The championship is officially within reach for the New York Knicks. The Knicks engineered an incredible 29-point second-half comeback to stun the Spurs in Game 4 on Wednesday, and now the NBA Finals shift back to Texas for Game 5 tonight.
New York holds a commanding 3-1 series advantage, standing just one victory away from hoisting the Larry O'Brien Trophy. Meanwhile, a desperate San Antonio squad will look to rectify the late offensive collapses that cost them previous games, aiming to protect their home floor and extend the series.
Continue below for our NBA Finals Game 5 best bets for Knicks vs. Spurs on Saturday, June 13.
NBA Finals Game 5 Best Bets
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Specific betting recommendations come from the sportsbook offering preferred odds as of writing. Always shop for the best price using our NBA Odds page, which automatically surfaces the best lines for every game. | ||
Knicks vs. Spurs Alternate Spread Pick
By Joe Dellera
This is a bet based on how the Knicks closed out their last three series in these playoffs.
Look at what they did to the Hawks, the Cavaliers, and Philadelphia in their closeout games—they completely crushed those teams. When the door is cracked, the Knicks haven't just been winning; these games have been absolute bloodbaths.
The physical toll of this series is finally catching up to San Antonio. The one undeniable gift that Thibs left behind for this Knicks' roster was supreme conditioning. Conversely, look at the last 12 minutes of Game 4; Victor Wembanyama looked exhausted.
The Knicks broke down the Spurs' defensive shell by putting Wemby into constant perimeter screening actions, dragging him completely out of the paint. Unless San Antonio designs a new coverage to hide him, they are cooked.
New York has five floor-spacers on the perimeter at all times, forcing Wembanyama to expend all of his remaining energy guarding out on an island.
Jalen Brunson discovered his supreme efficiency in the second half of Game 4, and OG Anunoby has been unbelievable all series.
The emotional floor is falling out for a fatigued Spurs team. Ride the trend and back the Knicks to smash the doors open.
Pick: Knicks -9.5 (+500)
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Knicks vs. Spurs Player Prop Bet
I haven’t touched this line all series, but it has quietly been printing money. You can grab Josh Hart Over 13.5 Rebounds & Assists at plus-money.
If you prefer a safer structural baseline, backing his floor of 8+ rebounds and 5+ assists sits at a comfortable +145, while a classic Hart double-double fetches an elegant +323 at DraftKings.
Hart's floor has been remarkably steady in the Finals. Outside of an early foul-trouble anomaly, he has consistently logged heavy volume.
The passing equity is where the real margin lies: whenever San Antonio tries to blitz Brunson at the top of the key, Hart acts as the short-roll escape valve. He catches the ball high, remains decisive, drives into the chest of the rotating defense, and kicks out to open shooters over and over again.
- The Transition Spark: Hart is New York's primary weapon when pushing off defensive stops.
- Rotational Volume: With Mikal Bridges struggling to find his offensive flow over the last two games, Hart is absorbing a heavier share of playmaking opportunities.
There is a bit of a redemption narrative at play here too. Hart openly admitted that Anunoby's miraculous tip-in saved him from a lifetime of New York City ostracism after his own late-game blown layup.
Expect him to be locked in for Game 5 today to help settle that score.
Pick: Josh Hart Over 13.5 Rebounds & Assists (+100)
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Knicks vs. Spurs Player Prop Bet
This is simple betting strategy: go back to the exact same play we have backed all series long: Dylan Harper Over 20.5 Points & Rebounds (-120 at Hard Rock).
Harper continues to be the Spurs' second-most reliable player in the Finals, generating positive contributions every time he touches the hardwood.
What makes his numbers so impressive is that he is putting up elite lines despite being anchored to the Spurs' messy bench units.
Contrast that with De'Aaron Fox, who gets all of his minutes tethered to Wembanyama and has still completely tanked their offense—logging an ugly 45% true shooting clip, a sub-100 offensive rating, and a negative BPM in the Finals.
If you isolate and remove the week where Harper was laboring through an ankle injury against the Thunder, Harper has flown over this line in 8 of his last 10 healthy games, missing twice by a single bucket.
