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All times Eastern, and all odds via Caesars Sportsbook
🔥 The Hot Ticket
Nuggets at Lakers, 8:30 p.m. | TV: ESPN
- Key Trend: The NBA Finals doesn't begin until June 1.
- The Pick: Lakers (-155)
There are logical reasons for this play and tinfoil hat conspiracy reasons. I'll start with the logic. I've never doubted Denver is the better team in this series. I've felt Denver has been the best team in the West nearly the entire season. They've also been one of the most underrated teams in the league from a gambling perspective, but I'm pretty happy with the Nuggets (+1800) ticket I got before the season began, so I'm grateful for it.
But while Denver is better than Los Angeles, I don't think it's so much better that the Lakers will fail to win a game in the series. While Game 3 went Denver's way, it's important to remember that the Nuggets have been awful on the road all year.
The Nuggets were a flamethrower Saturday night. They hit 17 threes and shot 41.5% from beyond the arc. During the regular season, Denver shot 39% from three at home compared to only 36.7% on the road. In the playoffs, it had been 40.2% at home to 35.5% on the road until Saturday night. Meanwhile, the Lakers were 10/32 from three, and any time your opponent hits seven more threes than you do in a game, you're probably going to lose. The fact the Lakers kept it as close as they did speaks to their willpower.
OK, tinfoil hat time... it seemed as if the NBA was trying to rig Game 3! The calls from the officials were mind-boggling at times, but the Nuggets overcame it with shooting. Do we believe the NBA won't do everything it can to extend this series? Based on what we saw from the Celtics Sunday night, the Eastern Conference Finals look done. So if the Nuggets sweep the Lakers tonight and the Heat sweep the Celtics tomorrow, there will be eight days of no NBA playoff games before the NBA Finals begin June 1.
That's a lot of downtime, which you don't want during your marquee event. I don't see the Lakers losing tonight.
Here's what SportsLine is saying about the game: The Projection Model doesn't like anything tonight, but there's plenty of plays our SportsLine experts are sharing.
💰 The Picks
🏀 NBA
The Pick: Lonnie Walker Over 7.5 Points (-115) -- OK, here's an automatic prop I'd been keeping to myself (sorry), but since there's a strong chance this will be the Lakers' final home game of the year, I'm ready to share it: Lonnie Walker's usage has been off-and-on during the season, but the one constant has been he scores points at home
Including the playoffs, Walker has played 30 games at home this season. He has scored at least eight points in 22 of them. That includes all five home games Walker's played in the postseason. He finished with nine points in Game 3 and hit the over on this prop (it was 6.5) with over half the second quarter left. In the playoffs, he's averaging 11.4 points per game at home compared to 3.0 on the road. He averaged 13.1 at home and 10.5 on the road in the regular season. It's felt like stealing this entire postseason.
⚾ MLB
Dodgers at Braves, 7:20 p.m. | TV: MLB.TV
The Pick: Matt Olson Over 0.5 Hits (-238) -- Friday was the first time I publicly shared the hit prop I've been having success with, and Cubs outfield Seiya Suzuki won it for us quickly, getting a hit in his first at bat. Hopefully, Matt Olson can do the same for us tonight.
Olson is slashing .364/.440/.818 over the last week, with two homers and four doubles. He's also slated to face a righty tonight in Los Angeles' Gavin Stone. Olson has never faced Stone before, but he's hitting .270 this season against righties compared to .193 against lefties.
🔒 SportsLine Pick of the Day: I won money this weekend betting Brooks Koepka to win the PGA Championship, and I can't wait to put some of those winnings to use in the Charles Schwab Classic.
