It was always fitting that both of these series survived to Game 6, given that they’ve been the most competitive so far. The New York Knicks and Detroit Pistons have looked virtually inseparable across five games — a 21-0 New York run in Game 1 aside — and the LA Clippers and Denver Nuggets have played three thrillers from their five games.
It’s playoff basketball; of course tonight’s NBA action should be good. Here are my best bets for today’s Game 6’s at DraftKings Sportsbook, with two from each game.
First, let’s take a look at the full slate:
New York Knicks at Detroit Pistons, 7:30 p.m. ET
Denver Nuggets at LA Clippers, 10 p.m. ET
New York Knicks Moneyline (+102)
Maybe it’s because I’m impacted by the discourse around me because I live in New York City, but there’s no logical reason why this Pistons team should end up in a seven-game series with the Knicks. Cade Cunningham is brilliant — there’s no getting around that — but he also averages five turnovers per game. And overall, if you list out the best five players in the series, four of them wear blue and orange. If not for the minor injuries that sidelined both Jalen Brunson and Josh Hart for a couple of critical minutes late in Game 5, a stretch in which New York was outscored by four points, the series might be over right now.
Detroit played closer to its A-level of basketball in Game 5 than the Knicks did — Cunningham was effective on both sides of the ball, even if not efficient, Ausar Thompson scored a series-high 22 points, and Dennis Schröder contributed 14 points off the bench — and the game was still extremely close. The Knicks’ most important player, Brunson, had his fourth-worst game of the season by game score, shooting just four-for-16 from the field, coughing up four turnovers, and committing four fouls. Their second-most important player, Karl-Anthony Towns, got himself in his typical foul trouble while also shooting just five-for-14 from the field. Each of those players are too talented not to bounce back.
Jalen Brunson 30+ Points (+100)
Speaking of the diminutive southpaw, his struggles in Game 5 were somewhat of an aberration and basically the first terrible playoff game that he’s had in the last two seasons. Given that he’s scored 30 or more points in 11 out of his 18 postseason games across that span — and in one of the games he didn’t, he left late in the third quarter with a broken hand — I’ll back him to get himself and his team back on track. The crowd at Little Caesars Arena won’t be friendly and he might not get the foul calls that he’s used to — after all, he attempted only two free throws during New York’s Game 4 victory, among his fewest of the season — but Brunson thrives off of negativity.
J.B. Bickerstaff has thrown Thompson and Schröder at Brunson to an almost equal degree, and both have been fine; Brunson’s shot nine-for-22 when guarded by Thompson and 14-for-32 when guarded by Schröder. But that doesn’t tell the full story of why he struggled in Game 5; nine of his 16 field-goal attempts came with the nearest defender more than four feet away, including three of his four three-point attempts. During the regular season, he hit 44.1% of his field goals and 34.1% of his threes on such shots, and on Tuesday, he made just three of his twos and none of his threes. He also went just one-for-six in the restricted area.
LA Clippers -6.5 (-112)
This series absolutely deserves a seventh game, even if the Oklahoma City Thunder are going to have a nearly insurmountable rest advantage over whichever team emerges from this battle of attrition. Three of the five games have been instant classics; Game 1 went to overtime, Game 2 was decided by just three points as Kawhi Leonard announced his return to terminator form, and Game 4 was decided on an Aaron Gordon buzzer-beating dunk that we may never know definitively whether it even should’ve counted. Game 5 wasn’t a great look for LA, but it can surely feel confident that Russell Westbrook won’t score 21 points again tonight.
The legend of playoff Jamal Murray only grew after a 43-point outburst in Game 5 in which he went 17-for-26 from the field and eight-for-14 from beyond the arc. But there wasn’t anything particularly egregious about the way the Clippers guarded him; he simply hit six of his eight shots in which a defender was less than four feet away and 11 of his 18 shots with the nearest defender more than four feet away, both significant upticks from his marks during the regular season. The Nuggets as a whole shot 51.5% from beyond the arc, and they’re due to cool off, especially in front of a fired-up Intuit Dome crowd.
Nikola Jokić to Record a Triple-Double (-105)
This bet more comes down to whether or not Jokić wants to record a triple-double than whether LA can stop him from getting there. He has three triple-doubles so far this series, falling one rebound shy in Game 1 and two assists shy in Game 3. And the strong defense of Ivica Zubac, who’s “limited” Jokić to 66 points, 30 assists, and nine turnovers on 25-for-51 shooting, is even more reason to believe in Jokić as a playmaker, since he might hesitate for just a moment longer and look to find a pass before shooting against his Balkan counterpart.
It’s just a matter of his teammates knocking down shots. Jokić leads the league so far these playoffs in potential assists per game by a fairly wide margin — 20.0 per contest, 1.6 more than Cunningham — but of the 23 players averaging five or more assists per game, he ranks merely in the middle of the pack by what percentage of his passes actually lead to assists. So far, he’s averaging at least 1.5 assists per game to at least five different Nuggets, but Michael Porter Jr. is only shooting 16.7% from inside the arc on passes from Jokić and Westbrook is shooting only 29.4% from deep. If either of those correct, Jokić should have no trouble collecting double-digit assists. He’s also second in these playoffs in rebounds and rebound chances per game, and of the 19 players who are averaging eight or more boards per game, his are contested at the ninth-lowest rate.
