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While many eyes will be on college basketball and the selection of the NCAA Tournament field on Sunday, the NBA has a nine-game slate headlined by a nationally televised matchup between the New Orleans Pelicans and Los Angeles Clippers (9 p.m. ET, ESPN).
With plenty to choose from, our experts have their eyes on a pair of player props today, including one from the aforementioned Pelicans-Clippers matchup. You can check out their analysis and picks below.
NBA Odds & Picks
Cleveland Cavaliers vs. Atlanta Hawks
Brandon Anderson: Larry Nance Jr. is back! And not a moment too soon for the Cavs.
Nance has been transformational for the Cavs this season with a breakout season. His defense changed everything for the team early on as Nance helped Cleveland out to a shocking 8-8 start before he got hurt and missed a couple games. Nance played a couple more, than missed another week, played one more, and then disappeared for a month — and so did the Cavs.
Nance is back now, and the 28 minutes he played against the Pelicans on Friday night suggest that he’s back without any real minutes restriction. That should mean a full-go, and we project Nance around 30 minutes tonight.
While Nance has been especially transformational to this Cavs defense, he’s also been a useful player on the other end. He’s averaging 9.4 points a game, almost all of them in the flow of the game, along with 6.7 rebounds and 3.1 assists. Those assists are what we’re playing here with an oddly low line.
Nance had only one assist in his return, but he’s had multiple assists in 13 of his 20 games this season, going over this line 65% of the time. And what should really give us confidence is that Nance’s median assist outcome is three dimes. He’s had three or more assists in 55% of his games and four or more 40% of the time. Nance has even had games of six, seven, and eight assists this season.
Those numbers show Nance’s real passing ability and suggest that this line is too low. That’s why the juice is trying to keep us away, but I won’t fall for it. I’m happy to lay the juice here with only two assists needed to hit a winner. Nance is a good enough passer that he could get that in one quarter alone. I’m happy to play over 1.5 assists up to -225.
New Orleans Pelicans vs. Los Angeles Clippers
Joe Dellera: Zion Williamson has had back-to-back games with just zero and two assists coming out of the break. However, he averages 3.3 per game with a median assist total of four.
The Clippers do a solid job at limiting their opponents’ assists, but this feels like an over-correction to prop line that had been set at 4.5 for the past few weeks. He is 21-6-2 to the over on his assists for the season and at plus money on DraftKings I’m taking over 3.5 assists.