While the Bulls have been stuck in mediocrity for the past couple of years, they have finally made some strides to begin the rebuild. One player who has been constantly mentioned in trade talks is Zach Lavine, who isn’t just playing for this team but rather auditioning for a contender who might want some additional firepower as the season progresses. Lavine has looked fantastic since returning, averaging 21.6 points in 34 minutes per game. He has covered this number in 8 of 12 games with 30+ minutes, and we’re expecting another heavy workload.

The Bucks rank 23rd defending above the break shots, where Lavine scores 39% of his points. While the Bucks have strong defensive players on the roster, the strength comes in the paint with Brook Lopez and Giannis defending down low. From there it’s pretty much common sense, with the drop defenders crashing to protect the paint and allowing shooters to pick them apart from downtown. This isn’t a new problem, we’ve attacked the Bucks with 3-point shooters for years, and Zach Lavine should be able to take advantage.

We successfully backed Bennedict Mathurin last week and we are going right back to the well, even in a bit of a tougher matchup against the Rockets. The good news is that bad matchups are no problem for Mathurin, considering he cashed this number for us against the brutal Magic defence and has played Miami twice along with the Knicks and Hornets this month.

Houston is strong specifically at limiting 3-point attempts, but Mathurin’s versatile scoring won’t be as affected as some of his more one-dimensional team-mates. Even a star player like Haliburton, who has scored 50% of his points from beyond the arc, will see a much tougher matchup. Despite scoring 21.7 points per game this month, Mathurin doesn’t rely on the 3-ball only averaging 4 attempts from deep.

It was a pretty tough choice between Bennedict Mathurin overs or Tyrese Haliburton unders in the scoring department. At the end of the day, with so many injuries leading to increased minutes, the Mathurin call is safest. He has 20+ points in 5 of his last 6 and looks super confident taking advantage of all the injuries.

Despite always finding himself in some sort of social media beef, Draymond Green has still been surprisingly one of the most consistent guys we’ve bet on over the last couple of years. Even in his age-34 season, with a new-look Warriors roster, the point forward is still going strong.

We think a big part of that is always going to be his chemistry with Steph Curry because it doesn’t hurt to play with arguably the best assist target of all time. The playmaking has been especially strong recently with Curry heating up, tossing out 7, 7, 6, 11, and 6 assists over this number in five straight games. He’s averaging 6.1 assists this month on 12.2 potentials, playing an increased role at 30 minutes per game.

We love a good old-fashioned shootout game, and with Trae Young and Stephen Curry going back and forth we could get a great offensive showing. The Hawks present a fantastic matchup on paper, allowing the fifth-most assists this season while playing at the second-fastest pace which will help lead to easy assists in transition.

Earlier in the article we talked a bit about the tough Magic defense, and we’re looking at plenty of tempting unders on both sides of this Clippers matchup. If you take a look at the overall total, it’s currently sitting at 206.5, one of the lower numbers you’re going to see this season. Not only do both of these teams have fantastic individual defenders, but they both play at slow places, limiting possessions and making assists hard to come by.

While James Harden is someone we do love to back, this number is simply too high. Even just looking at the 206.5 total you should really have interest in assists props, especially when Harden nearly needs a double-double to cash this prop. The Magic are allowing the third-fewest 3-pointers and the fewest amount of points within 10 feet of the rim, where Harden would be getting a majority of his assists.

Additionally, they just lost Normal Powell, who has functioned as a great catch-and-shoot player, someone who has been scoring will definitely be missed. We see them having to rely even more on defensive guys like Batum and Dunn, which could mean Harden will take on much more of the scoring load himself.