Perhaps no two teams have defined this season as much as the Detroit Pistons and San Antonio Spurs, as both have fully made the leap to championship contention after showing flashes last season. Entering the final quarter of the season, the Pistons top the East by five games, while the Spurs trail the Oklahoma City Thunder by just 3.5 games in the West. Each team’s star player will likely receive at least one first-place MVP vote (Detroit’s Cade Cunningham and San Antonio’s Victor Wembanyama).
The Spurs emerged with a 114-103 victory the last time these teams faced off on February 23 in Michigan. Now, they’ll face off tonight at 8 p.m. ET in San Antonio.
Both teams have pretty clean injury reports, with the Spurs’ Harrison Barnes (ankle) the only regular rotation player for either team set to miss the game.
San Antonio is a 3.5-point favorite at DraftKings Sportsbook (-155 on the Moneyline), with the point total set to 228.5. The Pistons are +130 on the Moneyline. Below, I’ve broken down my three favorite prop bets from tonight’s potential Finals preview.
Victor Wembanyama 4+ Blocks (+107)
More than any other player in the NBA, Wembanyama has the ability to impact the game even when he’s playing a pretty passive role on offense. In the Spurs’ 131-91 demolition of the Philadelphia 76ers on Tuesday, Wembanyama scored just 10 points on five shots, but he recorded a +41 because he recorded three steals and six blocks. All in all, he’s had at least four blocks in six of his last seven games, including six against Detroit on February 23. In fact, he rejected five shots in the second half of that game alone.
That performance wasn’t a fluke for the Pistons. Despite having an All-Star big man (Jalen Duren) who’s capable of holding his own against Wembanyama in the post, Detroit has been the league’s fourth-most blocked team this season. Because the Pistons are light on shooting — they rank 28th in made threes per game and 25th in three-point percentage — they tend to drive, averaging the second-most shot attempts within five feet. That strategy might work against most teams, but not against Wembanyama, who’s held opponents to shooting 6.5 percentage points worse than league average at the rim.
Cade Cunningham 10+ Assists (-129)
Cunningham was atrocious in the teams’ first meeting, shooting five-for-26 from the field, including two-for-nine from beyond the arc. Stephon Castle held him to three-for-13 shooting in the 47.4 partial possessions that he guarded him for. With Castle likely to lock him down again and Wembanyama waiting in the paint to clean up any of his mistakes, it’s hard to imagine that Cunningham will be too aggressive as a scorer. He looked to facilitate in the teams’ first game, dishing out 10 assists, and he’s reached double-digits in six of his last seven games overall.
Overall, it’s hard for any player to reach double-digit assists against San Antonio, which has conceded the 11th-fewest dimes overall, but utilizing Cunningham more as a playmaker than a scorer could maximize Detroit’s chances of victory. The Spurs have given up the 10th-most wide-open threes this season, so Cunningham dishing it out to Duncan Robinson and Tobias Harris could be a better strategy than having him drive into traffic. Plus, while San Antonio has been the league’s second-best defense against the pick-and-roll roll man, teams tend to test Wembanyama’s drop coverage anyway, so Cunningham might be able to record some dimes to Duren on volume alone.
Dylan Harper 12+ Points (+122)
The Spurs became the first team in NBA history to sweep all of the NBA’s monthly awards, as Wembanyama won Player of the Month and Defensive Player of the Month, Mitch Johnson was named Coach of the Month, and Harper was named Rookie of the Month. In February, he averaged 12.5 points per game on 55.4% shooting, reaching the 12-point threshold seven times in 10 games.
More than anything, this is a usage play. Lineups featuring both him and Wembanyama have a ridiculous plus-31.1 net rating in 389 minutes, and Johnson is clearly starting to trust him more — six of the 10 games in which he’s played the most minutes have come since the start of February. As long as he continues playing alongside the Frenchman, he should continue to get easy shots, given that defenses will dive to the basket to help on Wembanyama, leaving Harper open to test out an improving three-point shot (25.0% through the end of January and 30.0% since then).
To be fair, one of his only single-digit scoring performances in February came against the Pistons, but he shot anomalously poorly that game, shooting just one-for-three both in the restricted area and the non-restricted paint despite typically finishing at a 62.0% clip at the rim and a 45.0% clip from floater range. His primary defender in that game was Daniss Jenkins, who has a negative defensive true shooting impact, per NBA RAPM.
