The Eastern Conference Finals tip off Tuesday night between the Boston Celtics and Miami Heat (8:30 p.m. ET, ESPN), and Munaf Manji of The Action Network has two player prop bets for Game 1 (video above).
For his first prop, he’s looking to Celtics and swingman Jayson Tatum. As for the bet, Manji is backing Tatum under 27.5 points on BetMGM.
Manji expects this series to be quite defensive in nature and believes Tatum will continue to struggle against Miami.
In three games against the Celtics during the regular season, Tatum averaged only 17.7 points per game on 42.2 percent shooting from the floor. Additionally, Tatum was worse from beyond the arc in those games, from where he shot only 29.4 percent across the three contests.
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Further, Tatum has featured against the Heat 15 times in his career. In those games, he has notched 28 or more points only twice and has failed to reach 20 points in more than half of those games.
As for the Heat side of things, Manji is choosing to back guard Jimmy Butler over 1.5 steals.
Butler has proven quite sufficient on the defensive end this postseason and has a stellar track record of going over this benchmark.
“Jimmy Butler has recorded at least two steals in nine of 11 playoff games,” Manji says.
Given Butler will likely matchup against either Tatum or fellow Celtics guard Jaylen Brown, both of whom have struggled with turnovers this postseason, Manji expects another strong defensive performance from Butler as he clears this prop line once again.