What’s up Karma Nation. Welcome to the very first edition of my Monkey Knife Fight first look article. If you have not signed up for an account yet, make sure to click on the link and use promo code KARMA to get a nice deposit bonus. In this article, we will try to take advantage of early lines either the night before the slate or the early morning. These lines will move quickly so make sure to turn on DFSkarma Twitter notifications to make sure you don’t miss out on any of my articles.
Bradley Beal OVER 31.5 Points:
Bradley Beal has been one of the best scorers in the league this season and there seems like there is no slowing down in sight. He is averaging a league-high 33.1 points per game, 24.2 field goal attempts, and 8.4 free throw attempts. His scoring numbers do improve when Russell Westbrook is off the floor. Tomorrow he should be with Westbrook who mainly only sits out on the back end of back-to-backs. Even though last game he played because he got a revenge matchup against the Rockets. Beal is averaging 32.5 PPG, 23.6 FGAs per game, and 8.2 FTAs per game. So his numbers don’t really go down much with Russ playing.
He gets a pretty easy matchup against the Nuggets, who used to be known for the defense, which isn’t really the case anymore. The Nuggets allow 110.9 points per 100 possessions this season, ranking 16th worst in the league. They also rank 28th in pace, only playing 98 possessions a game. As we have seen from the Wizards’ previous games, even though they have a subpar record they still are able to control the pace, leading to plenty of high paced high-scoring games.
Nikola Jokic OVER 26.5 Points:
Nikola Jokic is trying to make his push as a lead MVP candidate this season. Jokic is seeing career highs in points, rebounds, and assists this season. He is averaging 26.5 points, on 18.2 field goal attempts and 5.4 free throws; all career highs. I have some concerns with Jokic coming off a back-to-back tomorrow but it is a quick flight and he hasn’t shown many struggles in back-to-backs. He has scored 29, 22, and 26 points this season on back-to-backs. The one game he scored 22 was a slow-paced blowout against the Knicks. I actually prefer this play because of the back-to-back so there is less risk of the Nuggets blowing out a bad Wizards team.
The Wizards have had issues defending the paint ever since they lost Thomas Bryant earlier in the season to an ACL tear. The Wizards are allowing 13.5 second chance points and 42.4 points in the paint since TB has been out. They are also in the bottom half for defensive rating and play at the highest pace in the league. They also give up the 7th most points to centers this season. Jokic should have no issues scoring on this bad Wizards defense.
