We've got another trio of NBA Playoff games on Tuesday with six teams looking to get a win in Game 2: Hawks vs. Heat (7:30 p.m. ET), Timberwolves vs. Grizzlies (8:30 p.m. ET) and Pelicans vs. Suns (10 p.m. ET).
Our NBA analysts are beyond ready to bet tonight's slate and have a bevy of bets, especially in the Wolves-Grizzlies series, that includes props, spreads, team totals and series bets.
You can find their breakdowns and best bets for Tuesday night below.
NBA Odds & Picks
Atlanta Hawks vs. Miami Heat
Roberto Arguello: I wrote a more in-depth breakdown on Hawks-Heat Game 2 here, but my best bet in this matchup is a player prop. With the Heat playing such a switch-heavy scheme — especially when Trae Young is on the court — expect Bam Adebayo to be further away from the basket than normal. They will want to utilize his freakish combination of size, speed and defensive smarts.
With Clint Capela’s incredible rebounding absent, there is even less of a need for Adebayo to be by the rim than normal against this Hawks team.
The Heat have played a similar defensive scheme in all three of their matchups vs. the Hawks when Adebayo has played. In each of those games, Adebayo recorded exactly six rebounds (including in Game 1) while playing 34, 33 and 28 minutes.
Expect Adebayo to play closer to 38 minutes on Tuesday (this game should be more competitive), but there is still value in him hauling in fewer than 9.5 rebounds.
You can play Adebayo Under 9.5 Rebounds at +100 on BetMGM or play it more conservatively at Under 10.5 Rebounds on FanDuel at -138. I would bet this under at 9.5 at -115 or better.
Atlanta Hawks vs. Miami Heat
Matt Moore: Miami is an inconsistent offensive team. They had a 78.5% TrueShooting Percentage after Hawks misses in Game 1. That's an unbelievable figure to shoot in any situation. That's exacerbated by how the Hawks shot. Atlanta shot six percentage points worse than expected factoring shooter, location and contest level, according to Second Spectrum data provided to Action Network.
Their expected eFG% was low; the Hawks likely play better, create better shots, and shoot slightly better. The Heat straight up toyed with Atlanta's poor defense; they shot nearly 10 percentage points better than expected and when you watch it, it was just easy for them.
I don't trust Atlanta's defense to shut down Miami. I don't trust the Hawks to put up a huge number of the Heat's switching scheme. But I also don't think they'll be as bad as in Game 1, and Miami's offense is weaker than it showed. They scored 115 despite all these advantages.
That's enough for me to take the under. I don't mind a play on the combined total under, but I really like Miami to go under 113.5.
Minnesota Timberwolves vs. Memphis Grizzlies
Moore: I bet the Wolves in this series, and basically every cap I had on the game came true in Game 1. Yay me, right?
Except the Wolves shot six percentage points better than expected and the Grizzlies shot nine percentage points worse in Effective Field Goal Percentage. The expected score on this game was drastically different than what it was. Was that just shot variance?
I don't think so entirely. But I do know that Memphis will play with higher intensity in this game. Minnesota did a better job after the first quarter of slowing the game down, but if the Wolves shoot a little worse (which is likely), there are more chances for the Grizzlies to run.
Anthony Edwards was incredible but he's 21 and could regress a bit. The Grizzlies likely play more small-ball. There are concerns there: lineups with Clarke and Jaren Jackson Jr. were -8, but the eye test was great for those minutes.
Memphis will be desperate not to go down 0-2. I think Minnesota has more tweaks and adjustments, but those will come in Game 3 after they get the split. Minnesota gets hit with a big run in the third and peaces out with intent to go up 3-1 at home.
Minnesota Timberwolves vs. Memphis Grizzlies
Brandon Anderson: This just is not the series for Steven Adams.
The matchup has been a major problem for Adams all year, and it was bad again in Game 1. Adams was a minus-15 on the court in the first half alone and put up a donut on the scoreboard. He played 24 minutes and failed to score, and he had more personal fouls (four) than rebounds (three). But this wasn't just a one-off bad game. This is the third time this year Adams has recorded three or fewer rebounds against the Wolves.
That's three of his four lowest rebounding games on the entire year, all against the Timberwolves. He's simply not playing enough minutes, and even when he is out there, he's getting pulled away from the hoop in defense, hurting his rebounding opportunities.
