Today’s NBA Player Prop Picks: JJJ is Too Hot To Handle

The Western Conference hogs the NBA Playoffs betting spotlight tonight with three series on that side of the bracket in action.

We dig into the early series results, player news, and coaching adjustments and measure those against the NBA player prop odds to give our best free prop picks for Thursday, April 21.

NBA player props for April 21

• Jokic Under 7.5 asts (-115)
• Jackson Jr. Over 6.5 rebs (+105)
• O'Neal Over 1.5 made 3s (+125)

Picks made on 4/21/2022 at 11:30 a.m. ET.
The odds widgets below represent the best odds currently available for each betting market at regulated sportsbooks.
Click on each pick to jump to the full analysis.

Today’s best NBA player props

Joker’s Wild

Nikola Jokic is having a tough go in the NBA Playoffs, with the Denver Nuggets down 0-2 to the Golden State Warriors and the reigning MVP getting booted from Game 2 after letting his frustrations with the officials boil over.

The Warriors have done a great job checking the Nuggets’ pass-happy playbook and have limited Jokic to 21 of 45 shooting from the field in the series for a collective 51 points.

Despite those struggles, Denver head coach Michael Malone is preaching aggression from his paint players and could keep the offense simple in Game 3, establishing Jokic’s presence in the post against a smaller Warriors frontcourt.

“I think it starts with an aggression level,” Malone told The Denver Post. “Be aggressive. I mean, we got guys catching the ball in the paint, not even looking at the rim, kicking it out to the perimeter. … The most aggressive team is going to win and they have been the most aggressive team. They have been the more physical team so until that changes, we have no chance in hell of winning a game in the series.”

Golden State has taken away the Nuggets’ playmaking by shutting down the passing lanes and forcing turnovers (Denver has only 48 assists to 26 turnovers). Jokic — who averages almost eight assists per game — has posted assist totals of four and six in the first two games of the series.

In fact, the slick Serbian has stayed below his season average for assists in five straight games going back to the regular season and in eight of his last 12 efforts.

With the Joker getting the green light to be greedy and Malone wanting to jump on the back of his big man, we like Jokic to hog the ball and stay below his assist total in Game 3.

Pick: Nikola Jokic Under 7.5 assists (-115)

Action Jackson

Foul trouble and lineup shuffles have the Memphis Grizzlies frontcourt in a state of flux through two games against the Minnesota Timberwolves. 

Head coach Taylor Jenkins has benched big man Steven Adams in place of a more mobile rotation that counters the Timberwolves’ pace and versatility. Those shake-ups slide Jaren Jackson Jr. into the primary center position, anchoring the Grizzlies' interior attack on offense and pegging him as the team’s primary rebounder on both ends. 

Jackson’s offensive contributions have been spotty, shooting just 9-for-25 from the floor in the series, but he did finish Game 2 with 16 points and grabbed seven rebounds — five of which came on the offensive end — in less than 27 minutes of floor time. 

This is an up-tempo matchup and the series pace will find a new gear with Minnesota playing a postseason game at home for the first time since 2018. These teams rank No. 1 and No. 5 in field goal attempts per game which means plenty of shots as well as plenty of rebounding opportunities.

Minnesota is not great at cleaning the glass, boasting a limp rebound rate of just 48.9% (24th) while Memphis owns top marks in that metric (52.7%). Adams was hauling down 10 boards a contest for the Grizz, but he’s not part of the puzzle right now. That means someone — a 6-foot-11 someone — picks up that slack on the glass.

If Jackson Jr. can keep his foul count down and stay on the floor for 30 minutes, we like his chances of snagging seven or more boards again in Game 3.

Pick: Jaren Jackson Jr. Over 6.5 rebounds (+105)

Royce is the Choice

The Utah Jazz hope home court can inject some giddy-up into their offense after two stagnant scoring efforts versus the Dallas Mavericks. 

Utah, which has one of the better scoring attacks in the NBA, has mustered just 99 and 104 points while splitting the first two games in Dallas after finishing seventh in the league with 113.6 average points per game. The biggest downtick has come from beyond the arc, where the Jazz are a collective 18-for-51 from distance (35%) in the playoffs. 

Utah finished second in the NBA in 3-point makes per game at 14.5 and shot 40.3% from long range on the year (also second best). The Mavericks are being overly aggressive on the perimeter, not giving the shooters much space, but Utah has also been dragging its toes with the basketball. 

The Jazz aren’t the most up-tempo team in the NBA but their playoff pace rating of just 89.75 is a sharp drop from their season-long rate of 97.50. Head coach Quin Snyder wants to put some pep in his team’s step which should help his shooters find the space needed.

“A big emphasis for us at the beginning of this series was to run, and we haven’t run the way that we need to,” Snyder told The Salt Lake Tribune. “That’s important for us to be able to generate off-the-dribble threes, or kick-ahead threes, or skip-pass threes, or to be able to get into the paint."

While the Jazz’s usual suspects from beyond the arc have struggled, 6-foot-5 tweener Royce O’Neale finished Game 2 with 4 of 6 makes from downtown. He seems to have snapped a shooting skid that plagued him in the home stretch, in which he went from knocking down a 41% of 3-point shots to 34% in the final 28 games.

O’Neale averages 1.5 makes on four attempts from beyond the arc per game and his Over on 3-point makes for Game 3 is paying plus money, which sounds good to us as Utah revs the engines and tries to jump start its success from deep.

Pick: Royce O’Neale Over 1.5 3-pointers (+125) 

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