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Posted at 10:00 AM EST. Odds are subject to change.

Phoenix +150 over Denver 

10:00 PM EST. Rest is doing a lot of quiet work in this price. Denver visits Phoenix tonight, and the Suns haven't played since Monday, three full days off, at home — while the Nuggets are on their second road stop in three days after winning in New Orleans on Wednesday. Phoenix is only 1-2, but the home game on its ledger is a 131-122 win over Golden State, and Devin Booker (22.7 a game) leads a perimeter group — Jalen Green, Mikal Bridges, Dillon Brooks — built to score in bunches when it's fresh. Your +150 is also the top of the board: DraftKings is dealing +142, so you're already being paid the best price available for the home dog.

Denver's 2-2 deserves an asterisk, too. Both wins came against New Orleans, the league's doormat of the moment, and the losses came against Oklahoma City and Golden State — the Nuggets haven't beaten a real team yet, and their defensive rating (113.9) is nothing to frame. The wing rotation is a genuine problem tonight: Cameron Johnson is questionable with an ankle after missing three games (and has played 11 minutes all season, so even a return comes with a minutes leash), Alpha Diallo is questionable, and Spencer Jones and Julian Strawther are out. Trevon Brazile, a rookie, started on the wing Wednesday. Against a rested Booker and friends, that thin a perimeter rotation is where a home upset grows.

The whole reason Denver is favoured is the middle. Phoenix's starting center, Mark Williams, is out until February after shoulder surgery, which leaves rookie Khaman Maluach — talented, raw, about 28 minutes a night — standing across from Nikola Jokic, who just posted 21 points, 13 rebounds and 10 assists on Wednesday and lives for exactly this kind of mismatch. Oso Ighodaro, the backup big, is questionable with an oblique strain, and if he's out the Suns are down to fumes behind Maluach. 80 percent of the tickets are on the Nuggets. The bet, in the end, is legs and depth: a rested home team with real scoring against a thin-rotated visitor whose only wins came against the Pelicans, at the best price on the board. Let's give them a whirl tonight at this price!

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