These Oklahoma City Thunder Betting Trends for January 2024 Are Worth a Look
OKLAHOMA CITY, OK (Gambling911.com) - The Oklahoma City Thunder are one of the better NBA teams as we check out their performance to date as of January 2024.
Sagarin has the Thunder sitting in the No. 2 spot while ESPN has them ranked No. 4.
Tim MacMahon of ESPN writes:
"Chet Holmgren had his third 30-point performance of the season in Monday's win over the Wizards, and he has shot better than 60% from the floor in all of them. Holmgren has surprised many scouts and coaches around the league by instantly establishing himself as an efficient and effective scoring complement to MVP candidate Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. Holmgren is averaging 17.8 points while shooting 55.1% from the floor and 40.9% from 3-point range. No rookie has ever averaged that many points with an effective field goal percentage as high as Holmgren's (62.4)."
Chet Holmgren and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander player props should be readily available the day of the game at your favorite online sportsbook or customized bookie software site, including from the great state of Oklahoma.
Chad from Edmond tells us his bookmaker business is booming thanks to all those DraftKings and FanDuel commercials ahead of the NFL Playoffs coupled with Oklahoma residents inability to play at either of those two sites.
"I'm doing all right because of the player props because otherwise the state teams are kicking my ass," he tells Gambling911.
The Sooners finished the 2023 season 8-4 Against The Spread while the Cowboys closed at 7-6 ATS. It doesn't help that the Sooners are killing it in college basketball as well with just two losses on the season and they owned a 9-6 record Against The Spread.
"Yeah, a bunch of my guys are betting college basketball this season and always throwing in a Sooners bet," Chad says.
Then there is the Oklahoma City Thunder, which at times have defied the odds.
Second half of back-to-back play? Not a problem.
Oklahoma City has covered in each of the second games of their back-to-back challenges with flying colors except in Atlanta on January 3 where they came in as a rare +1 underdog.
Here the challenge was too much. The Thunder hosted, and beat, the Boston Celtics 127-123, then had to fly to Atlanta and play the Hawks the next night. OKC fell 138-141 in that one, but notice how they still put up a whole lot of points.
A massive underlay and couple of point line move favoring Atlanta pretty much told the story here. We should note that the Hawks have sucked at covering in 2023-24, worst record in the NBA in fact.
Looking ahead, we have two back-to-back games coming.
January 23-24
On paper at least, the January 23 game versus Portland should be a breeze. The Thunder beat the Trailblazers 139-77 the last time they met. Earlier in the season, OKC beat that team 134-91.
Don't be fooled by last season where the Trailblazers went 1-3 against the Thunder and kept all those losses close (within four points). This is a much improved Thunder team and the Trailblazers did manage to to 33-49 Straight Up last season. They have only won 10 games thus far.
The line will likely be somewhere in the neighborhood of -16 and it wouldn't surprise us in the least if the Thunder go on to cover here.
Next night we have them hitting the road in San Antonio to play an even worse team. But without factoring in the previous night's play in the range of Thunder -6.5 to -7. San Antonio will have had rest prior to this game. I'd look for a sucker line under the 6 and place a small bet on the Spurs to cover. It's a painful thought but even if this were not a back-to-back game, OKC is just 1-3 Against The Spread assuming a line of 10 or more versus teams sitting in the bottom 10 of the Sagarin Ratings on the road compared to 4-1 at home.
The emphasis here is on the word SMALL if you're planning on backing San Antonio. It truly is a hard pill to swallow but that's pretty much the only weakness we've detected with Oklahoma City so far, the second game of a back-to-back ONLY when the Thunder are traveling the next day. Now keep in mind it's not as if they're flying over a bunch of states. Not to mention they've walloped the Spurs in recent games.
January 28-29
Forget the game in Detroit on January 28. As noted already, OKC hasn't been as impressive blowing out bad teams on the road.
They come home and face a good Minnesota team and all the pundits will be discussing this being the second game of a back-to-back and the flight back home, yada yada yada.
Minnesota comes into this one with a night's rest.
As of this writing we have Oklahoma City being able to beat the Timberwolves by 2.73 points assuming no other variables. But we have a pretty significant variable with the night prior play on the road and return trip home.
Do watch for Minnesota to be favored in this one then look at the size of this underlay. A play on OKC should be considered.
The T-Wolves have had OKC's number but they were beaten in Oklahoma City 129-106 back on December 26.
- Martin Hackborn, Gambling911.com Sports