His points & rebounds metrics in the Finals have been a steady drumbeat: 24, 21, 22, and 25 PR. He's capable of clearing this line with points alone.
Pick: Dylan Harper Over 20.5 Points & Rebounds (-115)
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Knicks vs. Spurs Player Prop Bet
By Joe Dellera
I am fading the literal biggest player in the series and taking Victor Wembanyama Under 15.5 Rebounds & Assists. This line is simply an overreaction to his raw floor time.
Across seven total head-to-head meetings against New York over the entirety of this season, Wembanyama has failed to clear this 15.5 combo line all seven times.
The passing volume simply isn't there. Outside of a distinct Game 3 anomaly where he logged 6 assists on 11 potential chances, his playmaking generation has been few and far between:
- Game 1: 2 assists on 7 potentials
- Game 2: 2 assists on 4 potentials
- Game 4: 1 assist on 3 potentials
Wemby simply does not pass the ball often, and to be fair, that isn't what San Antonio asks him to do within their half-court architecture.
On the glass, New York's five-out offensive scheme has done an exceptional job dragging him completely away from the basket.
Wembanyama logged 44 grueling minutes in Game 4, and that physical exhaustion heavily saps a big man's secondary vertical burst on box-outs.
Furthermore, these two metrics are inherently negatively correlated for him; when he is operating high above the three-point arc to facilitate and find passing angles, he loses his position to dominate the offensive glass.
This number is too high.
Pick: Victor Wembanyama Under 15.5 Rebounds & Assists (-150)
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Knicks vs. Spurs Over/Under Pick
By Matt Moore
While this series has occasionally trended toward the over, Game 5 presents a perfect storm for a low-scoring, defensive grind.
The macro-historical trends point directly to a muddy environment: when a team has the opportunity to close out and win the title on the road in the NBA Finals, the Under is 9-5 since 2003. It is a small sample size, but nonetheless, an indicative marker of how tight closeout basketball behaves under maximum pressure.
On the court, the reality is that both of these rotations are completely running out of gas and hitting a wall of sheer physical exhaustion. Expect the game flow to heavily reflect that fatigue.
The Spurs have repeatedly gassed out and grown stagnant after their initial bursts of hot shooting, and they are highly unlikely to recapture the blistering, outlier perimeter rhythm they briefly discovered earlier in the series.
The Knicks' half-court offense has regularly ground to a halt. New York is expected to continue struggling to score while trapped in a stagnant Brunson isolation offense that burns large amounts of the shot clock.
Defensively, New York will look to lock things down even further by cleaning up their coverage schemes and loading up on interior tags to interrupt easy lobs to Wembanyama.
When you combine the Spurs' weariness with a slow-paced, isolation-heavy Knicks attack, the under is the ideal side of the total to be on.
Pick: Under 216.5 (-110)
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Knicks vs. Spurs Player Prop Bet
Why stop playing this now? We should not be getting a plus-money price tag on Josh Hart Over 8.5 Rebounds (+105 at FanDuel). Hart has done exactly what he was expected to do coming into the Finals.
Outside of his 18-minute Game 2 foul disaster, his rebounding log reads: 15, 9, and 8 boards. He is averaging 10.7 rebounds per game on roughly 16 chances whenever he isn't handcuffed by the whistles.
That means he is converting nearly two-thirds of his available rebounding opportunities, matching frontcourt anchors like Karl-Anthony Towns (10.7) and Wembanyama (10.5) on the glass.
The alternate lines are mispriced too; getting an extra 65 cents of profit for just one additional rebound to hit 10+ boards (+170) is worth taking a flyer on.
However, the ultimate escalator is taking a small nibble on Hart to finish as the Series Rebounds Leader at 25-1 (+2500) at DraftKings.
The current leaderboard charts Towns at 43, Wembanyama at 42, and Hart sitting right behind them at 38.
Because Hart has a proven 15-rebound ceiling in his bag, if San Antonio can claw out a victory tonight and extend the series, Hart might be in position to make that four-board deficit disappear before it is all said and done.
Pick: Josh Hart Over 8.5 Rebounds (+104)
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