Happy Wednesday, everyone!
The regular season is winding down. Some teams are blatantly tanking, while others are jockeying for playoff seeding.
Let’s dig in and find some plays for tonight.
Mikal Bridges more than 26.5 Points
This number seems awfully high for someone like Bridges, but it’s almost April, and anything goes in the NBA.
Bridges has been fantastic in an alpha role with the Nets since being acquired in the blockbuster Kevin Durant deal at the trade deadline.
Across the last four weeks, Bridges has averaged 28.45 points per 36 minutes.
However, he’s only logged 10 games this season with a usage rate better than 30%.
Well, guess what?
Bridges posted at least a 30% usage rate in six of his last seven appearances.
He’s still trending upward, and tonight, he gets an elite matchup against the Houston Rockets, who own the league’s second-worst defensive rating.
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Spencer Dinwiddie more than 28.5 Points + Assists
Let’s stick right here in this Nets vs. Rockets game.
Dinwiddie has become much more of a distributor since his arrival in Brooklyn, which could help him eclipse this number tonight.
Across the entire season, he is averaging just over 11 potential assists per game.
However, over the last 15 games, that number jumps to 15.6 (per NBA.com), while he’s tallying 9.4 per game during this stretch.
RotoGrinders has Dinwiddie projected for more than 10 assists tonight, as no team yields more assists per game to opposing point guards than the Rockets.
Houston is a favorable scoring matchup for anybody, while his points + assists projection is currently 29.1.
Devin Booker more than 27.5 Points
Phoenix needs to keep winning games if it wants to hold home-court advantage – at least during the first round of the playoffs.
The big news here is that Kevin Durant is returning from injury this evening.
KD and Booker have only played 67 minutes together (on the court) this season, but during that brief sample size, Booker’s per-36 scoring average would be north of 35 points per game – paired with a 31% usage.
Obviously, that scoring number is not sustainable, but seeing fantastic production from Booker with Durant briefly by his side was encouraging.
Regardless, Booker has scored more than this number in 11 of his last 13 games.
This should be a great environment for someone to score points in, as the game total sits around 235.5.
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Grayson Allen less than 10.5 Points
We know NBA news drops late at this point of the season.
I’ll endorse this one – as long as Giannis, Holiday, and Middleton are all active for Milwaukee.
Allen is no more than the fourth or fifth fiddle (can��t forget about Lopez and Portis) on the Bucks when this entire roster is healthy.
Allen logged 120 minutes alongside of the Bucks’ “big three” this season and averaged just eight points per 36 minutes.
However, if everyone else plays, I don’t believe he’ll come close to playing 36 minutes.
Allen has only logged more than 25 minutes once in the last five games.
With the additional chance of a blowout, my lean is that he scores less than this number tonight.
You can follow Justin Carlucci on Twitter @ThejCarlucci