Griffin Wong previews tonight’s game between the Indiana Pacers and the Phoenix Suns with his favorite player prop bets.
If NBA fans heard prior to the season that, three weeks into it, one of the Phoenix Suns and Indiana Pacers was in the play-in picture in its conference and the other was second-to-last, all but the most ardent Pacers haters would assume that Indiana had a winning record and Phoenix was awful.
Alas, reality works in funny ways, and after 11 games, the 1-10 Pacers are on the league’s third-longest losing streak, while the 7-5 Suns are tied for its third-longest winning streak. Both streaks could continue or end when the two teams face off tonight at 9 p.m. ET in Phoenix.
The Suns are 4.5-point favorites at DraftKings Sportsbook (-185 on the Moneyline), with the point total set at 232.5. Indiana is +154 on the Moneyline. Below, I’ll lay out my three favorite prop bets for tonight’s battle of surprises.
Grayson Allen 18+ Points (+110)
Allen has been incredible during Phoenix’s hot streak, scoring 18 or more points during three of the Suns’ past four games. The headliner was a 42-point effort against the New Orleans Pelicans in which he drained 10 of his 15 three-pointers, but he followed it up with a 23-point effort last night in a win over the Dallas Mavericks. He’s combined star-level usage with his typical efficiency, and he trails only Donovan Mitchell in made three-pointers per game. It’s possible that he could play an even bigger role tonight if any of Phoenix’s veterans rest on the second night of a back-to-back.
The Pacers have been an absolute disaster on both sides of the ball with their offensive anchor, Tyrese Haliburton, out with a torn Achilles, and their defensive anchor, Myles Turner, now on the Milwaukee Bucks. Indiana has conceded the fourth-most points per game this season despite holding opponents to the fifth-worst percentage from deep, which is more a function of luck than anything else. This season, the Pacers have allowed the seventh-most uncontested three-point attempts, which opponents have hit at a below-average rate. They can’t expect to get that fortunate against Allen, who’s generated 5.7 wide-open triples per game this season and made more than half of them.
Pascal Siakam 2+ Steals (+167)
The only beneficiary of Indiana’s myriad injuries is Siakam: without Haliburton, Turner, Obi Toppin, and Bennedict Mathurin, he’s posted the highest usage rate and the third-most minutes of his career. He’s also averaging the second-most steals of his career, and the Pacers still need him on the floor at all times. With him on the court, Indiana has been outscored by 7.1 points per 100 possessions, but without him, it has been blitzed to the tune of a negative-20.4 net rating, which would be by far the worst mark in league history. In part because of the playing time, he’s recorded two or more steals four times in 10 games this season (+150 implied odds), and he ranks 42nd in deflections.
He has a friendly matchup tonight against a Suns team that has been quite sloppy with the ball. This season, Phoenix has conceded the fifth-most steals per game, and individually, Booker leads the league in turnovers among players who have played in eight or more games. While that could benefit Andrew Nembhard or Ben Sheppard more, given that they matched up directly against Booker more frequently last season, it’s not like Booker has the ball the entire game. The Suns throw an above-average number of passes, and with his seven-foot-three wingspan and roving defensive style, Siakam is good at impacting passing lanes.
Devin Booker U7.5 Assists (-132)
All in all, Booker has averaged his second-most assists per game, in part because there’s not much facilitating elsewhere on this depleted roster. However, his playmaking has been inconsistent, as in his 12 games, he’s had nine or more assists five times and just three assists thrice, so there’s a lot of randomness involved. Plus, in each of the games in which he dished out more than seven assists, he had center Mark Williams available, and Williams sat out on the second night of the team’s only back-to-back this season and could conceivably be scratched tonight. Booker’s passes to Williams have accounted for 0.8 assists per game.
That’s one area in which the Pacers have been stingy. This season, they’ve allowed the eighth-fewest assists per game, in part because of the physical, high-pressure defensive scheme that helped them to within one win of an NBA title last season. Plus, Indiana has been so gettable on defense that there’s no reason for Booker not to look to score first, especially since the Pacers have fouled at the league’s highest rate and the easiest points on the court come from the charity stripe. In the teams’ two matchups last season, he went five-for-10 when guarded by Nembhard, so he should be confident as an attacker tonight.
