Happy New Year! We’re on the up and up heading into 2025 with back-to-back sweeps in the last two articles. Let’s keep the winning ways rolling for today’s NBA slate.
Here are three of my favorite player predictions via PrizePicks for Thursday, January 2nd.
Happy New Year! We’re on the up and up heading into 2025 with back-to-back sweeps in the last two articles. Let’s keep the winning ways rolling for today’s NBA slate.
Here are three of my favorite player predictions via PrizePicks for Thursday, January 2nd.
Fading facilitators against the Thunder has been a staple of my betting season. Oklahoma City has the best adjusted net rating, allowing the fewest points to opposing point guards.
Zeroing in on James Harden’s scoring tendencies, he scores 32% in isolation, 18% as the pick-and-roll ball-handler and 12% in transition. The Thunder rank in the top three at defending those play types. They held Harden to just 12 and 17 points in their two previous meetings this year. He has failed to cover this line in 19 out of 30 games (64%).
Let’s not get too carried away here with ourselves, but D’Angelo Russell looked great in his first game back as a member of the Nets. It has been a while since we have seen a 22-point, eight-assist outcome from him, even if it came against the lowly Raptors.
All that production came in just 26 minutes, too. I’m not convinced the sportsbooks have caught up to the new role he is in with Brooklyn, so let’s back him to dish it out again, hopefully with Cam Thomas back in the lineup.
Without D’Angelo Russell in L.A., the Lakers need more facilitators. Austin Reaves seems to have stepped into that role. We’re working with a very small sample size, but over his last three games, Reaves has averaged 29 points, 12 assists and 8.3 rebounds per game.
Two of those games were without Russell, and one was without LeBron James. Now facing a pretty weak Trail Blazers defense that ranks 29th in adjusted defensive net rating, look for Reaves to continue this recent dominance.
Tyler is a featured writer at BettingPros. For more from him, follow @808Paperboi.
