Last night, the Cleveland Cavaliers became the first team to clinch a playoff spot, as they’re now 22.5 games ahead of the sixth-seeded Miami Heat with 20 games left in their season. It was a reminder not just of Cleveland’s brilliance but also that the season is truly winding to an end and the postseason is nearly among us. It’ll continue tonight with a six-game slate of action.
Here are my top bets for Thursday’s games at DraftKings Sportsbook for tonight’s hoops action, with one bet from almost every game — sorry, Bulls and Magic fans.
First, let’s take a look at the full slate:
Chicago Bulls at Orlando Magic, 7 p.m. ET
Golden State Warriors at Brooklyn Nets, 7:30 p.m. ET
Philadelphia 76ers at Boston Celtics, 7:30 p.m. ET
Indiana Pacers at Atlanta Hawks, 7:30 p.m. ET
Houston Rockets at New Orleans Pelicans, 8 p.m. ET
New York Knicks at Los Angeles Lakers, 10 p.m. ET
Stephen Curry 30+ Points (+185)
For all the Curry fans who were clamoring for just one other capable offensive initiator to draw opponents’ attention away from him — you were right. Far more than the blockbuster deal that sent Jimmy Butler to the Golden State Warriors was good for Butler, it also revolutionized Curry’s game in a way that we haven’t seen yet this season. In 11 games since Butler joined the team — 10 of which came alongside him — Curry has averaged 29.4 points, 4.4 rebounds, and 6.8 assists per game on 51-43-89 shooting splits. His average game score across that span — 24.3 — is just 0.3 lower than he posted during his 2015-16 unanimous MVP campaign, which is widely considered one of the greatest offensive seasons of all time.
Brooklyn did have a hot stretch right before the All-Star break in which its opponents couldn’t score, even if it couldn’t either. But since then, the Nets have regressed to the mean, allowing 117.5 points per 100 possessions, the ninth-worst in basketball. Brooklyn is helped out by the fact that it plays at the league’s 10th-slowest pace, but it’s no longer a defensive juggernaut and Curry should be more than capable of carving it up. Only two Nets players who have appeared in more than two games since the All-Star break have held opponents to a worse field goal percentage than normal.
Philadelphia 76ers +12.5 (-112)
Yes, Philadelphia has been unfathomably awful in the last few weeks. Joel Embiid is done for the season, Tyrese Maxey suffered a back injury on Monday and will miss tonight’s game, and Paul George is questionable with a groin injury too. In its last 10 games, Philadelphia is 1-9 with the worst defense and second-worst net rating in basketball, while Boston has the eighth-best defense and fourth-best net rating. I’m just not sure that the Celtics — on the second night of a back-to-back and with major injury concerns of their own, given that none of Jayson Tatum, Kristaps Porzingis, or Jrue Holiday played yesterday — will win by 13 or more. Winning by 13 is hard; Boston has done it only 22 times this season.
The Celtics were hit with devastating injury news this morning, as Jaylen Brown, Porzingis, Holiday, and Al Horford were all ruled out, while Tatum and Sam Hauser are questionable. For the 76ers, Kelly Oubre, Guerschon Yabusele, and Quentin Grimes are all quality NBA players and even a healthy Celtics team can’t completely write them off.
Indiana Pacers to Score 100+ Points in the First Three Quarters (+185)
This game has a point total of 248.5, 15.5 points more than the projected second-highest scoring game on tonight’s slate. It should be an electric battle of flashy pass after flashy pass from Trae Young and Tyrese Haliburton, and neither of these defenses are great, either. In fact, since the All-Star break, Atlanta has posted the league’s third-worst defensive rating — any time you’re on a list with the dysfunctional Phoenix Suns and Philadelphia 76ers, it’s not a great sign.
Since the All-Star break, Indiana has been hot, winning five of its seven games and posting the league’s fifth-best offensive rating across that span. The Pacers reached 100 points before the end of the third quarter in each of their first two games after the break, winning both comfortably against the league’s third- and 10th-best defenses. Indiana hasn’t topped that mark since, but recorded 97 points in the first three frames against the Miami Heat and 95 against the Chicago Bulls as well. The Hawks should ratchet up the pace of the game and give the Pacers a chance to get there. Atlanta’s opponents hit triple digits in the opening 36 minutes in four of their seven post-All-Star break games.
Dillon Brooks O2.5 Three-Pointers Made (+130)
The Pelicans have actually had a better net rating than the Rockets have since the All-Star break. Part of that has to do with the fact that Houston has dealt with some injury concerns — both Amen Thompson and Alperen Şengün have missed some time, and Fred VanVleet remains out — and part of it with New Orleans just starting to click — especially Zion Williamson. In six games since the intermission, Williamson is averaging 26.2 points, 7.0 rebounds, 5.8 assists, and 2.1 stocks per game on 64.8% shooting from the field, all while facing more double-teams than any other player in the league. Defensively, too, the Pelicans have gone from the second-worst team in the league before the break to the 12th-worst after it. Pair that with Williamson’s offense, and New Orleans has the backbone of a decent team.
But the Pelicans still have some glaring flaws, one of which being that they’ve still allowed the most three-point attempts in the league since the All-Star break. New Orleans’ opponents have also hit them at a 36.6% clip, the 10th-best mark in the league. Brooks has played six games since the All-Star break and attempted at least six three-pointers in all but one of them, including at least eight in each of the past four. He has only hit two or three-pointers in each of his last two games, but only because he’s shooting eight-for-29 (27.6%) from the field and four-for-17 (23.5%) from deep across that span. I wouldn’t expect that horrific accuracy to continue.
New York Knicks-Los Angeles Lakers U231.5 (-110)
The Lakers have won 19 of their last 23 games and have climbed into second in the Western Conference, and they’re 7-2 in games that Luka Dončić has suited up in. Despite losing one of the best defensive players in the league and adding a player who was traded because his defense was so bad, Los Angeles has had the league’s best defense since that hot streak began, 2.2 points per 100 possessions better than any other team in the league. At this point, that’s more than a third of the season that the Lakers have been a defensive juggernaut; it’s a big enough sample size to ignore the fact that they had the league’s seventh-worst defense up to that point.
It is true that since January 15, the Knicks’ defense has been the league’s seventh-worst in the league and that their offense has still been pretty good, while Los Angeles has paired its elite defense with an almost-as-great offense. But of each team’s offense and defense, the standout factor is that elite Lakers scheme. Four of each team’s last five games have gone under the point total, and I expect it to be more of the same tonight.
