Best NBA Bets Today – Sunday, February 23, 2025
FTN Staff
We start our week with eight games of NBA action. Several games are important for the standings. The Chicago Bulls face the Philadelphia 76ers in the “battle” for the 10 seed in the Eastern Conference, while the Brooklyn Nets have a chance to get an easy win and sneak over both of those teams to grab the 10 seed for themselves.
The Miami Heat and Atlanta Hawks face each other with the winner grabbing the 8 seed with a real chance to get up to 7. There’s an interesting inter-conference matchup between the Denver Nuggets and Indiana Pacers. Those games should all be compelling, but the best matchup of the night is on NBA TV, as the Minnesota Timberwolves head to Oklahoma City to face the Thunder for the second time in two nights. Here’s my breakdown of the matchup and my best bets.
Minnesota Timberwolves at Oklahoma City Thunder
Current Line – Thunder -12, 228.5
My Projection – Thunder 123, Timberwolves 108
Key Injuries – Donte DiVincenzo, Julius Randle, Rudy Gobert and Chet Holmgren are out.
Oklahoma City Thunder Team Total Over 120.5
-115, FanDuel, DraftKings
These teams faced one another last night in Minnesota. The Timberwolves lost by seven points despite generating eight more possessions than the Thunder, making 12 more free throws than the Thunder and making 40% of their 45 attempted three-pointers. Additional possessions are generated by having more offensive rebounds and/or less turnovers than your opponent, and Minnesota crushed OKC on the glass on offense. With that many extra chances to score, additional free throws and such a good performance from deep, you would have expected the Timberwolves to keep the game much closer (or to have won it).
Unfortunately, Rudy Gobert missed the game, and they missed him dearly on defense. The Thunder shot over 55% from the field, over 54% from deep and scored 14 more points in the paint. Minnesota has some good perimeter defenders, but Gobert is the only player on the floor who can control the paint and defend the rim. He’s not going to play again tonight, and I see no reason to expect the Timberwolves defense to suddenly get better on the road.
The Thunder struggled only in the second quarter of last night’s game. They lost the second frame of the game 40-26 but responded with a 42-33 win in the third quarter and held their lead in the fourth. Offensively, the game went about as well as expected. Defensively, it was a disappointment and likely one of the worst performances of the season from the NBA’s best defense. I expect a better effort tonight at home where they’ve played their best. There’s a good chance we see Minnesota’s shooting regress. That will help anyone betting the spread, but I’m focused on the offense and how many points they’ll score. They put up 130 on just 86 attempts from the field, which is one of the lowest numbers of field goal attempts the team has had all season. That was on the back of one of their best shooting nights, and although that might regress, I’d be shocked if they shoot the ball less than 90 times, which would still be below their season average. Said another way, I think the pace will be fast tonight, so even if the shooting is worse, I expect the Thunder to score a lot again. I make their team total 123 and the market is set at 120.5. Give the over on that.
Looking into player props, our NBA Prop Tool at FTN is showing some nice edges on this game, and there is one in particular I like a lot.
Naz Reid Over 2.5 Made Threes
-110, FanDuel
No Rudy Gobert means a lot of minutes for Naz Reid as the team’s only reliable big. Reid is a good shooter, making just over 40% of his threes with the third-most attempts on the team. He’s averaging three makes on eight attempts from deep in games without Gobert, including two 3-for-9 performances against Oklahoma City. Our model at FTN projects him to make 3.7 threes and would price this deeper than -220. That gives us an expected value of more than 35% at this price. Bet this and don’t be afraid to sprinkle a little money on 4+ and 5+ made threes if you have that option.
You can see all my picks and my record in the FTN Bet Tracker. If you have any questions about other games, drop them in the #nba-betting channel of the FTN Discord and tag me @noopschristenson. I’ll be sure to get back to you ASAP.
