🏠 Win or Go Home

The NBA playoffs commence with the play-in tournament

The Miami Heat in the play-in tournament — a tradition unlike any other.

In today’s Betting Life newsletter, presented by Underdog.

  • NBA Play-In Tournament: Trust the 76ers with Joel Embiid?

  • The Masters: Scottie Scheffler pays off big for bettors.

  • NHL Monday: Back Panarin and the Rangers.

  • It’s 4/15. Take it away, Matt LaMarca

We’ve officially made it through the NBA regular season. I’m not going to lie; things got a bit ugly at times down the stretch. NBA teams are not afraid to tank when they’re out of it, and the good teams are not above resting their best players, either. The result is some wildly uncompetitive contests over the final month or so.

That said, the time for tanking and resting players is over. The NBA Play-In Tournament starts on Tuesday, and the stakes for those teams couldn’t be higher. The winners advance to the playoffs, while the losers will be relegated to their couches.

As a reminder, the play-in tournament works as follows. The teams that finished seventh and eighth in each conference will meet in the first round, and the winner will earn the No. 7 seed in the playoffs. The loser will face the winner of the matchup between the ninth and tenth seeds, and the winner of that game will earn the No. 8 seed. That means that the seventh and eighth seeds need to win just one of two contests, while the ninth and 10th seeds need to win two in a row.

Let’s dive into my favorite bets for the first round of the Play-In Tournament.

The Heat are like Michael Myers. Every time you think you’ve killed them off, they pop up to scare you one more time. Josh Hart told reporters that Jimmy Butler does “side quests” before shifting to the main storyline in April, and I’m not sure a more perfect quote has ever existed.

Betting against Butler and the Heat is a bit scary, but the 76ers are simply the better team. They got Joel Embiid back in the lineup recently, and he looks like he’s ready to go. He’s played in five of the team’s past seven games, and he’s led the team to five victories. He was pretty darn good statistically as well, averaging 30.4 points, 9.2 rebounds, and 5.2 assists in 30.5 minutes per game. Embiid topped out at just under 36 minutes in his return to the lineup, so he seems ready for a full workload.

When Embiid has been in the lineup for Philly this season, they’ve been one of the best teams in the East. They racked up a 31-8 record, which puts them on pace for a 65-win season over a full 82 games.

Before Embiid’s first extended absence – which came on Christmas – the 76ers were No. 1 in the league in Net Rating. They were second in offensive efficiency and third on defense, which is an excellent combination. The team’s most-used five-man lineup this season – Embiid, Tyrese Maxey, Tobias Harris, De’Anthony Melton, and Nic Batum – posted an absurd +33.2 Net Rating.

There’s a reason Embiid was the runaway MVP favorite before missing time with an injury. With him, the 76ers were elite. Without him, they were below average. Now that he’s back, I expect the 76ers to take care of business against a flawed Heat squad. In fact, I think you can make a case for the 76ers at +900 to win the Eastern Conference.

🏀 NBA Play-In Tournament

Win and you're in!!! Lose and you're in Cancun!!!

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Watercooler

⚾️ Jackie Robinson Day is here across Major League Baseball. Best bets for Monday’s slate.

📺 Post-season hoops are here. How to dominate NBA Playoff betting.

⚰️ Nothing says tanking like “Dalano Banton.” Thankfully for the Blazers, the season is officially over.

NHL Best Bets

NHL Monday has delivered us a tasty eight-game slate for betting. While there are several important games on the slate (many with massive playoff implications), the best opportunities may involve some props in more low-key matchups. Geoff Ulrich breaks it all down below.

  • Panarin 2+ goals (+800; FanDuel)

  • Panarin hat trick (+4300; FanDuel)

The thesis for this Monday is simple … back the Rangers), and back their heart and soul winger Artemi Panarin in the anytime goal markets. Panarin is vying for the first 50-goal season of his nine-year career (the last five of which have been with the Rangers) and is two goals away from reaching that milestone. He’d be only the fifth Ranger in team history to achieve that feat. 

Backing Panarin might be a tougher decision if the Rangers were playing a better team or Panarin’s odds were south of +100, but neither of those circumstances pertain tonight. Ottawa has been extremely poor on the road this season and has the fourth-worst penalty-kill in the league. Panarin has a career-high 11 power-play goals to date and will likely have teammates actively looking to set him up early in this game.

The Rangers can afford a little in-game bias if they want to (they already have home ice locked up) and have an old-school coach in Peter Laviolette — under whom Alex Ovechkin scored a hat trick last year in a regular season game to reach the 800-goal milestone.

As the saying goes, “History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes,” and it feels like history is about to rhyme the heck out of itself with Panarin/Laviolette tonight. With his odds still very playable, Panarin’s goal props make for nice upside plays to chase on Monday’s betting card.

This also seems like an appropriate spot to double-dip and back the Rangers in the outright markets. New York is three points ahead of Carolina (who has a game in hand) and can win the Presidents Trophy tonight by defeating Ottawa. Luckily for them, the game is in New York where they are 29-11 this season and will be playing a shorthanded Senators team who have managed just a 15-22 record on the road — the seventh-worst away mark in the league. 

I’m also unsure if you could find a more disinterested team than Ottawa for the Rangers to pummel tonight. The Senators played their last home game on Saturday (a thrilling 5-4 SO win over Montreal) and now have two road games left in two popular American cities — with absolutely nothing to play for. 

Ottawa has played decent hockey at points down the stretch (which is likely what is keeping the 60-minute line under -150 for now), but they have extremely poor goaltending and special teams. If New York gets up early, there is every chance this game gets out of hand and the Rangers cruise in regulation to an easy win.

👑 Kevin Fiala anytime goal (+170; DraftKings)

Fiala has been on fire of late. The winger has scored five times over his last seven games and plays his old team tonight in the Wild — against whom he’s landed multiple points in each of his last two meetings. Fiala is also just one goal away from hitting 30 goals on the season, a mark he reached in 2021-22 but failed to achieve last season.

Narratives aside, the Wild are also great opponents for us to chase a Fiala goal prop. They’ve allowed an average of 3.83 goals against over their last six games and have struggled against playoff teams, allowing four or more goals in recent losses to Winnipeg, Colorado (x2), and Vegas.

Much like the Rangers and Panarin, you could certainly look to play the Kings in the moneyline market (they are +105 on Bet365 to win in regulation) but there is divergence in the odds on Fiala’s goal prop. He’s as low as +150 at other books but available at +170 on DraftKings, where it makes sense to add him to our cards.