Star point guards Trae Young and Kyrie Irving highlight Friday night’s top NBA prop picks.
The pregame narrative: Young has turned his season around and I like him to stay hot against the Los Angeles Lakers. Plays on Irving and Desmond Bane round out the recommendations.
Check out the best NBA prop bets for Jan. 3.
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Best bet: Young over 23.5 points (-108)
Young’s scoring is way down but he’s heating up and gets the Lakers on a back-to-back.
The Atlanta Hawks aren’t strong defensively and will need to score plenty to keep up. Tonight’s total is 232.5, the third-highest of the nine-game slate.
These teams blew past that number when they met in December, a 134-132 overtime win for Atlanta.
Young dropped 31 points with five triples that game.
More recently, the star point guard is coming off back-to-back 30-point contests. He’s reached the 30-point mark four times in his last 10 games, averaging 25.7 points over that stretch.
Plenty of those buckets have come from beyond the arc, where the Lakers struggle (20th in opponent 3-point rate), providing Young an excellent opportunity to continue his big scoring output.
Key stat: Young has scored 23-plus points in six of his last seven games.
Quick picks
Irving over 2.5 threes (-150): I’m not confident this price is getting any better throughout the day and am getting in now.
Per StatMuse:
- Irving is 7-3 against this number in 10 games this season without star teammate Luka Doncic.
- He’s taken double-digit 3-point attempts in half of those games.
- Irving is shooting a career-best 44.1% from the perimeter.
The NBA-best Cavaliers (29-4) pose a significant challenge for the undermanned Dallas Mavericks, but Cleveland has been carved up by point guards.
And Dallas, without Doncic, will need Irving firing on all cylinders.
Cleveland allows the fourth-most points and 3-pointers to PGs, according to Betting Pros.
Bane over 21.5 points (-112): The Memphis Grizzlies shooting guard averaged 23.7 points per game last season. That number has plummeted to 16.3 this year.
But Bane cleared this number in back-to-back games with teammate Ja Morant sidelined and is coming off a season-best 31-point effort.
Bane has topped this line in three of his last six games, averaging 22.3 points and scoring no fewer than 18.
We’re working with a small sample here but Bane is moving in the right direction and is a gifted scorer who can shoot from long range.
He was due for positive regression and Morant’s absence should only help that, as Bane will need to assume a larger offensive footprint.
Tonight, he’ll go to work against a Sacramento Kings defence that’s allowing the second-most points in the NBA to shooting guards.
Picks made at 12:45 p.m. ET on 01/03/2025.
Chris joined NorthStar Gaming from Covers.com where he was a publishing editor and wrote betting content. Before that, he was the sports editor at VICE Canada, worked for theScore and covered the Blue Jays for MLB.com. In addition to filling out the lineup card each day for the editorial team, Chris writes frequently himself, primarily on the NBA and MLB.