After suffering a lopsided 117-98 defeat at the hands of the Indiana Pacers in Game 1, the Milwaukee Bucks surely hoped that Damian Lillard’s return would change fortunes in Game 2. It didn’t; Indiana came away with a 123-115 victory that wasn’t as close as the final score makes it seem, taking a 2-0 lead up I-65 to Milwaukee.
Perhaps most concerning to the Bucks is the fact that Pacers star point guard Tyrese Haliburton hasn’t shot the ball particularly well so far. Through two games, he’s averaging just 15.5 points per game on ghastly 34-18-75 shooting splits after recording 51-43-85 splits over the final three and a half months of the regular season.
On DraftKings Sportsbook, Indiana is a 5.5-point underdog and the total is set for 230. Below, I’ve detailed my favorite prop bets centered around Haliburton.
Best Tyrese Haliburton Prop Bets on DraftKings Sportsbook
Tyrese Haliburton 12+ Assists (+165)
Is this too much a matter of recency bias, given that despite recording exactly 12 assists in both games in this series so far, he had only hit that number once since the start of April? Is he going to stop putting up gaudy assist numbers when Pascal Siakam — who has made 18 of his 31 (58.1%) of his shots so far — stops shooting it at such an elite rate? Those are valid concerns, especially given that seven of Haliburton’s 24 assists have gone to his co-star, but I think Siakam’s shooting is sustainable — he’s been mostly stymied by Giannis Antetokounmpo, as one would expect, and feasted against Kyle Kuzma and Jericho Sims, which is equally unsurprising.
The Bucks can blame their own defensive woes for making everyone on the Pacers’ roster look like supersized Stephen Curry. 35.5% of Siakam’s shots, including all 10 of his three-point shots, have come with the nearest defender more than six feet away, and he hit open threes at a clip north of 40% in the regular season. Andrew Nembhard’s accuracy is perhaps a slight surprise, but Milwaukee shouldn’t let him get wide open on 39.1% of his shot attempts either. Bennedict Mathurin, Aaron Nesmith, and Obi Toppin have also been wide open on a greater proportion of their shots in the postseason than the regular season.
Tyrese Haliburton +0.5 Three-Pointers Made vs. Damian Lillard (-140)
Speaking of getting wide-open, the Bucks have been allowing Haliburton to get six feet of daylight on 11 of his 15 three-point attempts this series, an uptick of 1.2 triples per game relative to the regular season, when he attempted 4.3 wide-open triples per game. The fact that Haliburton has hit only two of them represents a major underperformance, given that he hit 42.1% of his wide-open threes during the regular season; some reversion to the mean is likely in Game 3. Lillard, despite his miraculous recovery from deep vein thrombosis in his calf, clearly isn’t close to 100% and shot just two-for-eight from deep in Game 2 despite having at least four feet of breathing room on six of his eight three-point attempts. By both three-pointers made and opponent shooting percentage, Indiana was one of the league’s stingiest teams during the regular season.
