NBA picks, best bets for playoffs: Don't fade Pacers or Mavericks in Game 2, Reid stays hot for Wolves

Bucks and Clippers still lacking some star power for Tuesday

Now that the 2024 NBA postseason has begun, the basketball betting market is hotter than ever. CBS Sports will be providing daily picks for the duration of the postseason. Sam Quinn will make at least one pick for every game between now and the NBA Finals.

I'm looking at Minnesota's bench here with Kyle Anderson dealing with a hip injury. You could go in a number of different directions. Nickeil Alexander-Walker played very well and is versatile enough that you could talk yourself into almost any of his props. My favorite on the board, though, is Naz Reid's 3-pointers. He fired off six of them in Game 1, but more importantly, Minnesota won his minutes by 22 points. There was some fear coming into this matchup that Phoenix would force Minnesota to play a bit smaller, but the opposite was true in Game 1. The Timberwolves can play big because of the spacing their non-Rudy Gobert bigs provide, and with Kevin Durant largely guarding Karl-Anthony Towns, Reid is going to have a lot of opportunities for quick-trigger 3's against slower bigs that want to hang near the rim. The Pick: Reid Over 1.5 3's