UPDATE: Houston Rockets center Alperen Şengün (calf) has been ruled out for tonight’s game against the Indiana Pacers.
2025 is already coming to an end. As part of the NBA’s 11-game slate tonight, four teams — the Orlando Magic, the Brooklyn Nets, the Houston Rockets, and the Dallas Mavericks — will play their final games of the calendar year.
While that means NBA fans will see Paolo Banchero, Michael Porter Jr., Alperen Şengün, and Cooper Flagg for the final time this season tonight, they’ll also get to see the likes of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Victor Wembanyama (though, sadly, not against each other) tonight and again in two days.
For my favorite prop bets at DraftKings Sportsbook, I’ll stick with those two league icons and add a fellow international star playing his final game of 2025.
Top NBA prop bet picks
Alperen Şengün 11+ Rebounds (+104)
The Rockets’ offense is so stacked that Şengün’s game-to-game production tends to vary more than that of most superstars of his ilk, but he’s always pretty active on the boards, snagging double-digit rebounds in 15 of his 26 starts and at least 11 in three of his last five. He did miss Houston’s win over the Cleveland Cavaliers on Saturday with calf tightness and is questionable for tonight, but since he’s had three days off to recover, he could be in line to suit up. If he plays, he shouldn’t be on a minutes restriction, since if his calf weren’t healthy enough to play a starter’s load, he likely wouldn’t play at all against a cellar-dwelling opponent like the Indiana Pacers.
To be fair, the Pacers have been somewhat better since inserting Jay Huff into the starting lineup. Their offseason trade acquisition and Myles Turner replacement has been stellar defensively, leading the league in total blocks (and blocks per game, since Wembanyama hasn’t played enough to qualify) despite playing just 19.8 minutes per game. But despite being seven-foot-one and a strong rim protector, rebounding just isn’t Huff’s game: even after becoming a starter, he’s averaged only 5.0 boards per game, and across that span, Indiana has had an utterly putrid 46.9% total rebounding percentage. Şengün, whose athletic limitations keep him near the rim defensively, should take full advantage.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander 10+ 1st-Quarter Points (-105)
There’s starting hot, then there’s the Oklahoma City Thunder. This season, Gilgeous-Alexander’s squad has outscored opponents by 17.8 points per 100 possessions in the first quarter, by far the best mark in the league. In part, that’s a result of Mark Daigneault’s rotations, since Gilgeous-Alexander has recorded more first-quarter minutes this season than anybody not named Nikola Jokić. Though he’s only scored the fifth-most points in that time, he just had nine on Christmas Day against an elite defense in the San Antonio Spurs’, so expecting him to score one more tonight against the Atlanta Hawks is reasonable.
Expectedly, the Hawks’ defense has fallen off a cliff since Trae Young returned from his knee sprain. In the six games since Young’s return (one of which he sat out while managing the injury), Atlanta has had the league’s second-worst defensive rating, allowing 126 or more points in each game. Young also tends to play most of the opening frame, averaging 8.6 first-quarter minutes per game, so Gilgeous-Alexander will have plenty of time to hunt the mismatch. This bet is pretty contingent on Young playing (he’s questionable with a quad contusion): if he doesn’t, he might have a tough time against his cousin Nickeil Alexander-Walker, who held him to eight-for-21 shooting across 78.5 partial possessions during the 2025 Western Conference Finals.
Victor Wembanyama Most Points (+335)
These are great odds on a guy whose averages are artificially low because he was on a minutes restriction for six games and averaged just 18.0 points per game across that span. Given a normal minutes load, he’s been dominant, scoring 26 or more points in seven of the 12 games he played before his injury and posting 32 in his return to the starting lineup in Saturday’s loss to the Utah Jazz. His workload has increased by two minutes in each of the last four games, so expecting him to play around 30 minutes tonight is reasonable, which should leave him plenty of time to score at least 25 points (and help seal off Donovan Mitchell’s drives to the rim).
While Mitchell is a more consistent scorer than Wembanyama, the Spurs’ defense is much better than the Cavaliers’. With Wembanyama on the court, San Antonio has allowed just 106.5 points per 100 possessions, just 1.9 points per 100 possessions worse than the Thunder’s league-leading mark, while Cleveland has had a below-average defense and won’t be at full strength today with 2024-25 Defensive Player of the Year Evan Mobley on a minutes restriction. Last season, Mitchell averaged just 25.5 points across his two games against the Spurs, and that was before Stephon Castle developed into a game-wrecking defender capable of holding Gilgeous-Alexander and Luka Dončić to a combined eight-for-25 from the field.
