Today is a day that basketball fans have been looking forward to for four months: the NBA is officially back.
The Oklahoma City Thunder will open the 2025-26 regular season with a ring ceremony and a 7:35 p.m. ET clash against Kevin Durant and the Houston Rockets. Then, at 10 p.m. ET, the Los Angeles Lakers will welcome the Golden State Warriors to Crypto.com Arena for their first games of the season.
The marquee matchup lost some of its luster when LeBron James was ruled out with sciatica, but Stephen Curry and Luka Dončić always makes for good television.
The Warriors are 2.5-point road favorites at DraftKings Sportsbook (-155 on the Moneyline) and the point total is set to 225.5. Meanwhile, the Lakers are +130 on the Moneyline. Below, I’ll take you through my three favorite prop bets from tonight’s clash.
Stephen Curry 5+ Three-Pointers Made (-110)
Curry massively elevated his game in the second half of the 2024-25 season, after Golden State traded for Jimmy Butler III. After Butler’s arrival, Curry averaged 4.8 made three-pointers per game on 40.8% accuracy and then made five or more triples three times in the opening round against the Houston Rockets. Assuming Butler plays — he’s currently probable after tweaking his ankle in the preseason — the Warriors have plenty of offensive threats to take defensive attention away from Curry, especially with a floor spacer now at center in Al Horford. He should be motivated to start off the 2025-26 season with a bang, especially against a long-time rival in Los Angeles.
For their offensive strengths, the Lakers aren’t stacked with perimeter stoppers. Last season, Dončić allowed opponents to convert from beyond the arc at a rate 0.8 percentage points higher than normal, and even after notably slimming down during the offseason, he lacks the requisite foot speed to chase the relentless Curry. Dončić’s back court partner, Austin Reaves, is nominally better, holding opponents to 1.8 percentage points worse than normal last season, but in the 26.3 partial possessions that Reaves guarded Curry during the 2024-25 regular season, Curry made three of his six triples. Curry hit half of his triples while guarded by Dončić as well.
Luka Dončić 35+ Points (+177)
I’m probably overreacting to all of the pictures of slimmed-down Dončić and his 31-point pre-season performance against the Sacramento Kings, but this feels like solid odds for a guy who averaged 33.9 points per game in his last healthy season with a roster that was deeper all around than this James-less Los Angeles unit. Though he played five games without James as a Laker last season and only topped the 35-point threshold once, that was a pudgier Dončić still integrating himself within JJ Redick’s offense and recovering from the shock of the trade. I’m more encouraged by the fact that, in those five games, his usage rate was 4.6 percentage points higher than what he posted in his Los Angeles stint as a whole.
To be fair, it won’t be easy for Dončić against a Golden State team that posted the league’s best defensive rating after trading for Butler, but I’m not sure how confident any defense can be in stopping him. Last season, he scored an efficient 11 points in 30.2 possessions when guarded by Jonathan Kuminga, 16 in 13.3 when guarded by Horford, and six in 11.5 against Brandin Podziemski. The only Warrior who was particularly capable of slowing Dončić down was Draymond Green, but he plays in more of a roving role than in one-on-one lockdown duty anyway. Golden State also fouled a lot, and Dončić went 187-for-224 (83.5%) from the charity stripe over his final 24 games last season (regular season and playoffs).
Deandre Ayton O10.5 Rebounds (-102)
Headed into the offseason, the Lakers knew that they needed an upgrade at center after the Minnesota Timberwolves trio of Naz Reid, Rudy Gobert, and Julius Randle effectively played Jaxson Hayes off of the floor. That the solution in the middle turned out to be Ayton — selected two picks ahead of Dončić in the 2018 draft — was a surprise. But the Portland Trail Blazers bought him out of his contract in order to open up more playing time for youngsters Donovan Clingan and Yang Hansen, and Ayton’s two-year, $16.6 million deal with Los Angeles isn’t terrible value. Ayton has an 18.8% career rebounding percentage, a figure that would have ranked 11th last season among 179 qualified players, and he had a 21.2% rebounding percentage in five preseason games.
After the Butler deal, the Warriors allowed the sixth-fewest rebounds per game despite having an undersized lineup, in part because Curry, Butler, and Green are all solid on the glass for their size and Kevon Looney was able to gobble up boards in his 15.0 minutes per game. But now Looney is gone and his replacement, Horford, is a perimeter-oriented big who averaged just 6.2 rebounds per game last season and had a rebounding percentage 6.7 percentage points lower than Ayton’s career mark. Golden State allowed the third-most rebounds per game in the postseason and got even smaller in the summer.
