The Indiana Pacers and New York Knicks each failed to clinch their first-round series on Tuesday. The Pacers head home tonight to try to take out the Milwaukee Bucks in Game 6. Meanwhile, the Knicks must win on the road to avoid a Game 7 against the Philadelphia 76ers.
Here are the three best NBA PrizePicks plays for Thursday, May 2.
Our PrizePicks Cheat Sheet helps bettors by comparing lines from PrizePicks vs. our daily NBA projections >>
The Indiana Pacers and New York Knicks each failed to clinch their first-round series on Tuesday. The Pacers head home tonight to try to take out the Milwaukee Bucks in Game 6. Meanwhile, the Knicks must win on the road to avoid a Game 7 against the Philadelphia 76ers.
Here are the three best NBA PrizePicks plays for Thursday, May 2.
Our PrizePicks Cheat Sheet helps bettors by comparing lines from PrizePicks vs. our daily NBA projections >>
Thursday’s Best NBA PrizePicks Player Predictions
This Season: 75-75
With both Damian Lillard and Giannis Antetokounmpo out in Game 5, Bobby Portis Jr. picked up the slack and scored 29 points. It was his third-highest-scoring game of the season. He also set a season-high in field goals attempted with 24.
While Lillard and Antetokounmpo are both expected to miss tonight's game, Portis Jr.'s performance is an outlier, not a sign of things to come. He didn’t score over 17 points in any of the series’ first four games. It was also his first 20-point game against the Pacers this season.
We like his points + assists under because it's two higher than the line for his points. He's compiled just four assists in this series, so assists are unlikely to play any role in this prop tonight.
It was unlikely Myles Turner would keep up his phenomenal shooting for the entirety of the playoffs. However, the level to which he fell off in Game 5 was surprising. After scoring 29 points in back-to-back games, Turner managed just 13 in the Pacers 115-92 loss.
A large part of the reason why Turner scored so few points was his lack of three-point success. He was just 1-of-4 from deep after making at least three in each of his first four games in the series. Game 5 could be a fluke, but considering Turner averaged just 1.5 made threes per game in the regular season, it may be a sign of him leveling off. Even if he makes two or three shots from beyond the arc tonight, expect Turner to miss this total.
Josh Hart has pulled down 60 rebounds in this series for an average of 12 per game. Yet, he has also pulled down under 10 rebounds in two of the five games in the series. The Knicks lost in each game where Hart struggled on the glass. This shows a correlation between the 76ers scoring points and Hart struggling to get boards.
The amount of minutes that Hart plays makes it so that his overs are always on the table. He's averaging 46.4 minutes per game this series, and he has yet to play under 42 in a game. Still, Hart's rebounding success this postseason isn't normal for him. He averaged 8.3 rebounds per game in the regular season, and even with additional minutes, expecting him to top that average by over three rebounds is a bit of a stretch, especially in a game that the 76ers are favored to win.
Make sure to check out our other best bets for Thursday:
Phil Wood is a featured writer at BettingPros. For more from Phil, check out his archive and follow him @Phil_Wood_Jr.
