Jayson Tatum Predicted to Outscore Bradley Beal
By Peter Dewey
After making the Eastern Conference Finals last season, the Boston Celtics find themselves in a precarious position this postseason when they take on the Washington Wizards in the league’s play-in tournament.
Boston lost second-leading scorer Jaylen Brown for the season due to a wrist injury, and it is in danger of getting upset by the Wizards and having to play a win-or-go-home game for the No. 8 seed in the Eastern Conference.
It’s been a major tumble down the NBA’s hierarchy for Boston, and even though WynnBET has Boston as a two-point favorite (-110) on Tuesday, it’s going to take a heroic performance from Jayson Tatum to get it done.
WynnBET has set Tatum’s player prop points total at 32.5 for tonight’s game, with the over (-110) being the slightest underdog to the under (-112). Vegas is looking at Tatum to pick up the slack in Brown’s absence, and he’s actually projected to score more points than Wizards star Bradley Beal, who has a 31.5 point projection on WynnBET with the under (-120) being favored to the over (+100).
Beal averaged the second-most points per game in the NBA this season, but he did miss three of Washington’s final four games due to a hamstring injury. He returned for the final game of the season and dropped 25 points on just 8-of-27 shooting in Washington’s win over the Hornets.
The volume is always going to be there for Beal, but if he’s at less than 100 percent it’s possible that his shooting woes will continue in Tuesday’s play-in game. Tatum sat out Boston’s final regular season game on Sunday, and he has scored over 32 points in four of his last contests.
Tatum is averaging 25.5 points and 20.2 shots per game since Brown went down, but those numbers still pale in comparison to the 31.3 points per game Beal averaged this season.
If Boston wants any chance of hanging onto the No. 7 seed, Tatum is going to have to step up, but I just don’t see him being a lock to score over 32 points in this one. Washington’s defense (although they don’t play much) is certainly going to key in on Tatum and dare the Boston role players to beat them.
Washington won 15 of its final 20 games this season, and if Beal is truly good to go, I like the +100 odds on his over more than I like Tatum to score at least 33 points on Tuesday.