5 NBA Win Totals to Target After All-Star Break

With the NBA season about to hit its home stretch following the All-Star break, we're looking at five win totals worth targeting before play resumes on Thursday. One pick is the Over for the Mavericks, who have found a new gear on defense.

This break in the NBA season allows us all a chance to take a step back and ponder. There is a third of the season remaining, what teams will make the most of it? What teams will squander the spring?

As betting markets for NBA odds have evolved over the last few years, we now have the chance to bet win totals during the season. When games tip every night, that puzzle can be a bit much to solve while also worrying about nightly handicaps. But this week, we get a chance to focus more acutely on in-season win totals.

Here are a handful to consider betting before play — and your NBA picks — resumes on Thursday night.

5 NBA Win Totals to Target

Atlanta Hawks Under 37.5 (+104 at FanDuel)

Through 55 games, the Atlanta Hawks are on pace to win 35.8 games. That is the simplest form of these handicaps, but expecting Atlanta to exceed its current rate by two games is an aggressively bold choice with only 27 games remaining.

The Hawks’ remaining schedule is perfectly average, No. 16 in the NBA in opponent winning percentage, per Tankathon, so it is not like the Hawks will load up on games against the dredges to create some surge.

At 17-38 against the spread, this is believed to be the worst ATS team of all time, not a barometer that impacts these wonders but one that underscores how disappointing Atlanta is compared to expectations.

Furthermore, the Hawks are perched in standings purgatory, with two games of cushion in each direction. Unless the Brooklyn Nets mount a charge under interim head coach Kevin Ollie, there will be no pressure on Atlanta to win games to close the season.

Five of the Hawks’ final six games are against winning teams, ones that look like they will be fighting for seeding in April. Atlanta could spiral to end the year, yet still make the Play-In Tournament.

This total is set too high for one of the league’s most disappointing teams, and without a standings necessity or a schedule advantage, there is no reason to trust the Hawks for the next two months.

Dallas Mavericks Over 47.5 (-110 at DraftKings)

Look out for the Dallas Mavericks. They found something very effective before the break. Specifically, they found a defense, notable for a team still led by Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving.

In the six games before the All-Star Break, Dallas led the NBA in defensive rating at 102.5. There is an obvious sample-size worry there, but the gap between the Mavericks and the No. 2 defense in that stretch, the Timberwolves, was larger than the gap between Minnesota and No. 5.

That was quite a change for Dallas, which ranked No. 25 in defensive rating before February. A 15-point improvement is a bit absurd, but some piece of that should be sustainable.

That may be all it takes for the Mavericks. Luka is Luka. Kyrie is Kyrie. The pick-and-roll delights of adding Daniel Gafford have yet to be fully realized. This offense will hum.

Finding some defense now should buoy Dallas in the standings, racing with the Suns and the Pelicans to avoid the Play-In Tournament. All three will have incentives to win until the season’s final week, and the Mavericks have the easiest remaining schedule of that trio.

That six-game winning streak before the All-Star Break put Dallas on a 47.5-win pace already. The easy schedule, the improved defense, and the standings incentive should propel the Mavericks well past that total.

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Minnesota Timberwolves Over 55.5 (-130 at DraftKings)

This number is oddly low. It implies that the Minnesota Timberwolves must be expected to coast to the finish line.

Minnesota is currently on pace to win 58 games. It has the No. 20 most difficult schedule remaining. Its defense has been a constant this season, one setting a floor high enough that the Timberwolves have yet to lose even three games in a row, suffering two-game losing streaks only twice this season.

Setting the win total this low suggests Minnesota will build enough of a Western Conference lead to cruise through April. Three teams are within three games of the Timberwolves in the standings, including the pressing Clippers. Additionally, tiebreaker scenarios with the Oklahoma City Thunder are entirely contingent on Minnesota winning two of three games against the Nuggets, the third of those three teams in the chase.

None of that suggests the Timberwolves can relax come spring.

Furthermore, Minnesota has made a point of not resting players on back-to-backs. The franchise has embraced a public ethos of playing every night. It may be the only team in the league not willing to grant more than one schedule loss in the season, and even that night resulted in an overtime loss at Boston on Jan. 10.

New York Knicks Over 49.5 (-105 at DraftKings)

Similarly, since when does a Tom Thibodeau team do anything but play every night like it's the last game of all time? If the New York Knicks can catch the stumbling Bucks — the last play left out of this article was Under 50.5 wins for Milwaukee at +104 at FanDuel — for No. 3 in the Eastern Conference, they will improve their chances of avoiding Joel Embiid in the second round.

Consider that an incentive Thibodeau does not need.

New York is already playing at a 49-win pace, and that has been without Julius Randle and OG Anunoby for the last nine games. Both should be back on the court before the season’s home stretch.

Eight of the Knicks’ final 13 games are against teams below .500, including three against the Bulls in April alone — that’s just weird, NBA schedule-makers. If Randle and Anunoby can spark a late-season winning streak, New York should clear this total.

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Boston Celtics Under 63.5 (-106 at FanDuel)

Yes, the Boston Celtics are the best team in the NBA. But to some degree, that could be said for a few years now, at least as it pertained to the Eastern Conference. Yet, the most games Boston has won in what we’ll call the Jayson Tatum Era has been last season’s 57.

This team is better, most pertinently on offense, but what reason do the Celtics have to keep winning at a 64-win rate? They have a six-game lead in the East even after the Cavs just rattled off an 18-2 stretch.

Despite with one of the league’s easiest remaining schedules, Boston should ease up in April. Half of the Celtics’ eight games in the final two weeks of the season may come against the league’s worst teams — two against Charlotte, one against Portland, and one against Washington — but those are the exact games that often defy expectations late in the season. Boston will not care about them, not at all.

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