NBA Week One Betting Takeaways | What to Make of Opening Week

The 2023-24 NBA season is just about a week underway, with most teams having played between two or three real, meaningful basketball games, and while that is a beyond-absurdly small sample, there is actual data we now have to parse through. This, in many ways, is the Golden Hour for NBA bettors. It’s when the market hasn’t fully calcified, and bettors who can separate signal from noise do truly have as large an edge on the books as they are ever going to have.

Personally, it is my favorite time of year to bet the NBA, and it has historically been my most profitable as well. If you have been following in the Action App (@TurveyBets), you know I have been going particularly hard on the player props, as this is the best time to attack that market.

However, it’s also the best time to notice new trends at the team and even league-wide level, so with that in mind, let’s dive into some actionable takeaways from the first week of the 2023-24 NBA season.

League Wide Lens

Three Up

I don’t speak for the whole Action NBA crew, but there was definitely a general consensus among the team that, while the Nuggets were arguably the collective favorites to defend their title this season, the regular season wasn’t going to be their time to shine. The starting five was truly elite, but the depth was going to have to grow into itself, and their star had proven all he needed to in the regular season and would be focused on horses for the next six months, or something like that.

Well, that has been decidedly untrue to start the season. Yes, the starting lineup has been elite. In fact, their starting five has played the most minutes together of any five-man unit in the NBA, and they possess a net rating of +12.9 in those 59 minutes, but the bench has been a revelation. In fact, the team net rating as a whole (+16.5) is even better than just that starting five. 

The team already has three quality wins, having beaten the Lakers, Grizzlies, and Thunder, three teams who most folks had in the playoff picture in the West before the season. Nikola Jokic has looked every bit the best player on the planet (the whole not caring thing plays a lot better when it becomes obvious just how much he does care about basketball), but really this truly looks like a viable 10-man rotation that is going to be an absolute juggernaut all year.

Of course, we all know that’s not how these things actually work, so the advice from preseason remains. I picked the Nuggets as my title winner, but at only +550 odds to win the title, I suggested bettors wait until an inevitable lull and to avoid getting trapped in the doom of that moment to hop on the number then. Now it appears as though that lull is potentially less likely to arrive, but: A) we are still working with the tiniest of samples, and B) even if you were to wait until right before the postseason begins, unless a rash of injuries to star players arrives unlike we have ever seen, you’re really not going to be giving up a ton of value to get a whole lot of information. As such, I still don’t recommend betting the Nuggets to win the title, but rather waiting til a better number pops, or the postseason arrives and we can see what the path looks like.

Ok, I’m cheating a little bit and combining two teams because they are kind of a yin and yang. Through Sunday’s games, the Pelicans have the second-best defense, while the Pacers have the best offense. They also sit second and third in NBA-Reference’s simple rating system which accounts for net rating, as well as opponent. 

For New Orleans, this looks a lot like last season’s start. Remember when they were 23-12 and atop the Western Conference just before the New Year last season? Yes, Zion got injured not long after and was part of their second half swoon, but it wasn’t just Zion. The Pelicans also lost: Brandon Ingram in late November; Herb Jones for most of December; Larry Nance from mid-December to mid-January; and Jose Alvarado for most of the stretch run.

Zion is definitely a big part of their ceiling, but those other players are central to their floor, and while some injuries are inevitable in a long NBA season, the Pels had inarguably some of the worst luck in that regard last season. If Zion stays healthy, the Pels ceiling is nearly unlimited; if their depth stays healthy, their floor is playoff team.

As for Indiana, this success isn’t entirely new either. The 2022-23 Pacers started the season 23-19, and it’s no coincidence that that winning percentage started to drop on January 13, when Tyrese Haliburton missed his first chunk of time. For the Pelicans, Zion is their ceiling, but for the Pacers, Halliburton is both their floor and their ceiling. That sounds like a crazy statement, but just think about the fact that the Pacers instantly went 1-9 in his absence after that 23-19 start last season.

It has almost gotten comical how much NBA Twitter Types love Hali, but it’s deserved! He’s one of the smartest players in the league right now and almost single-handedly (Rick Carlisle deserves some credit) can float a top-five offense.

Hopefully you tailed some of our preseason Pacers love, because I’m not backing off it one bit. I still love Haliburton to lead the league in assists at anything around +200 (he is out to an early lead, and only Chris Paul—who recently was moved to the bench—is averaging more potential assists per game), and while Rick Carlisle’s Coach of the Year odds have already plummeted (+1000 down from +4000 given out this summer), I actually still would put a touch on that price.

