Best WNBA Player Props for 9-10: Best Bets for Breanna Stewart, Marina Mabrey & Napheesa Collier

Prop bet #1: Breanna Stewart Under 20.5 points 

+105 at BetRivers

There will be little-to-no reason for Breanna Stewart to play a full game tonight, and even when she is playing, she should not be the New York Liberty’s offensive focus.

First of all, New York has a three-game lead in the standings with five games to play. The Liberty will be the No. 1 seed. Secondly, the Dallas Wings have incentive to lose a few more games.

As things stand today, the Wings are one game behind the Mystics for the second-best lottery odds. Catching Washington would mean a 9.8% bump in Dallas’s chances at Paige Bueckers.

That logic expects a blowout tonight. At that point, Stewart should find the bench sooner than usual.

While she is in the game, Stewart should defer to Sabrina Ionescu. The pure shooter went 1-for-9 in Saturday’s loss to the shorthanded Aces.

Frankly, Ionescu has struggled with her shot since coming back from the Olympics. That is hard to say about someone who has hit three 3-pointers in six of eight games, but Ionescu has done so on 22.8% shooting from beyond the arc.

New York should take tonight’s rout as a chance to get Ionescu back in a groove. Sacrificing some Stewart looks for that cause would serve a longer-term goal.

Prop bet #2: Marina Mabrey Over 11.5 points

-102 at FanDuel

The Connecticut Sun made a choice when they traded for Marina Mabrey. They saw a chance to go for something greater this season, and they shoved their chips to the middle of the table.

Mabrey has responded, scoring 13.8 points per game in her 11 games since the trade. Remove two outliers of five and two points, and Mabrey has averaged 16.1 points in her nine other games.

Meanwhile, the Sun have gone just 7-4 outright in that 11-game span, a fall from their .750 winning percentage before the trade.

Perhaps the problem with the trade all along was that Mabrey knows only one path forward: shoot. After her first two seasons, she has averaged at least 12.2 field-goal attempts in each of her four seasons since. That isn’t about to change. This is who she is. Connecticut should have known as much when it made this trade.

The Los Angeles Sparks give up plenty of scoring with the No. 11 defensive rating in the last two months, effectively one month of play when accounting for the Olympics break. Mabrey may have notched only 10 points in Sunday’s tilt, but she will not change her approach tonight. She’ll shoot.

Prop bet #3: Napheesa Collier Under 20.5 points

-110 at DraftKings

Napheesa Collier came back from the Olympics break with a sudden scoring outburst, pouring in 23 or more in four of her first five games back, averaging 25.6 points per game in those first two weeks back. This was intentional and literally asked for by the Minnesota Lynx coaching staff.

Collier has since cooled off, cracking 20 points in just one of five games, shooting a woeful 39.5% from the field in the last two weeks. Minnesota has still gone 4-1 in that stretch, underscoring how much Collier impacts all facets of the game.

The wins are the most important piece for the Lynx. Even if Las Vegas Aces’ superstar A’ja Wilson were to miss the rest of the regular season, she would win MVP. Collier cannot score enough to change that. Meanwhile, Minnesota is just one game up on the Sun for the No. 2 seed. Holding onto that positioning is paramount. Collier’s best impact in that pursuit will be her widespread influence, far more than the scoreboard.

In her five games of relative scoring struggles, Collier has averaged nine rebounds and 2.8 assists per game. By no means is she actually struggling. Her scoring has simply slowed, and that creates some value as the regular season ends.