Griffin Wong shares his three favorite player prop bets on DraftKings Sportsbook for Monday night’s two-game Conference Semifinals slate, including props for Jalen Brunson, Joel Embiid, and Victor Wembanyama.
30 has now been whittled down to eight, with the second round of the NBA Playoffs set to begin tonight with a pair of Game 1’s, one in each conference.
At 8:10 p.m. ET, the New York Knicks will host the Philadelphia 76ers after the Knicks dispatched the Atlanta Hawks behind a 51-point rout in Game 6 and the 76ers overcame a 3-1 deficit against the Boston Celtics. Later, the San Antonio Spurs — 4-1 winners in the first round against the Portland Trail Blazers — will begin their second round with a 9:30 p.m. ET home game against the Minnesota Timberwolves, who ousted the Denver Nuggets in six games.
Despite losing plenty of stars to either injury or elimination in the first round, today’s slate still includes plenty of the NBA’s best talents. I’ve gone through tonight’s slate and picked three of my favorite prop bets surrounding these stars at DraftKings Sportsbook.
Brunson had a slow first few games in the first round as New York suffered a pair of back-to-back losses to fall into a 2-1 deficit, but he found his stride in a must-win Game 5, dropping 39 points and dishing out eight assists as the Knicks romped to a 29-point victory. He didn’t have to do much in Game 6, recording 17 points and eight assists as New York took a 61-point lead at one point, the largest margin any team has achieved in a playoff game. All in all, Brunson had at least 35 combined points and assists in three of the six games despite facing a fairly difficult defensive matchup in 2025 Defensive Player of the Year finalist Dyson Daniels.
The 76ers’ defense should be more exploitable. Though Philadelphia has some decent defenders in Paul George and Joel Embiid, neither of them will spend much, if any, time on Brunson. Instead, the 76ers will likely guard him with VJ Edgecombe, who guarded Brunson for more possessions than any player except Daniels during the regular season. Despite holding him to eight-for-24 shooting during the regular season, Edgecombe still graded out as a net-neutral defender overall, ranking in just the 50th percentile in points saved per 100 possessions. As a team, Philadelphia had the fourth-worst defensive rating among the 16 playoff participants in the first round and the 14th-worst in the league in the regular season. It also allowed by far the most wide-open threes per game in the first round, and though that’s partially a function of the Celtics’ playing style, it won’t fly against Brunson, who made such shots at a 39.4% clip during the regular season and a 57.1% clip so far these playoffs.
Embiid returned prior to Game 4 after undergoing an appendectomy late in the regular season, and he made an immediate impact, averaging 28.0 points, 9.0 rebounds, and 7.0 assists per game across the final four games of the series to spark the 76ers’ 3-1 comeback. Philadelphia was 7.6 points per 100 possessions better with him on the floor during the regular season and 10.7 points per 100 possessions better during the first round, and despite appearing to sustain a lower-body injury late in Game 7 after Maxey fell into him, he should be good to go without restrictions for tonight’s game. He had 10 or more rebounds in three of the four games against Boston and each of his final two regular season games, so +118 represents good value.
To be fair, the Knicks are a tougher overall matchup than the Celtics for opposing centers. They have two of the best rebounding bigs in basketball in Karl-Anthony Towns and Mitchell Robinson, finishing fifth in total rebounding percentage during the regular season and first in the first round, and Embiid won’t be able to play Towns off the floor like he did Neemias Queta and Nikola Vučević. Still, Boston finished third in rebounding percentage both during the regular season and the first round, so Embiid should be effective regardless. He’s only faced New York three times in the Towns era, but he recorded double-digit rebounds in two of them, and when the teams met in the playoffs in 2024, he snagged at least 10 boards in four of the six games.
Wembanyama made a statement in his first career playoff game, draining five of his six triples in a 35-point Game 1 outburst, and while he was more quiet from the perimeter in Games 2, 4, and 5, that was partially due both to the concussion that knocked him out of Game 2 after just 12 minutes and his dominance against Donovan Clingan inside. Though Clingan is an excellent interior defender, he’s no Rudy Gobert, and Gobert is one of the few defenders in basketball capable of giving Wembanyama trouble. If the Timberwolves can wall off the interior as capably as they did against Denver, Wembanyama might be more incentivized to pull Gobert out to the perimeter, opening up cuts for Stephon Castle and Devin Vassell.
To be fair, Minnesota is also one of the best three-point defenses in basketball, allowing the second-fewest attempts and the 13th-lowest percentage during the regular season and the seventh-fewest attempts and third-lowest percentage during the first round. The Timberwolves also do a better job than most closing out on shooters, allowing a below-average number of wide-open threes both during the regular season and playoffs. Still, the absences of Donte DiVincenzo and (possibly) Anthony Edwards could somewhat hinder Minnesota’s ability to guard the perimeter. Plus, Wembanyama has generally been aggressive from deep in his prior matchups against the Timberwolves, making at least three treys in five of his nine games.
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