In 21 games this season, with 22 minutes played or fewer, Adams has gone under 10.5 rebounds 16 times. That's a 76% hit rate to this under if he sees his minutes limited again, and we're getting plus odds somehow on a shocking number. If you like, you can play the PRA instead. He's under that in all but one of those games, and at 20.5 at +100 (FanDuel) we're getting even odds and boosting the line without any real worry of a huge Adams scoring game ruining our play.
There's more you can do here too if you think this trend persists during the series. At DraftKings, you can play Adams to average under 9.1 RPG for the series. Remember, he's had three or fewer rebounds in 75% of his Wolves games this year, and one of those counts toward that average!
Even if the series goes seven and even if Adams has 10 rebounds in every remaining game, he still goes under that line. You can also bet on the series rebounding leader at some books, and Karl-Anthony Towns looks like a pretty good bet there with Adams his main competition. You might even think about using the PointsBetting option at the eponymous book to bet the under on Adams's rebounding line, going for a big payout.
Not everyone has all of those options though, so for our purposes here, I'll just recommend the traditional rebounding under for Adams. Let's hope the big man gets played off the court again.
Minnesota Timberwolves vs. Memphis Grizzlies
Raheem Palmer: The Memphis Grizzlies were upset by the Minnesota Timberwolves as 7-point favorites in Game 1 of their first round playoff series. Fortunately for us, that puts us in an advantageous position as bettors to capitalize on a trend which has been successful over the past 17 years.
Although the zig-zag theory (ie:betting the opposite of what happened in the last game with the assumption that teams are likely to bounce back from a poor performance given the prospect of facing elimination.) can’t be blindly played, it can be played in spots and this fits that.
One of the best angles to play the Zig-Zag theory is backing top three seeds who have been upset in Game 1. Since 2005, top three seeds at home that lost the opening game of a best of seven playoff series are 28-16 ATS in the following game.
We’ve seen this occur three times in last year’s postseason:
Eastern Conference Finals
- Game 1: Atlanta Hawks defeat Milwaukee Bucks (-8)
- Game 2 : Milwaukee Bucks defeat Atlanta Hawks 125-91
Eastern Conference Semi-finals
- Game 1: Atlanta Hawks defeat Philadelphia 76ers (-8)
- Game 2 : Philadelphia 76ers (-6.5) defeat Atlanta Hawks 118-102
Western Conference First Round
- Game 1: Memphis Grizzlies defeat Utah Jazz (-10)
- Game 2 : Utah Jazz (-10) defeat Memphis Grizzlies 141-129
This trend has proven to be +EV longterm and this feels like a great spot to play on the Grizzlies who underperformed their shot quality by 10 points facing the Wolves who over-performed by 18 points, according to ShotQuality.com.
The Grizzlies shot 25.9% from behind the arc, at mark that should regress positively to the mean since they ranked 12th in 3-point percentage (36.3%) during the regular season.
The Grizzlies also struggled in an area they’ve dominated all season, getting crushed on the glass by the Wolves who were 29th in Defensive Rebound rate (28.1%). The Grizzlies are the best offensive rebounding team in the league, but the Wolves dominated them in that category generating 19 second chance points to the Grizzlies 14.
Overall, the Grizzlies should be able to clean up a lot of these mistakes and get the win here. Typically a Grizzlies win means a ton of points as this is a team which plays the 7th fastest pace (100.0) and is eighth in Offensive Length of Possession (14.4 seconds) per Dunks and Threes.
The Grizzlies are 47-34 to the over in the first quarter and I expect them to once again go over as they should get out to a fast start. I’m going to lay the -6.5 on the Grizzlies while also laying them -2 for the first quarter and -4 for the first half (make sure to shop for the best line as various books have the halves and quarters priced differently). I’ll also be betting the Grizzlies' first quarter (31.5) and first half (63.5) team totals to go over.
Minnesota Timberwolves vs. Memphis Grizzlies
Austin Wang: Game 1 between the Grizzles and the Timberwolves did not disappoint. We saw fireworks in the matchup between two of the league's top-scoring offenses.
Twenty-year-old phenom Anthony Edwards showed the world that he is a star in this league as he scored 30 points and led the Wolves to an upset against the No. 2-seed Grizzlies in Game 1.
