plus points from SGA and a Thunder win if you think 31.5 is too high, and I feel good about the Thunder pulling this one out.

By Sean Little

The Clippers have been struggling, period. They're 6-8 straight up since the All-Star break and own a -2.1 net rating.

With that said, the offense is still top-10, and they just fell flat on their face against the 10th team in the east, the Atlanta Hawks. James Harden has played poorly since the foul-call changes have occurred.

They've played some good defensive teams of late, including the Bulls twice, Bucks twice, Nuggets and Rockets.

Ty Lue is upset with the schedule in the back half of the season, but his team has had two full days off since Sunday and is playing one of the worst defenses in the league in the first of a duplex spot.

The Blazers are 24th in defense and 29th in turnover percentage in the last 10 games. Everybody should be able to create and develop more offensive flow against Anfernee Simons and Scoot Henderson.

The only reason I didn't lay the points is because I'm worried about a backdoor, but they should easily clear 112, 115 points.