Griffin Wong shares his three favorite player prop bets on DraftKings Sportsbook for Monday night’s five-game NBA slate, including props for Nickeil Alexander-Walker, Jalen Duren, and Donovan Clingan.
Slowly but surely, the NBA seeding picture is starting to come into full display, and it’s just as well, given that most teams have only two games remaining in the regular season. Entering play on Thursday, six of the 20 postseason participants have their seeds locked, and several other teams could clinch their positions tonight.
Most notably, the Boston Celtics can lock themselves into the East’s No. 2 seed by beating the New York Knicks at 7:30 p.m. ET. The Denver Nuggets will secure home-court advantage in the first round if the Houston Rockets lose to the Philadelphia 76ers. No team in the East’s morass can quite secure a top-six spot today — the Atlanta Hawks blew an opportunity to do that last night — but the Toronto Raptors-Miami Heat game has the biggest implications, since the Raptors can finish no worse than eighth if they win and the 76ers lose.
I’ll stick with the three games with the biggest playoff implications for tonight’s top prop bets at DraftKings Sportsbook.
Top NBA prop bet picks
Jayson Tatum 4+ Three-Pointers Made (-102)
Just 15 games into his return from the torn Achilles that he suffered in last season’s playoffs, Jayson Tatum is fully back to his normal self. He’s had at least 23 points in each of his last six games, posting 46-39-78 shooting splits across that span that actually out-pace his career averages. Plus, his three-point attempt rate is a career-high 50.2%, perhaps to protect his rehabilitated leg from the pressure of an aggressive drive. He’s made at least four three-pointers in three of his last five games, and he could have higher usage if any of Jaylen Brown (Achilles), Sam Hauser (back), Neemias Queta (toe), or Derrick White (knee) sit.
The Knicks have had excellent rim protection as of late, but they’ve also been gettable from beyond the arc, conceding the ninth-most three-point attempts per game this season. That wouldn’t be an issue if New York had also been elite at closing out on three-point shooters after deterring drives, but that hasn’t been the case; since Jose Alvarado made his team debut on February 8, the Knicks have given up the sixth-most wide-open triples per game. That won’t cut it against Tatum, who’d never made fewer than 40% of his wide-open threes prior to this season.
VJ Edgecombe 14+ Points (-113)
Edgecombe has had some inconsistencies as a rookie, but 14 points is a pretty low bar, given that he’s reached that number in 42 of his 72 games this season, including 10 of his last 15. He’ll likely be the fourth option tonight with Tyrese Maxey, Joel Embiid, and Paul George all healthy, but in the six games since Maxey returned from his finger tendon injury — four of which also came alongside Embiid — Edgecombe has scored at least 14 points three times and at least 13 on two other occasions. It’s also possible that one of George, Embiid, and Maxey will be on a slight minutes restriction, given that Philadelphia is on the front end of a back-to-back.
The Rockets have been surprisingly good as of late defensively, going 9-2 since elevating Reed Sheppard into the starting lineup on a full-time basis and posting the league’s ninth-best defensive rating across that span. Houston has plenty of good perimeter stoppers in its starting lineup, but All-Defensive First Teamer Amen Thompson will likely be tasked with chasing around Maxey. That’ll mean more possessions for Edgecombe to target Sheppard, who ranks 743rd in defensive RAPM and is fairly undersized at six-foot-two and 185 pounds.
Scottie Barnes 7+ Assists (-110)
Toronto has played mediocre basketball for the last month and a half, going just 12-12 since the All-Star break to risk dropping out of the top six in the East, but Barnes has displayed elite playmaking chops despite his inconsistency as a scorer. He became the first forward since LeBron James to record six consecutive games of 10-plus assists, dishing out at least seven dimes in nine of his last 13 games. Among players who have appeared in at least 10 of their team’s last 13 games, Barnes ranks fifth in potential assists per game. Though his playmaking duties might be somewhat diminished with Immanuel Quickley back from injury, he still had 14 potential assists in Quickley’s return, and his teammates simply didn’t convert.
Despite the fact that he recorded just five assists against the Heat on Tuesday, I like him to bounce back tonight. Miami has been horrendous defensively over the last 10 games, allowing the fourth-most assists per game. While some of the Heat’s defensive shortcomings have been a result of luck — they’ve allowed the second-fewest wide-open threes, but opponents have hit such shots at an unsustainable 46.6% clip — some have been their own doing. In that span, they’ve allowed the fourth-most corner threes, and Barnes should be able to use his gravity to open up easy shots for his teammates.