NBA DFS Prop Picks for 1/13/23 - Monkey Knife Fight

The Lakers and Mavericks went to double-overtime last night and Damian Lillard dropped 50-points despite a tough loss to the Cavaliers. Thursday's late-games salvaged an underwhelming night in the NBA and the weekend kicks-off with a nine-game Friday slate. Only the Thunder are playing on the second night of a back-to-back and luckily for them, the Bulls have been struggling recently.

Oklahoma City has potential to pull-out a second-win on their four-game road trip, and every win is making it harder to advocate for their eventual tank. Tanking is a much tougher strategy to instill when your team, along with the Suns, Lakers, Trail Blazers, Warriors, Clippers, Timberwolves, and Jazz, are all between seven to ten games behind the two first place teams, Denver and Memphis.

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ATL @ IND

Trae Young (ATL) MORE 26.5 Points – Myles Turner (IND) LESS 18.5 Points

Throughout all of December and January, Myles Turner scored 19-points or more five times. The problem here is that sites are going to plant a seed in the mind of bettors. Assuming that Turner is playing, Tyrese Haliburton’s usage has to go somewhere, right? Well, Haliburton was conducting the offense and doing everything in his power to get teammates involved at an astonishing rate. If Turner wasn’t putting up the numbers we needed before, then there’s no reason to bank on him randomly over-producing without arguably his most valuable asset, a quality point guard.

Trae Young is averaging around 31-points over the last week and that’s about all we can hope for when betting on a shooter. He’s gone through two incredible shooting streaks already this season, and this will be the third time this year where he is posting consecutive 30+ point games. While the Pacers are scrambling, Young should benefit from Indiana unwillingly being forced into a new offensive game plan.

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GSW @ SAS

 Steph Curry (GSW) MORE 26.5 Points – Keldon Johnson (SAS) MORE 23.5 Points

As long as both of these players are playing, it’s physically difficult to take the under. Of course, any single-celled organism can say, ‘good game’ or ‘bad game’ because technically they’ll always be half-right. But Steph Curry is one of those players that is so good that each and every game provides the groundwork for him to create history. Whether he does or doesn’t is dependent on him, but the potential is there and Curry-under bets were made to be busted.

Keldon Johnson has the luxury of being one of the few Spurs options that the team can comfortably rely on. Of course, the Spurs will always be the Spurs and will have a seemingly endless supply of options, but Johnson is still the one player who carves out a role for himself whether they like it or not.

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OKC @ CHI

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (OKC) MORE 30.5 Points – Zach LaVine (CHI) MORE 30.5 Points

There’s no reason to focus on Shai Gilgeous-Alexander here because when you are one of the league’s leaders in points scored, you’re clearly in some type of rhythm. Defense doesn’t matter and as long as he is playing, you take the over and just sit back and watch. Take the under if you want, but you’ll be sweating the entire time.

With no DeMar DeRozan, Zach LaVine couldn’t ask for a more perfect situation. He used to thrive in the lone-wolf environment earlier in his career, and with just Nikola Vucevic at his disposal, he’s back in a similar position. The best thing that could have happened to this Bulls team is an injury which allows them to start their tank. The Bulls were collapsing before DeRozan went down so now it’ll just be the “Zach LaVine Show” for the next couple games.

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HOU @ SAC

Jalen Green (HOU) MORE 25.5 Points – De’Aaron Fox (SAC) MORE 24.5 Points

If only there was a way to ignore Jalen Green’s nine-point (on 15-attempts) outing against the Timberwolves. Sadly, that’ll happen to a young shooting guard and it dropped his weekly averages by almost two points. Making it worse, it was after his first 30-point game since early December. Seeing that type of inconsistency is alarming and even though the hot-hand ability is there, scoring at least 26-points for Green doesn’t come easy since he’s only done it in 11 out of 41 games.

Looking at De’Aaron Fox’s game log you’ll notice a similarity. He also posted a low-scoring game recently, there’s just one glaring difference. Fox’s low-scoring game came in a blowout victory where his scoring wasn’t needed. Green’s came in a loss where any points would have made a difference. Despite the scoring, Fox’s usage was still around 23% and that’s what we are targeting here since one team is playing well and the other has lost 13 of their last 14 games.

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