Locks
NBA Summer League (0.5 Unit) Atlanta Hawks -2.5 vs San Antonio Spurs (-110; Odds via Caesars): 3:30 PM CT on ESPN2
This Hawks roster is loaded for the summer, and I think they can make a run at the tournament title out in Vegas. Atlanta has a couple of high-impact rookies in Henri Veesar, Kingston Flemings, and Zuby Ejiofor, plus sneaky-elite shooting surrounding them. To be fair to San Antonio, the Spurs also have plenty of talent on their Summer League roster, but they aren’t battle tested yet. This is San Antonio’s first game of the summer while the Hawks played three games up in Utah over the past week. That cohesiveness, and success as their only loss was in OT to an elite Utah roster, is going to be an important factor here and I think they pull away in this opener.
NBA Summer League (0.5 Unit) Golden State Warriors/Dallas Mavericks Over 178.5 (-110; Odds via Caesars): 6:00 PM CT on ESPN
Dusty May taking over the Mavericks creates an intriguing scenario here for me. I know he won’t be coaching, as a Mavs assistant will handle that, but his fingerprints will be all over the style Dallas plays in this tournament. If I know May from his college days, he’ll want his team to make a statement and play up-tempo basketball. Dallas has the roster to do it too, with a lot of athleticism, shooting, and a great point guard in Ryan Nembhard to set it all up. Don’t discount the Warriors either though, as this roster is extremely deep. They have shooters all over the floor, and their franchise principles of taking a ton of three’s is sure to trickle down to Summer League action. That makes for a high ceiling of potential scoring here, and I have to take the over on the second-lowest total of the day.
NBA Summer League (1 Unit) Utah Jazz/Washington Wizards Over 186.5 (-110; Odds via Caesars): 8:00 PM CT on ESPN
This matchup of the top-two draft slots last month might very well be a championship preview of Summer League this year, so it’s a great opening day game. Speaking of loaded rosters, Utah is just stacked and was unstoppable offensively during their mini-summer league the past week. They rested their 3 best players for Tuesday’s finale and still dropped 103 points, so their style of up-tempo play combined with so much talent is sure to be putting up a lot of points the next couple of weeks.
And it’s not like Washington is going to play any defense, during this tournament or the regular season, so I see the Jazz running right through them with their true roster. The Wizards have a ton of talent too though, obviously with AJ Dybantsa being added to a very young roster that has a lot of scorers. Dybantsa will be highly motivated to play well in this debut against the team he wanted to be drafted by, and plenty of high level talent around him should create a lot of scoring to clear this total.
Degenerates
No degenerates today.
Past 7 days Tiny Tracker: 10-12 (-1.16 Units) – Recommend: Tail With Extreme Caution
Tiny Nick has been writing betting picks for Zone Coverage since 2020. Every day he will offer his Locks and Degenerate picks. Locks are what he’s most confident in, while Degenerates are entertaining but riskier picks.
