NBA Finals First Basket Scorers: Pacers vs. Thunder (Game 1)
The Oklahoma City Thunder will welcome the Indiana Pacers to the Paycom Center for Game 1 of the NBA Finals tonight.
The Thunder are nearly 10-point favorites and have a much higher probability of winning it all. However, the Pacers already knocked off the Bucks, Cavaliers and Knicks, and didn’t need seven games in any of those matchups.
Indiana won’t go down without a fight. That said, will the Pacers score tonight’s first basket? Let’s talk about it below.
Follow along and make sure to check out our NBA First Basket Prop Bet Cheat Sheet for help identifying all of today’s best prop bets.
Get instant alerts when a line reaches your target via the BettingPros App >>
Thursday’s Best NBA First Basket Scorers Picks & Predictions
(Odds courtesy of FanDuel Sportsbook)
Who will score the first basket in today’s NBA games? We compare historical first-basket stats to prop bet odds to help identify today’s best bets. View first-basket odds across sportsbooks here.
Indiana Pacers vs. Oklahoma City Thunder
The Pacers and Thunder played each other twice in the regular season. The Thunder won both games, but the Pacers scored the first basket in both matchups. Ultimately, Myles Turner and Isaiah Hartenstein each won a tip, but it was Andrew Nembhard who scored first in each game.
Meanwhile, it’s been Chet Holmgren competing for the tip recently for the Thunder. There’s a possibility Holmgren will be the tip-man again for the Thunder in Game 1 of the Finals. After all, Hartenstein only won the tip in 22% of games in the regular season.
While Turner hasn’t been much better, he won the tip in 43% of the regular-season games. The Thunder have also allowed the first basket to centers 33% of the time, so Turner is easily one of the best options to score first tonight.
After all, Turner scored 13 first baskets in the regular season. He also added the team’s first basket in 30% of games and attempted the team’s first field goal in 34% of games.
He was one of the most consistent first-basket scorers on the Pacers, slightly behind Nembhard, who added six first baskets in 47 games, with two against the Thunder. Nembhard scored the team’s first basket in 32% of starts this season, which again, is just a little better than Turner. But Turner has a larger sample size and is facing a Thunder team that struggled to get stops against centers on the first possession.
Let’s go with Turner.
Pick: Myles Turner (+1000)