Photo: Geoff Burke-USA TODAY Sports
Joel Embiid and the Philadelphia 76ers get their first look at Victor Wembanyama on Monday night.
The game itself shouldn’t be competitive. The Sixers are a 14-point favorite on your Pennsylvania sports betting and New Jersey sports betting apps.
The real intrigue is how Wembanyama, currently the second favorite to win NBA Rookie of the Year behind Chet Holmgren, stacks up against Embiid, who enters Monday as the Most Valuable Player favorite at FanDuel and co-favorite with Nikola Jokic at DraftKings.
Wemby’s had mixed results against some of the NBA’s top big men.
For example, he had 30 points and 13 rebounds in a matchup with Anthony Davis, but he also produced a 12-point, 10-rebound game in one of his two meetings against Rudy Gobert.
What we do know about Wemby is that he’s going to score.
The French rookie has gone over 20 points on 20 occasions this season, and that’s led to his points prop recently being over 20. That numbers sits at 21.5 tonight.
The real betting fun with Wemby has been with blocks. It’s not an often-bet prop for NBA games, but he’s been a blocking machine with multiple rejections in 27 of his 36 games. The presence of the league’s top big men did not prevent him from swatting away shots. He had six blocks against Davis and the Lakers and five rejections versus Giannis Antetokounmpo’s Milwaukee Bucks.
Translation: The dude is a basketball freak that the MonStars couldn’t even create and he’s probably going to make a few plays that have you wondering if he’s even human.
The good news for the Sixers is that the Spurs suck. They’re 8-34 and their only wins over the last month have come against Portland, Charlotte, Washington, and Detroit, all of whom are also terrible.
Wemby or no Wemby, Embiid should eat in the post and he’s been really good against the atrociously bad teams.
Four of Embiid’s five highest point totals this season came against Charlotte, Detroit, and Washington. He had at least 11 rebounds in each of those 40-plus-point performances.
A similar performance is needed for Embiid to cash the overs on player props because they sit at 34.5 points and 12.5 rebounds. They are remarkably high, but he keeps giving us reasons to bet on his overs, especially against the bad teams.
As for the 14-point spread, the Sixers are 5-1 against the spread as a double-digit favorite this season with the only non-cover coming in Saturday’s game against Charlotte, which was the second leg of a back-to-back.
Meanwhile, San Antonio is 6-6 ATS as a double-digit underdog, and in their most-recent instance as a double-digit dog they got trounced by the Celtics in a 117-98 loss.
It will be cool to see Wemby go up against Embiid, but that’s the only fascinating thing about a Spurs-Sixers matchup in mid-January.
Gregory Daniels is your guide to the latest trends, viral sensations, and internet phenomena. With a finger on the pulse of digital culture, he explores what’s trending across social media and pop culture. Gregory enjoys staying ahead of the curve and sharing emerging trends with his readers.
