2024 NBA Finals MVP Jaylen Brown has somewhat slid under the radar this season, but the Boston Celtics are going to need him to be at his peak if they want to become the first back-to-back champions since the Golden State Warriors in 2016-17 and 2017-18. Although he’s posted his worst efficiency since his rookie year, Brown is having a solid campaign, averaging 22.5 points, 6.0 rebounds, and 4.6 assists per game.
Tonight’s 10 p.m. ET contest against the Phoenix Suns will present a rare opportunity for Brown to be the number one option, given that Jayson Tatum looks likely to miss just his seventh game of the season after suffering an ankle sprain on Monday night against the Sacramento Kings. In his last outing without Tatum, Brown scored 26 points, snagged eight rebounds, and dished out seven assists in a 114-108 win over the Utah Jazz on March 10.
On DraftKings Sportsbook, the Celtics are 4.5-point favorites and the total is set for 220. Below, I’ve highlighted my favorite prop bets centered around The Gravedigger.
Best Jaylen Brown Prop Bets on DraftKings Sportsbook
Jaylen Brown 25+ Points (+125)
To its credit, Phoenix has won four straight games to climb back into the West’s Play-In Tournament picture, and it has opened up a half-game lead over the Dallas Mavericks, who have been decimated by injuries but can still pip the Suns or the Sacramento Kings for the final spot if Anthony Davis stays healthy. It hasn’t won through its defense, though; Phoenix has had the league’s third-best offense and merely its 13th-best defense across its four-game winning streak, and two of those games came against not-so-great opponents in the Chicago Bulls and Toronto Raptors. Brown has scored 25 or more points in three of the five games in which he has played without Tatum so far this season, all three of which were among the 19 highest-usage games he has played this season.
Jaylen Brown O5.5 Assists (+105)
No Tatum means more playing time, which means more offensive responsibility, which means more ball-handling duties, which means more assists. Despite Boston being down a 27-point-per-game scorer who drains more than 35% of his threes when Tatum sits, Brown is surrounded by more than enough talent to demonstrate his playmaking chops with his co-star on the bench, and this will be one of the Celtics’ healthiest games in a while. Besides Tatum, only reserve center Xavier Tillman — who’s played more than 10 minutes only six times all season — has an injury designation for tonight’s game. Of those five games that did not feature Tatum, Brown recorded six or more assists in four of them.
Plus, while the Suns have been excellent at containing opposing ball-handlers over their four-game winning streak, a larger sample size tells a different tale. Since the All-Star break, Phoenix has conceded the 11th-most assists to opposing players, and on a season-long basis, that figure is the league’s 14th-worst. Replacing the injured Bradley Beal with a defensive-oriented first-round pick, Ryan Dunn, has clearly made a difference over the last four games, but I’m going to need to see it for more than a week in order to truly believe that the Suns have figured out how to control the passing lanes.
