Best Special Bets for the NBA Playoffs: PJ Tucker Scoreless

• Bovada has recently published NBA playoff specials for each team that is not in the play-in tournament.
• Many bets sport very long odds, but a few stand out as great values.
• A common bet seems to be a team to win the championship and have their best player as MVP, with some teams like the Philadelphia 76ers having +1200 odds or better.

NEW YORK – The NBA playoffs is quickly approaching on Saturday featuring six matchups for the first round. With every team looking to make a run at a championship, Bovada has set many specials for each team, with odds as high as +100000.

Using a methodology for determining which specials are worth playing can greatly help sift through the over 100 possible props that can be bet on. Generally, betting on the teams that will play the most throughout the playoffs can increase the chances that the specials found on legal betting sites will cash in on their attractive odds.

Method for Finding Best Value Plays

There are a couple ways for bettors to narrow down the teams and players they can be on for the playoff specials. As alluded to, one of the most important ones is betting on the teams that can make deeper playoff runs and thus play more games, since many specials specify that a prop just has to happen once in the playoffs.

Another big thing to note is that many of the specials pertaining to averages in points, rebounds, or assists, are very high and become more difficult for teams that play more games, as variance will typically have a player keep in line with their regular season averages.

Championship Winner + FMVP Picks

A popular category of the specials is for a team to win the championship and have one of their players be the Finals MVP. While many of the lower seeded teams have huge NBA odds, they generally are not worth taking when great value can be found for the best teams. Namely the Milwaukee Bucks and Philadelphia 76ers have strong odds for these types of picks.

Starting off with the most favored, the Bucks sport +300 odds to win the championship and have Giannis Antetokounmpo be FMVP. With the Bucks being the top favorite to win it all and Giannis easily being the best player on the team, it is unlikely that they would win the championship without heavy involvement from The Greek Freak. This makes the pick slightly better than their +250 odds to win the championship normally.

In a similar vein as the Bucks, the 76ers sport +1200 odds to win the championship and have Joel Embiid be Finals MVP. Essentially using the same logic as before, Embiid is by far the best player on the 76ers and would have to continue his MVP season for Philadelphia to bring home the championship. The 76ers alone are +1000 to win it all, giving this a nice boost of 200 odds points.

Player Prop Value + Mike Breen

One of the best value plays on the board is for P.J. Tucker to start a game and log zero points once throughout the playoffs at +400 odds on legal sportsbooks.

This year, Tucker has 22 total games starting with no points scored. if the 76ers make a playoff run that lasts about 10-20 games, it checks out that Tucker will have at least a single game without any points scored against strong defensive big men like Nic Claxton, Rob Williams III, or Clint Capela.

One of the more fun props to bet on his having commentator Mike Breen say “BANG!” for a Golden State Warriors three-pointer at EVEN odds. While this prop exists for many of the teams, Breen is surely more likely to say his signature phrase with the best three-point shooting team. Breen has also executed a rare double “BANG!” for the Warriors before in Steph Curry’s iconic game winner in the 2016 playoffs.