2024 NBA bets, lines and stats for Wednesday - ESPN

Happy Valentine's Day! («Every day's the 14th,» for the Outkast fans out there). The NBA has an extremely packed slate on the day of love, with 13 games scheduled and 26 of the 30 teams in play. With this abundance of action, there will be a lot of opportunities to find players and teams likely to outplay their odds. Let's dig in to some that catch my eye.

Los Angeles Lakers (+5.5) over Utah Jazz (-110).

The Lakers will be without LeBron James (ankle) on Wednesday night, but should still remain competitive. The Lakers have won five of their past six games with wins over some strong competition… including a nine-point win over the Celtics, in Boston, with both James and Anthony Davis sitting. The Jazz have lost five of their past seven games, the last two by a combined 36 points to the Phoenix Suns and Golden State Warriors. According to the ESPN Analytics Game Predictor, the Jazz should be favored, but only by a 2.5-point margin which would fall within the spread.

Victor Wembanyama over 22.5 points (-125).

Wembanyama is fresh off a monster triple-double on Monday, but he has seemed to have some extra pep in his step when facing the MVP candidates and big-named opponents all season. He dropped 33 points against Joel Embiid, 27 against Giannis Antetokounmpo, and 30 points and 13 boards against LeBron and the Lakers. His first truly big game in the NBA was when he dropped 38 points on Kevin Durant's Suns way back on Nov. 2. This will be Wemby's first game against Luka Doncic's Dallas Mavericks since his NBA debut, and he has grown leaps and bounds since then. I look for him to put another strong game in the books against another MVP candidate, particularly against a Mavericks defense that ranks in the bottom half of the