Prop Holliday - Bobby Stanley
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Game 1 of the Western Conference Finals tips off tonight with the Los Angeles Lakers heading up to Denver to face the Nuggets. The regular season record holds little merit (2-2) due to injuries and drastic changes to the Lakers roster post-trade deadline, but we did see this showdown in 2020 WCF in the bubble. This time around the Nuggets are significantly better team and Jokic is the best player in the series. The Lakers will look to make Jokic work on both ends of the floor (something Phoenix did NOT do), while Jokic will continue to get his teammates open looks.
I’m going light for Game 1 to see how the rotations shake out, but I suspect we see more Rui Hachimura this series than we did in the previous series. His size will be valuable against Aaron Gordon and Michael Porter Jr. Anthony Davis was ineffective offensively towards the end of the Warriors series, but I expect him to see an uptick in FGA vs Jokic who is not known for his defensive prowess and should dominate a post matchup with Aaron Gordon. Either way, I’m expecting the Nuggets to add to their undefeated home record.
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Austin Reaves over 22.5 points, rebounds + assists (-113)
Line available on FanDuel Sportsbook at the time of publishing.
One could make the case that Reaves is the 3rd best player on the Lakers team and no, I did not have that on my playoff bingo board. He’s started every game, averaged 35mpg, and 24.5 PAR in that stretch. He’s hit this line in 7/12 (58%) of games this postseason and I like his role in this Nuggets series. He’s coming off his best game of the playoffs in 23-6-5 and this Lakers rotation is starting to really consolidate. Ham played only 7 guys (Rui and Lonnie played 14+ minutes in Game 6); Malik Beasley and Vanderbilt are non-factors. I have Reaves penciled in for 36 minutes and 25.2 PAR. The only two games Reaves played under 30 minutes were the two blowouts vs GSW (Game 2+3). 0.5U
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Aaron Gordon over 13.5 points (-108)
Line available on FanDuel Sportsbook at the time of publishing.
Defensively, Gordon will likely draw the Anthony Davis assignment, but I like his matchup on the offensive end. The Lakers went guard heavy to close out the Warriors series, but we’ll likely see Vanderbilt inserted back into the starting lineup for size for Game 1. Gordon is still a freak athletically and a handful for Vanderbilt or even LeBron at this stage of his career, who has been known to take quarters off to pace himself for the later stages of games. Gordon averaged 16.3 ppg in the regular season and hit this line in 3/5 games vs Minnesota in Round 1. Outside of a blowout in Game 1 vs MIN, Gordon has not played less than 32.5 minutes in a game all postseason and I project him at 35 tonight barring another blowout. The Lakers have been susceptible to a lot of back door cuts and movement, which is where I can see Gordon getting a few easy buckets. It helps that he’s averaging 14.6PPG at home this postseason as well. 1U play from me.
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