It’s not often that fans get to see a battle between two Defensive Player of the Year winners. Okay, maybe I’m anointing Victor Wembanyama too early, but either way, the matchup tonight between Wembanyama — the odds-on favorite to win Defensive Player of the Year — and Jaren Jackson Jr., who won the award in 2022-23 and has the second-shortest odds to win this season, should bring plenty of fireworks.
Jackson’s Memphis Grizzlies are 25-15 and in third place in the Western Conference despite point guard Ja Morant playing just 23 games and being relatively inconsistent when he’s been on the court. Jackson has appeared in 38 of the Grizzlies’ 40 games and averaged a career-high 22.8 points, 6.4 rebounds, and 2.1 assists per game on 50-35-78 shooting splits. He’s the only player in the NBA to average at least 1.5 steals and 1.5 blocks per game this season.
Meanwhile, Wembanyama’s San Antonio Spurs are 19-19 — significantly better than expected entering the season — and will benefit from a hostile crowd at Frost Bank Center. San Antonio is 12-8 at home this season, while Memphis is just 10-10 on the road.
On DraftKings Sportsbook, the Grizzlies (-148) are slight favorites and the total is set for 239.5. Below, I’ve highlighted my favorite prop bets centered around Triple J.
Best Jaren Jackson Jr. Prop Bets on DraftKings Sportsbook
Jaren Jackson Jr. O29.5 Points + Rebounds (-110)
Unsurprisingly for a team with the likely Defensive Player of the Year, the Spurs only allow 111.5 points per game, the 12th-fewest in the league. Surprisingly for a team with the league’s most fearsome post defender who also happens to be seven feet, three inches tall, San Antonio hemorrhages rebounds, giving up 45.5 per game, the sixth-most in the league. It’s not solely a Wembanyama issue — he averages 10.7 boards per game, good for ninth in the league — but either way, San Antonio still hasn’t figured out how to completely neutralize elite bigs.
Enter Jackson, who has taken on a bigger scoring burden in recent weeks. Over his last 10 games, Jackson has averaged 26.2 points and 7.9 rebounds per game while playing at least 30 minutes in each of his past seven games. Yes, Morant missed five games in that stretch, including Jackson’s two highest-scoring games of the season, but he still dropped 33 points and eight boards on January 11 with Morant starting alongside him. Memphis also plays at the league’s fastest pace, which should ratchet up the number of possessions and give Jackson more opportunities to stuff the stat sheet.
Jaren Jackson Jr. U1.5 Blocks (-125)
Jackson led the league in blocked shots in both the 2021-22 and 2022-23 seasons, but his block percentage has decreased significantly. Although he’s still eighth in the league in blocks, his production is hindered somewhat by sharing the court with seven-foot-four rookie Zach Edey, who has recorded 1.1 blocks per game of his own. He has recorded one or fewer blocks in seven of his last eight games.
San Antonio gets blocked just 4.6 times per game, the eighth-lowest rate in the NBA, which makes sense given that 31.3% of San Antonio’s possessions end with a shot, turnover, or drawn foul by Wembanyama, who has been blocked just 19 times this season, tied for the 25th-fewest among 93 players who have played at least 1,000 minutes.
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