The Timberwolves dominated most of the game and beat the Grizzlies in some of their biggest strengths: rebounding, second chance points and fast break points.
I expect better games from the Grizzles' starting frontcourt: Steven Adams put up a complete dud and Jaren Jackson Jr. struggled with foul trouble. We saw Brandon Clarke have some very productive minutes off the bench, so I expect him to get more run in Game 2.
Excluding Game 1, Memphis is 17-8 (68.0%) ATS following a loss this season, per the SDQL database at Gimme the Dog. They've been resilient off a loss.
This game also fits the Zig Zag theory as Raheem pointed out. Favorites by more than four points in Games 2-5 off a playoff series loss are 144-105-10 (57.8%) ATS in the history of the Bet Labs database, which dates back to the 2004-2005 season.
The idea behind this is the losing team will be one game closer to elimination and will come out the following game more motivated and play with more intensity.
I'm taking the Grizzlies, who I anticipate will come out aggressive in front of their home crowd to prevent falling in a 0-2 hole. I'll play them at first half spread of -4 and at the full game spread of -6.5.
Minnesota Timberwolves vs. Memphis Grizzlies
Joe Dellera: The Grizzlies suffered a loss in Game 1 and they were presented with an issue: Continue to play Steven Adams and be locked into a drop coverage defensive scheme or give his minutes to Brandon Clarke to be more versatile defensive at the cost of securing more rebounds.
The decision was easy considering in 24 minutes Adams scored 0 points, secured 3 rebounds but had 3 assists and was a -13. On the flip side, Brandon Clarke played 27 minutes while scoring 13 points and secured 12 rebounds. He’s not quite as physically imposing as Adams (this should help KAT) but he gives more flexibility.
This is not surprising considering Adams has struggled all season against the Timberwolves and this dates back to last season as well. In six games this season and last season, Adams has averaged 13.3 PRA with averages of 5.5 points, 5.8 rebounds, and two assists. It’s a brutal matchup for him. His current PRA line is set at 20.5 and opened at 21.5 yesterday. Over the last two seasons he has cleared this line just twice, with PRA totals of 10, 25, 7, 9, 23, and 6.
One thing to consider is he averages 26.3 minutes on the season, but just 22.5 against Minnesota this year. When Adams has played 25 or fewer minutes he has cleared this total in just 6-of-35 games (17%) and even if we draw this out to 30 minutes it has hit in just 17-of-53 (32%). This is a great spot to fade Adams in a bad matchup.
Additionally, if you want to remove some of the game-to-game variance, consider playing his series rebounds per game under. This is available at under 9.1 rebounds per game (-115) on DraftKings.
Currently, he has three rebounds on the series. In order to exceed this total here are how many more rebounds he would need (and the average per game) depending on how many games this series goes: four games — 34 (11.3); five games — 43 (10.75); six games — 52 Rebounds (10.4); seven games — 61 (10.17).
In other words, he’d need to average double digit assists against the Wolves for the rest of this series to clear the 9.1 average after his three-rebound Game 1. He averages 9.1 rebounds per game on the season, and just five against the Wolves with games of three, two, 12, and two.
Considering the scheme issues I mentioned above this is incredibly unlikely. Bet him to go under the series prop as well.
New Orleans Pelicans vs. Phoenix Suns
Anderson: I covered this game in full in today’s game guide (you can read that here), but my favorite bet in this matchup is the under on the Pelicans’ team total.
This team got 25 offensive rebounds in Game 1, shot 39% beyond the arc, racked up 95 shots, and still couldn’t even crack 100 points. New Orleans doesn’t shoot many 3s, so that high percentage is somewhat deceptive. The Pelicans do shoot a ton of 2s, and they were awful doing so in Game 1. The Pels were a horrendous 27-of-72 inside the arc — just 37.5% on 2s.
Even with its good 3-point shooting, New Orleans finished with an ugly 42.6% Effective Field Goal Percentage, compared to over 60% for Phoenix. That’s how you lose a game in which you outshoot your opponent by 17 shots.
New Orleans has too many one-way guys and it’s a losing equation. Either it goes with defense-only options like Herb Jones and Jaxson Hayes and can’t score, or they turn to Devonte’ Graham and others who can’t defend.
I just don’t trust the Pels to score enough.
