Sharp NBA Playoff Picks for Tuesday: 3 NBA Predictions for Today, Including Hawks vs. Heat

The NBA playoffs are here and with that comes plenty of opportunities to make some cash from the sportsbooks.

Tuesday’s slate of play-in games features two great matchups to get us started and we’ve got three bets to start off the playoff betting hot.

Hawks vs. Heat Pick: Trae Young Under 24.5 Points | -110 at BetMGM

7:30 p.m. ET

The Miami Heat definitely coasted at times in the regular season and played some unserious basketball.

In the postseason, however, this team is a different animal. Last year, they took the Boston Celtics to game seven on the back of a few masterful performances from Jimmy Butler.

Trae Young is obviously the primary threat to the Heat in this play-in game, but he’s one coach Erik Spoelstra’s team has had plenty of success against. Young has struggled heavily against the Heat’s prolific defense for quite some time.

In his last nine games against the Heat, Young is shooting 43 or 128 from the field (33.6%) and 12 of 62 from three (19.4%). He’s the type of player that gets frustrated and starts taking contested shots, which isn’t a recipe for success.

Right now, you can find this at -110 odds at BetMGM, which is pretty solid given other books are pricing this around -120. This will be a nice start to our playoff bets.

Saddiq Bey Over 9.5 Points | -119 at PrizePicks

This was an awesome find from the new OddsJam Fantasy Screen. For those who don’t know, the Fantasy Screen allows you to find mathematically profitable bets for all of the primary DFS books.

We found this bet at an implied 55% odds to hit had great value on PrizePicks.

For those that don’t know, the odds per entry on five- or six-leg PrizePick is -119. With that in mind, you should be creating multiple five- and six-leg slips per day that are Positive EV bets like this one.

This play is great because if you wanted to play this bet at Caesars, you’d be paying -142 and FanDuel is even higher at -150. That’s clearly insane value that PrizePicks is giving us, so we are going to capitalize on it.

Timberwolves vs. Lakers Pick: Anthony Davis Over 25.5 Points | -111 at Caesars

10 p.m. ET

While I expect the Lakers to cover the spread in this game, we’re going to be doing the smarter option by taking a play with +EV that involves the Lakers putting up points.

Our player for doing so is Anthony Davis, who had a dominant stretch carrying the team while LeBron James was recovering from his foot injury. In Davis’ last two meetings with the Timberwolves, which were both last month, he had 38 points in each contest.

Pair Davis’ dominance with the Timberwolves missing Rudy Goebert, Naz Reid and Jaden McDaniels and there is a recipe for success in the paint for the Lakers.

While LeBron James’ presence takes away numerous scoring opportunities, the path to victory for the Lakers is through Davis.

Look at the value we are getting on this play at Caesars. It’s a play I love and we are being gifted great odds, which means I am one step closer to my next free stay at Caesars Palace.

With this being priced as high as -152 on FanDuel, we have a huge edge with this one.