Best WNBA Player Props Today: Gray Slays Vulnerable Sparks Defense

With two games left on Sunday's WNBA slate, Doug Farmer is bringing you three undervalued scoring props to target in Phoenix and Atlanta. Read more in our WNBA betting picks below.

Douglas Farmer - Betting Analyst at Covers
Douglas Farmer • Betting Analyst
Jun 16, 2024 • 12:32 ET • 4 min read
Allisha Gray Atlanta Drea WNBA
Photo By - USA TODAY Sports

The best way to spend a Sunday afternoon in June is, without question, betting on some WNBA odds. With two games in the mid-afternoon, our free WNBA picks see plenty of value to be found.

Let’s fire through a couple of ideas before the Storm vs. Mercury and the Sparks vs. Dream tip on Sunday, June 16.

WNBA player prop bets for June 16

Picks made on 6-16 at 11:30 a.m. ET.

Today's best WNBA player props bets

Prop bet #1: Jewell Loyd Over 19.5 points

Jewell Loyd has not been shooting well. She is just 3-for-21 from deep in her last three games, making exactly one 3-pointer in each. The Seattle Storm star has not hit more than two 3-pointers in a game in her last seven games, going 10-for-39 since May 28.

So it's understandable that sportsbooks are starting to knock down her points prop, but the reality is, they shouldn’t. Even as she's struggled, relatively speaking, Loyd has still averaged 20.9 points in this stretch. She has cleared this points prop in four of the seven games, with two of the exceptions coming by the hook.

DraftKings, in particular, has overreacted to Loyd’s recent scoring struggles. Both FanDuel and BetRivers posted this points prop at 20.5 with juice on the Over. By shopping around, value has been found in this exact instance.

Frankly, that is reason alone to bet this Over, but the thought is encouraged by realizing the sportsbooks have broadly underestimated Loyd based on her recent struggles from deep, despite her scoring regularly all along.

Jewell Loyd prop: Over 19.5 points (-130 at DraftKings)

Prop bet #2: Brittney Griner Over 18.5 points

The WNBA season has already had enough storylines that Brittney Griner’s return from a toe injury has gone under the radar. She initially had a minutes limit, but in her two games of full-go in the last week, Griner has scored 24 and 25 points on 21-for-33 (63.6%) combined shooting.

The Storm have one of the best defenses in the WNBA, No. 3 by defensive rating, but Griner is playing efficiently enough that knocking her points prop this low is a poor decision by the sportsbooks.

The Phoenix Mercury has leaned on Kahleah Copper to keep it afloat this season while without Griner. And Copper should get some credit, even if the Mercury were only 4-6 when Griner returned. That was solid enough that going 2-1 in her return has pushed Phoenix to No. 6 in the WNBA standings.

Leaning on Griner moving forward will be the obvious choice, including today against Seattle.

Brittney Griner prop: Over 18.5 points (-102 at FanDuel)

Prop bet #3: Allisha Gray Over 14.5 points

The Los Angeles Sparks give up good looks from deep, with opponents shooting 35.1% from deep, the fourth-highest opposing rate in the WNBA. That is very much part of why Los Angeles has opened the season 4-9.

No one on the Atlanta Dream is more equipped to exploit that defensive weakness than Allisha Gray. She is shooting 44.4% from deep this year, making 2.2 threes per game. Nearly half of her makes come from beyond the arc, a lack of overall volume shooting reducing Gray’s scoring output.

She has thus fallen short of this points prop in four of her last five games, averaging just 12 points per game of late, but three of those games were against Top-5 3-point shooting defenses. Four of them were against 3-point shooting defenses better than L.A.'s.

This should be an exact matchup for Gray to shine, creating value on this prop.

Allisha Gray prop: Over 14.5 points (-110 at DraftKings)

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Douglas Farmer
Betting Analyst

Douglas Farmer spends his days thinking about college football and his nights thinking about the NBA. His betting habits and coverage follow that same pattern. He covered Notre Dame football for various outlets from 2008 to 2024, most notably spending eight seasons as NBC Sports’ beat writer on the Irish. That was also when his gambling focus took off. Knowing there were veteran beat writers with three decades more experience than he had, Douglas found his niche by best recognizing Notre Dame’s standing in each year’s national landscape, a complex tapestry most easily understood and remembered via betting odds.

In 2021, that interest created a freelance opportunity with Covers, a role that eventually led to Douglas joining the company full-time in 2023. In the fall, Douglas will place five or six dozen bets each week, a disproportionate amount via BetRivers because the operator tends to have lines slightly different than the rest of the market. The same can be said of Circa Sports’ futures markets.

While Douglas is an avid NBA fan and covers the league throughout the year, the vast majority of his bets are on college football, because that is the biggest key to sports betting: Know what you do not know.

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