2023 NBA playoffs: Odds, picks, betting tips for Monday

ESPN's fantasy basketball and basketball betting tips cheat sheet is your pregame destination for basketball betting predictions and our best intel and data, featuring ESPN's proprietary Basketball Power Index (BPI) to help you make smart fantasy and wagering decisions. NBA game odds for Monday are provided by Caesars Sportsbook.

Playoff pressure is mounting. In the defining game of Monday's two-game slate, the Golden State Warriors seek to equalize their first-round series with a road win over the Sacramento Kings. The Brooklyn Nets, meanwhile, are sizable underdogs to the Philadelphia 76ers in a game with a sluggish total thanks to Philly's deliberate pace.

A Warriors victory would counter a season-long trend of struggling on the road, although Golden State remains positioned as a small favorite in a contest with a robust total around 240 points at most books. Can the Warriors suppress All-Star big Domantas Sabonis for a second straight game? My model projects him for just over 50 fantasy points using DraftKings' scoring model, while for the Warriors, Klay Thompson stands out as a value in DFS lineups.

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Joel Embiid is unsurprisingly projected for nearly 60 DraftKings points as an obvious building block in lineups, but another angle of interest is his passing prop of 3.5 assists. This number is in line with his season average, but the relentlessly hard double-teams sent at Embiid in Game 1 of this series compelled the scoring champ to make quick passes. Most of these dishes converted into assists on Saturday, but it's reasonable to expect a few more dimes given he threw nearly 40 passes on Saturday.

— Jim McCormick

Brooklyn Nets at Philadelphia 76ers Game 2,