Jalen Brunson and the New York Knicks. Victor Wembanyama and the San Antonio Spurs. It all comes down to 48 minutes on the hardwood tonight.
All eyes will be on two of the league’s best players — and teams — as these rising squads meet with the Emirates NBA Cup on the line. The game will tip off at 8:40 p.m. ET at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
The Knicks are 2.5-point favorites at DraftKings Sportsbook (-142 on the Moneyline), with the point total set to 233.5. The Spurs are +120 on the Moneyline. Below, I’ve detailed my favorite three-leg same game parlay for tonight’s championship affair.
Best Same Game Parlay for Knicks vs. Spurs
New York Knicks Moneyline
This game is almost too close to call, with neither team having a significant exploitable flaw, and the overall numbers don’t quite do the matchup justice because Wembanyama has missed 12 games with an injury. The Knicks are just slightly better in almost every important category and are in extremely hot form, posting a plus-14.6 net rating over their last 10 games, which is even better than the Spurs’ mark with Wembanyama on the floor. New York has outpaced San Antonio in every major statistical category besides steals and blocks. Plus, it has gotten to the rim at a fairly high level — though not as high as the Spurs did in Wembanyama’s first 12 games — while generating lots of catch-and-shoot threes, and its shooters are more consistent than San Antonio’s.
Winning against a team led by Wembanyama requires defenders physical enough to knock him off his spot when the Spurs are on offense and tough shot-makers from the midrange and beyond the arc to avoid him defensively, and New York has exactly that. OG Anunoby is one of the league’s most voracious perimeter defenders, and for his occasionally waning focus and limited agility, Karl-Anthony Towns certainly doesn’t lack strength. On the other end, there are few players who are more built to hit difficult shots than Jalen Brunson, who ranks in the top 10 in makes from both the non-restricted paint and the midrange.
Mitchell Robinson 7+ Rebounds
Robinson hasn’t been getting as many rebounds as he did earlier in the season, when he was a starter, but he’s such a fiend on the glass — especially the offensive glass — that he doesn’t even need to play big minutes in order to make a big impact. Despite averaging just 17.9 minutes per game since being pulled from the starting lineup, Robinson has averaged 8.3 rebounds per game, and he’s snagged at least seven in five of his last seven games. In fact, he’s the all-time career playoff leader in offensive rebounds per 100 possessions.
Unsurprisingly, up until Wembanyama’s injury, San Antonio had been allowing the third-fewest rebounds per game (including the fourth-fewest offensive rebounds), and with the Frenchman on the court, it has a 55.1% rebounding percentage, which would rank second in the league. However, it’s likely that Wembanyama will still be on a minutes restriction, limiting his impact to just half the game, and throughout his 12-game absence, the Spurs were a bottom-half rebounding team. In the semifinal, four separate Oklahoma City Thunder players reached seven boards, including Isaiah Hartenstein, who did it in just 20 minutes of playing time.
Victor Wembanyama to Record a Double-Double
-116 odds for Wembanyama to record a double-double are maximally friendly. Even on a minutes restriction, it’s hard to bet against a player who’s recorded a double-double in nine of his 13 games this season (recording eight or more boards in each of the exceptions) and would lead the league in defensive rebounds, total rebounds, and defensive rebounding percentage if he’d played enough minutes to qualify. Two of the best games of his career — his first 40-point, 20-rebound game in his rookie season and a 42-point, 18-board Christmas debut in 2024 — have come against the Knicks.
To be fair, New York has been stellar on the boards, allowing the fourth-fewest rebounds per game even after replacing Robinson with Josh Hart in the starting lineup. It helps that the Knicks have Towns, who’s ranked second in rebounds per game in each of the last two seasons, as well as Hart, one of the better pound-for-pound rebounders in NBA history. Both teams have excellent rim protection — the Knicks have allowed the sixth-lowest field goal percentage in the restricted area, while San Antonio was second prior to Wembanyama’s injury — so there should be plenty of rebound chances available to both Wembanyama and Towns. Among the 25 players with at least 15 rebound chances per game, Wembanyama ranks first in rebound chance percentage, and he also ranks ahead of Towns in contested rebound percentage.
