UPDATE: Norman Powell (back) has been listed as questionable for tonight’s contest.
Guess which team has the longest active win streak in the Western Conference?
It’s not the conference-leading Oklahoma City Thunder, who suffered a defeat to the Dallas Mavericks last Friday with Shai Gilgeous-Alexander sidelined. Instead, it’s the 24-17 LA Clippers, who have won each of their past four games, recording double-digit wins over the Miami Heat, Brooklyn Nets, Portland Trail Blazers, and Los Angeles Lakers.
LA’s charge has, of course, been aided by the return of six-time All-NBA honoree Kawhi Leonard. But the Clippers’ latest star, Norman Powell, has been incredible all season, averaging 23.6 points per game on 44.6% shooting from deep, the fifth-best efficiency in the league.
Tonight, LA will welcome the 18-25 Chicago Bulls to the Intuit Dome, and with Leonard sidelined for rest, Powell is slated to take center stage.
On DraftKings Sportsbook, the Clippers are 6.5-point favorites and the point total is set to 227. Below, I’ve highlighted my favorite prop bets centered around Powell.
Best Norman Powell Prop Bets on DraftKings Sportsbook
Norman Powell U24.5 Points (-120)
Last time I wrote about Powell, I predicted that he would score 26 points or more against a bad Portland Trail Blazers defense with Leonard sidelined, noting that he could fail to reach his point total if LA blew the Trail Blazers out and he sat for most of the fourth quarter. That was exactly what transpired: Powell scored 23 points in 26 minutes then rode the bench for the last eight minutes, 10 seconds of the game as the Clippers won by 31.
The Bulls are a marginally better team than Portland is, but they’ve lost their last five games, being outscored by 9.6 points per 100 possessions over that span — the eighth-worst net rating in basketball. Meanwhile, LA has the second-best net rating in its last five games, a number buoyed by the 59-point blowout over the hapless Nets. It’s not like Chicago has dropped close battles to elite teams, either; its losses are to the Sacramento Kings, New Orleans Pelicans, Atlanta Hawks, Charlotte Hornets, and the Trail Blazers.
Everything else points to Powell stuffing the stat sheet, most notably the fact that the Bulls allow 120.5 points per game, the second-most in the league. But Chicago is too bad, and the Clippers’ form is too good, especially at Intuit Dome, where they have a 15-6 record, the fourth-best home winning percentage in the league. I can’t trust that the Bulls will keep it competitive enough for Powell to stay in the game.
Norman Powell U3.5 Three-Pointers Made (-145)
Despite Chicago struggling at pretty much every aspect of defense — it ranks second-to-last in opponent points, rebounds, assists, and turnovers — it is strangely good at preventing the three-ball. This season, the Bulls have allowed the 10th-fewest made three-pointers per game (13.4), and opponents are shooting just 33.9% from deep, the second-worst percentage in the league. Some of it is fluky opponent shooting luck — Chicago still allows heaps of open and wide-open threes — but we’re far enough into the season (43 games) that the general trend is very much real.
Opponents shoot 1.9 percentage points worse from deep when guarded by Bulls defenders, the second-best rate in the league. Chicago also contests 18.7 three-pointers per game, more than only the Thunder. Although neither is known as an elite defender, shooting guard Zach LaVine and center Nikola Vučević both rank among the league’s top six players in terms of three-pointers contested.
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