As the calendar turns to December, the NBA is officially entering its third month of the regular season, and while some things remain the same — the Oklahoma City Thunder being the best team in the league and the Washington Wizards the worst, for instance — volatility rules the day otherwise. Perhaps surprisingly, more teams in the Eastern Conference are over .500 than in the West.
Most of the league is in action tonight, with 18 teams partaking in the nine-game slate. The schedule starts at 7 p.m. ET with a trio of East Coast games and ends with a 10 p.m. ET meeting between the surprising Phoenix Suns and the Los Angeles Lakers at Crypto.com Arena.
The slate should already be fun in its own right, but betting on prop bets at DraftKings Sportsbook could be a way to make the action even more exciting. Here are my three favorites:
Top NBA prop bet picks
Jalen Johnson +7.5 Points vs. Cade Cunningham (-122)
Besides the seven-point stinker that the Atlanta Hawks forward put up in a blowout loss to the Washington Wizards last Tuesday, Johnson’s genuine star turn has been one of the stories of the season. In his last 10 games, he’s scored 25 or more points seven times, nearly averaging a 25-point triple-double across that span despite the single-digit performance. He’s combined usage with efficiency: among the 23 players who have appeared in each of their team’s last 10 games, played at least 32 minutes per game, and posted a usage rate north of 25%, Johnson has had the third-best true shooting percentage. With Young and (possibly) Kristaps Porziņġis remaining out tonight, Johnson should continue to be Atlanta’s leading man.
Of course, Johnson has difficult competition in Cunningham, the Detroit Pistons guard who’s led his team to a 2.5-game lead atop the Eastern Conference and secured Detroit’s best 20-game start since the 2005-06 team went 17-3. Cunningham has scored 25 or more points in nine of his last 10 games, and while he hasn’t been quite as efficient as Johnson, his usage rate has been higher. As a result of his larger role, he should be expected to out-score Johnson straight up, but 7.5 points is a huge line. As good as the Pistons’ defense is, the Hawks’ defensive rating was nearly as good in November. Atlanta has a pair of strong perimeter defenders in Nickeil Alexander-Walker and Dyson Daniels.
Norman Powell 3+ Three-Pointers Made (-123)
Powell broke out last season for the LA Clippers, averaging a career-high 21.8 points per game, but LA opted to ship him to the Miami Heat during the offseason in order to upgrade its forward depth. The move couldn’t have turned out worse for the Clippers: after finishing last season on a 17-4 hot streak and only narrowly losing to the Denver Nuggets in the first round, LA is 5-15 this season, with the 11th-worst offense and sixth-worst defense. Powell, meanwhile, has averaged 24.7 points per game and canned 44.4% of his three-pointers, including a 28-point outing in Saturday’s loss to Detroit.
The Clippers are all out of sorts. Since one of their best perimeter defenders, Derrick Jones Jr., suffered an MCL sprain, LA has had the league’s fourth-worst defensive rating and have given up the 10th-most made threes despite playing at one of the league’s slowest paces. Some of it is a matter of luck — opponents have drained wide-open threes at the league’s third-highest rate and catch-and-shoot looks at its highest — but that’s exactly where Powell thrives. Among the 79 players who have attempted four or more catch-and-shoot looks this season, he’s converted at the fourth-highest rate, and while he doesn’t get many uncontested looks, he’s 18-for-25 (72.0%) on such shots so far this season.
LeBron James U26.5 Points + Rebounds (-112)
James has been tremendous for a 40-year-old in the four games he’s played since his return from sciatica. Still, he’s definitely lost a step, and 24.0 combined points and rebounds per game, like he’s averaged since returning to a normal (33.3 minutes per game) load, seems like a reasonable expectation for the rest of 2025-26 now that he’s the third option in Los Angeles behind Luka Dončić and Austin Reaves. He’s been passive in his new role, averaging by far a career low in shot attempts, usage rate, and touches per game, leaving him with less opportunity to rack up 27 P/R.
Plus, it’s hard not to call Phoenix’s above-average defense legitimate now that nearly a quarter of the season has been played. The Suns finished with the 11th-best defensive rating in the month of November, led by Dillon Brooks’ 1.5 steals per game and Mark Williams’ solid rim protection. All in all, they’ve allowed the ninth-fewest points and eighth-fewest rebounds per game, in part because they’ve done an excellent job forcing an inefficient shot diet. Brooks has historically given James some fits: in 2022-23, he held James to just five points on two-for-six shooting across the 35 partial possessions that he guarded him, the fourth-fewest points he scored against any player who he matched up against for at least 30 possessions that season.
