NBA Best Parlays of Week 7

Our parlay wasn’t so safe last week thanks to the late scratch of Anthony Davis, leading to a Lakers loss to the lowly Pistons. This week we should be in much more trustworthy hands with the Rockets and the Jazz. Our Big Money Parlay fell flat on its face last week, but it happens, and we move. This week we’ll be going back to the well with Christian Wood, who covered for us last week, and pair him with a couple of studs from the Northwest Division.

Both the Memphis Grizzlies and the Houston Rockets are coming off of double-digit losses that snapped long winning streaks, six for Houston and seven for the Grizz. Only one of them can start a new streak on Thursday night, however. Oddsmakers are giving both teams similar NBA odds to win, though we believe this game is less of a pick’em than it seems.

The Rockets were thoroughly beaten by the lowly OKC Thunder on Wednesday night, but John Wall had the night off and big man Christian Wood was basically nonexistent with just eight points. Neither of those things are going to happen in two straight games, and when Wall and Wood are both on, Houston is going to be hard to beat. Rather than an NBA point spread play, we’re going with the Rockets’ moneyline at -115 odds, just to be safe.

To pair with the Rockets we’re going to go with one of the hottest teams in the league right now: the Utah Jazz. After their 11-game winning streak was snapped by the Denver Nuggets, the Jazz went right back to work with a win over the Detroit Pistons to start up a new streak. Utah will be taking on the Hawks on Thursday night in Atlanta on one days’ rest, and when the Jazz play after just one day off they’ve been dialed in this season, covering the spread in 10 of those 14 games.

The Jazz have also won three of the last four meetings between these two teams and when they’re favored, they’ve come through with a cover in 10 of 12 games. Sportsbooks are giving Utah a larger point spread than we’re comfortable with for this safe parlay, however, so we’re going to go with a much more secure alternate -5.0 point spread for the Jazz at -159 odds as the back half here.

As we mentioned during our safe parlay breakdown, Houston’s Christian Wood is poised for a big bounce back game after putting up just eight points in a big loss to the Thunder on Wednesday. The forward only took seven shots all night, so you can expect him to be much more aggressive with his offense against the Atlanta Hawks.

Wood is scoring 13.0 points per game in the paint this season, good for seventh in the NBA. That means that he should be able get his way down low against a soft Memphis frontcourt that just allowed Myles Turner and Domantas Sabonis to combine for 54 points and 24 rebounds in their last game and gave up 18 and 16 to DeAndre Ayton earlier last week. We’re taking the over on the UNLV product’s 32.5 points + rebounds prop at -110 as one of our top picks for the NBA’s Thursday slate.

In keeping with the dominant-big-man-against-a-weak-frontcourt theme from our previous pick, we’re also going to take the over on Nikola Jokic’s 41.5 Points + Rebounds + Assists prop at -126 odds. Jokic is even better down low than Wood (fourth with 14.9 per game) and his opponent, the Los Angeles Lakers, are even worse than the Grizzlies at defending the paint, allowing the fifth-most paint points to opponents (49.0). The Joker has been putting up 30.8 points, 10.8 rebounds, and 4.3 assists over his past four games.

For the third leg of our big money accumulator we head back to Atlanta where we like Jazz reserve guard and Sixth Man of the Year candidate Jordan Clarkson to have a big night. Clarkson has been a bit off over the past two games as he failed to reach 15 points in either contest, with an especially poor showing in his last outing where he went 3-for-9 from the field for just nine points.

Since joining the Jazz midway through last season, Clarkson has only had one stretch where he was held to under 15 points in three straight games. That means we can expect the Missouri product to progress back towards his season average—which is 17.4 points—on Thursday night. With his number set at just 15.5 points with beautiful +100 odds, the over on Clarkson’s points prop could be one of the best bets for today.