Three Down

Ok, time to hit the brakes hard from the Pacers victory-lapping (pun intended). Memphis is a team I have thought of as the modern Spurs for a few seasons now. The team that seems to be able to ride out the inevitable waves and crests of the NBA season with amazing consistency, just racking up wins with players that sound like 2K generated folks. 

They may have found their breaking point.

The team is currently without: Ja Morant, Steven Adams, Brandon Clarke, Santi Aldama, and Luke Kennard, and the result is an 0-3 start “highlighted” by a loss to the lowly Washington Wizards on Saturday.

As Matt Moore pointed out on Buckets, it has gotten to the point that Kyle Kuzma is cruising in for putback dunks and chuckling at the ease with which he can roast the Memphis frontcourt. However, it’s really the other side of the rebound rate that has been disastrous. For an offense that has long looked very mid in the halfcourt, their offense has basically been inextricably linked with their offensive rebound rate in the past half decade.

In 2019-20, when this iteration of the team first started to show signs of life, they were 12th in offensive rebound rate. The next season, their first above .500 in four years, they were 6th. Their peak, the 56-win 2021-22 season, they led the league in offensive rebound rate. Last season, through January 22, they were 31-15 and ranked second in offensive rebound rate. After January 22, they went 20-16, while ranking 22nd on the offensive glass. Why January 22?

That’s when Steven Adams played his last game for the season. And now, of course, he has been ruled out for the 2023-24 season. It’s easy to understate Adams’ impact, but with the way this offense functions, it’s incredibly bad news to have him out for the season.

I’m not fully to the point of buying out of all the Memphis futures I had preseason, I think there are moves to be made (more on that in a second), but I think fading them for the time being—especially on the offensive end—is a must-look for bettors.

Instead, I’m going to focus on one area in particular: The center position. Part of why I was high on the Hawks before the season was the potential move from Clint Capela to Onyeka Okongwu as the main Hawks big. Capela is a perfectly serviceable center, but Onyeka is the one who for seasons has looked like the piece who could really unlock this team on both ends. 

In their first two games, head coach Quin Snyder decidedly did not agree with this assessment, playing Capela 28.4 minutes per game, with Onyeka down at 19.7 mpg. More importantly, in two close losses, it was Capela getting the minutes over Onyeka. Plus minus is a stat that can be beaten into the ground, especially in small sample, but in both games Capela had been a notable negative (-19 and -9) while the Hawks had been positive with Onyeka on the court (+14 and +2).

There can obviously be a lot of noise in that stat, let alone over a two-game sample, but it’s worth noting that Trae, J, and the bench (Jalen Johnson being J) is a lineup that in 22 minutes this season has a +5.3 net rating, compared to the -9.9 that the starting unit has. But it’s worth noting that in a farrrr bigger sample size, last season Trae Young and Clint Capela were -0.1 together in 1430 minutes, while Okongwu and Young were +3.4 in 931 minutes.

Which brings me to the solve for both Memphis AND Atlanta. I couldn’t quite make it work in the trade machine, but that is far from my speciality. Let’s get Capela to Memphis where he would do immense work to stabilize the glass, while also freeing up Onyeka Okongwu to take his rightful spot in the starting lineup, with a bigger minutes share to boot. It’s a win-win for two teams who really need it.

We’ll stay somewhat brief here, but for any bettors who were on the Rockets win total over, or them to make the playoffs, losing their first two to the Magic and Spurs is not ideal. Those are the exact kind of teams that fringe playoff teams need to beat, and while the loss to Golden State is at least more defensible, at 0-3 with the second-worst simple rating per NBA-Reference, this is decidedly not the start bettors would have wanted. 

Betting a -1800 to not make the playoffs isn’t exactly the type of bet I’m in the market of handing out here, so instead, I’ll note that Jalen Greens FGA and usage rate have gone down with his new backcourt partner, and I’ve been looking at his points + assist unders plenty in this slow start.

Recommended Bets

Tyrese Haliburton to lead the league in assists: +190 FanDuel (if you don’t already have this bet).

Rick Carlisle Coach of the Year:  +1400 BetMGM (smaller, and again, if you don’t already have)

Pelicans over 44.5 wins: -110 FanDuel

Jalen Green: Points and assists unders