Jaylen Brown was rewarded in 2023 with a five-year, $304 million deal, the largest contract in NBA history at the time. Now that he’s a newly-minted number one option after his co-star Jayson Tatum suffered a torn right Achilles tendon, now is Brown’s chance to prove that he deserved that bag.
He certainly did just that in Game 5 of the Boston Celtics’ second-round series against the New York Knicks, recording 26 points, eight rebounds, and 12 assists as Boston kept its season alive. He’ll hope for a similar performance tonight at Madison Square Garden in the Knicks’ second attempt to punch their tickets to the Eastern Conference Finals.
The Celtics are 2.5-point underdogs at DraftKings Sportsbook, with the point total set for 211.5. Below, I’ve detailed my favorite prop bets centered around Brown.
Best Jaylen Brown Prop Bets on DraftKings Sportsbook
Jaylen Brown U25.5 Points (-105)
Brown scored in diverse ways in Game 5, hunting switches onto weaker New York defenders like Jalen Brunson, Karl-Anthony Towns, and Mitchell Robinson, nailing open triples, driving to the basket, and even hitting a difficult midrange over the Knicks’ best defender, OG Anunoby. It was the second time these playoffs that he has gone off without Tatum, having scored 36 points in Game 2 of the first-round series against the Orlando Magic with his co-star absent with a wrist sprain. He also didn’t force anything and finished with a career-high 12 assists.
Still, there are a couple of trends working against Brown. New York managed to get a defender within six feet of him on all but one of his shots, but he was four-for-six with the nearest defender between four and six feet away and four-for-nine — including one-for-one from deep — with the nearest defender between two and four feet away. His mark on open shots, in particular, was far better than his regular-season accuracy, especially given that he went four-for-five from the midrange overall. Knicks fans should expect some regression to the mean, and he scored more than 25 points only three times in the seven regular-season games that he played without Tatum, so this line is just a little high.
Jaylen Brown Boston Celtics First Field Goal Scorer (+180)
In the nine games that Brown has played without Tatum this season, including Wednesday night, he has made Boston’s first field goal four times, which alone implies a higher probability than the +180 odds would suggest, although it was Derrick White who made the team’s first shot in Game 5. Plus, in two of the others, the player who made the team’s first basket was Kristaps Porzingis, who has been dealing with a severe illness throughout the playoff run and has been virtually invisible. Porzingis’ 25.1% first-quarter usage rate during the regular season has to go somewhere, and it’s not going to go to Al Horford. Look for Brown to make a statement early.
