After the WNBA regular season got back underway yesterday with a five-game slate, the league is back to a simpler one-game offering for tonight, with the Atlanta Dream on the second night of a back-to-back as they visit the Phoenix Mercury.
Phoenix is a 7.5-point favorite (-305 on the Moneyline), with the point total set for 164. Atlanta, meanwhile, is +245 on the Moneyline.
Here are my favorite player prop bets from tonight’s contest at DraftKings Sportsbook.
Kahleah Copper U13.5 Points (+105)
The storyline for both teams is injuries: the Dream have gone just 1-2 since All-Star guard Rhyne Howard went down with a hyperextended knee, and the Mercury received good injury news on both Copper and Satou Sabally, who are both expected to make their returns tonight after multi-game absences. Copper has played just six games this season while battling knee and hamstring injuries, but she’s made a solid impact in that time, averaging 16.7 points per game on 44.8% three-point shooting as Phoenix has won four of the six games she’s started.
Still, that bloated average is heavily skewed by her 33-point game against the Dallas Wings, who have had one of the WNBA’s worst defenses this season. Otherwise, she’s scored fewer than 13 points thrice, one of which came in her season debut, when she scored only 11 points. She had been on a minutes restriction through her first few games back, and while Nate Tibbetts hasn’t yet announced his plans for his star tonight, I’d be surprised if she played a full load. I can’t see her scoring 14 points in limited minutes against an Atlanta team that has held opponents to the worst field goal percentage in the restricted area and allowed the fewest made threes.
Brittney Griner First Points Scorer (+500)
Tonight’s matchup will be a revenge game for Griner, who played 11 seasons with the Mercury and made nine All-Star appearances and six All-WNBA teams, winning Defensive Player of the Year twice. But last offseason, she tested free agency for the first time in her career and opted to sign with the Dream, as Phoenix went a different direction by bringing in Sabally and Alyssa Thomas. Though her impact isn’t as pronounced as it was earlier on in her career — she’s playing a career-low 23.4 minutes per game and Atlanta has been 14.1 points per 100 possessions better with her on the bench — but she’s still averaging 10.2 points and 5.7 rebounds per game.
This is the only prop bet available for Griner on DraftKings Sportsbook, but it’s a fairly sound one. The Mercury have struggled slightly to protect the interior, allowing the fourth-most rebounds and the sixth-highest percentage on restricted-area tries, so while the returns of Cooper and Sabally will help somewhat with that, it still presents somewhat of an opening for the WNBA’s tallest active player. Griner ranks second on the Dream in first-quarter usage rate, just 0.2 percentage points behind Jordin Canada.
