NBA 23/24: how many Dames in a Buck?

[steveeeeeeeee]

My family and I are going to be Phoenix when the Suns are playing the Timberwolves. It's a week 24 game and I imagine there will be nothing to play for, especially for the Timberwolves. The cheapest tickets are currently around the $70 mark and there seems to be plenty of them, but x 3 makes it an expensive night out for me. Is it worth waiting until closer to the date of the game, prices could go down given the idea both teams would have secured play-offs and might rest key players?

I know the answer is "if you really want to go, book the tickets now", but just checking. We also arrive in LA when the Clippers are playing and tickets are far cheaper than the Suns, but it's on the evening we arrive from Mexico and I imagine we'll be really tired.

[ursus arctos]

Prices will fall by the day of the game

[steveeeeeeeee]

Thanks ursus. It's not a must see for the family, but I would like to have the experience of seeing an NBA game, even if it is a dead rubber.

[ursus arctos]

Many of the secondary market ticket apps also run introductory discounts that are worth looking at. We tend to use StubHub and Seat Geek, but there are others, including a newish one called GameTime that claims to specialise on short notice.

I don't know Phoenix well enough to know if genuine touts exist.

[jason voorhees]

That’s on Seat Geek?

[jason voorhees]

$44 so far
https://seatgeek.com/phoenix-suns-ti...-2/nba/6120176

[jason voorhees]

Amazing how the small rinky-dink rink of the Coyotes led to Formula 1 prices
https://seatgeek.com/arizona-coyotes-tickets

[ursus arctos]

The overlap with Spring Training of Midwestern MLB clubs has a real impact there.

[Incandenza]

Every Spurs/Thunder game needs to be a national game. I hope we get many more years of Wemby v. Chet.

28 points, 13 rebounds, 7 assists, 5 blocks, 2 steals for Wemby. The most 25/10/5/5 games in a month (three) since Hakeem in 1993.

[steveeeeeeeee]

Interesting first half in Boston today, with Boston leading the warriors 80-44, the highest first half score in Celtics' history.

[Incandenza]

Dunk of the year last night

https://twitter.com/NBA/status/1769922824037102069

I like how sometimes even other players have reactions like fans:

https://twitter.com/FelipeFromMiami/status/1769915349439332361

any other night and this would have been the nastiest dunk:

https://twitter.com/BleacherReport/status/1769919072110829921

[Incandenza]

Golden State won on the road in Orlando after Draymond was ejected four minutes into the game. Curry was not happy after the ejection.

https://twitter.com/NBCSWarriors/status/1773134383324746122

The hottest team in the league is the Rockets, who are a game back of GSW. GSW is in the last play-in spot.

[Incandenza]

Julius Randle is being shut down for the season to have shoulder surgery. I guess they've gotten here without him, but definitely would have been nice to have him for the playoffs.

[Incandenza]

Giannis went down grabbing his achilles after a non-contact play. The team says it is a calf strain and he will get scanned tomorrow.

[Incandenza]

Giannis' achilles is intact, but has a calf sprain that will keep him out at least through the end of the season. No timetable on when he might be able to return.

[Incandenza]

Denver beat Minnesota earlier to go into the #1 spot in the West, but lost to the Spurs on this wild game winner, and now OKC are in the top spot.

[Incandenza]

https://twitter.com/georgemikan/status/1779162879393951803

[Incandenza]

Lakers scrape through in New Orleans, and Sacramento beat GSW--that might be the end of the big 3.

https://twitter.com/statmuse/status/1780457328677900405

[steveeeeeeeee]

Did Klay Thompson manage to score a point by the end? I went to bed with 3 minutes to play, and he still couldn't hit a basket. Great atmosphere in Sacramento, almost like a 6th man out there.

I enjoyed the topsy turvy nature of the Lakers Pelicans game, must be crushing to claw back a 20 point deficit in the final quarter to just be pipped in the last 30 seconds. But Pelicans should beat the Kings with home advantage.

[ursus arctos]

No

0 for 10 from the field, 0 for 6 from three

[ursus arctos]

Jontay Porter banned for life

The league found that Porter shared his own injury information with someone he knew was an NBA bettor. That is no bueno, but it gets much worse: The league also found that Porter pulled himself out of a game after three minutes, claiming an illness, in order to make sure a prop bet on his stats, ostensibly an “under,” paid out. (The $80,000 bet threw up a flag somewhere and wasn’t paid out.) Finally, the league found that Porter placed at least 13 bets on NBA games using another person’s online betting account. He won nearly $22,000 on those bets. Three of his wagers were multigame parlays in which Porter bet on the Raptors to lose. He did not play in any of those games, the league said. That’s still egregious. Someone on the Raptors’ payroll, with proximity to players on the court, had a financial incentive for the team to lose. It’s a minor blessing for the NBA that those parlays—bets that require multiple outcomes to occur to pay out—were losers for Porter, but the league’s statement does not say whether the Raptors lost on those days. (A parlay fails if any one pick in its group of bets doesn’t win.)

[Incandenza]

The $80,000 bet would have paid out $1.1 million.

https://twitter.com/DragonflyJonez/status/1780671619918090247

[ursus arctos]

I can only imagine the alarms that bet triggered in the back office

[Hot Pepsi]

With props like that, does the app or the sportsbook have that on their board for players to select? Or does the gambler have to submit it as an idea and wait for somebody (or an AI) to give them odds?

[ursus arctos]

I would guess that some books offer an over/under on any active player, but I'm surprised that they took 800K unless the idea was always to identify idiots without putting the book at risk