Three young guns factor into Monday's NBA prop bets.

The pregame narrative: The Los Angeles Lakers are on the brink of elimination and I expect Austin Reaves to step up and have a big game. Two rookies — Chet Holmgren and Jaime Jaquez Jr. — round out today's plays.

Check out these NBA prop bets for April 29.

NBA prop bets

Best Bet: Reaves over 14.5 points (-103)

The Lakers will need all hands on deck to win tonight and Reaves showing out would certainly help.

The third-year guard breezed by this line in Game 4, scoring 21 points in just 30 minutes of play.

Reaves had 22 points the game before that and has now gone over this total in eight of his last 11 games versus the Denver Nuggets.

He averaged 21.3 points in the Western Conference Finals last year and has gotten back to those levels after a tough start to the series.

Denver will rightfully throw the kitchen sink at stopping LeBron James and Anthony Davis and that means L.A.'s role players should have more open looks.

Reaves has scored 20-plus points in back-to-back games and averaged 16 field-goal attempts in those contests. That type of volume is what I love to see.

He should do most of his damage in the midrange. The Nuggets are allowing opponents to shoot 50.4% from that area of the court this postseason. That's the worst of any team in the playoffs, per Cleaning the Glass.

Key stat: Reaves has taken 39% of his shots from the midrange this postseason, which ranks in the 92nd percentile of all players.

Quick picks

Jaquez over 14.5 points (-104): Jaquez has fallen under this total in back-to-back games but he's been within a basket of clearing it both times.

Prior to that, the rookie swingman out of UCLA had scored 15-plus points in five straight.

Jaquez is averaging the second-most shots per game (14.0) on the Miami Heat this postseason and plays relentless defence — it's hard to imagine Erik Spoelstra cutting down his minutes in a must-win game.

He's a great off-the-ball player and that's important against a Boston Celtics team that will focus most of its defensive efforts on slowing down Tyler Herro and Bam Adebayo.

Holmgren over 15.5 points (-117): Holmgren had an absolute stinker in Game 3. He scored just six points on 2-of-8 shooting in a blowout victory.

But I expect the centre to have a better showing tonight. He scored 15 points in the series opener and followed that up with 26 in Game 2.

Holmgren also cleared this line in all three regular-season games versus the New Orleans Pelicans.

New Orleans allowed opponents to shoot 68.1% at the rim during the regular season (fourth-worst in the NBA). The team has been better in the playoffs but that's an area that Holmgren should expose tonight.

Holmgren's 5.0 postseason paint touches per game are the most of anyone on the Oklahoma City Thunder.

Picks made at 10:47 a.m. on 04/29/2024.