NBA Player Prop Bets & Picks: 3 Best Plays for Saturday, Including C.J. McCollum and Victor Oladipo

Shooters gonna shoot, and it's Shooting Guards Night here at The Action Network. We're playing NBA props for three shooting guards, including two who were just traded at the NBA Trade Deadline and another who has finally returned from a long injury spell.

For those who are new to this article, we'll be using the Action Labs Player Prop tool to compare our NBA projections to the props posted at a variety of sportsbooks. Each bet is then graded on a scale from 1-10, with 10 being the best possible grade.

Below, I have laid out three prop bets that I'm playing, the case for each bet and the best books to find odds on those player props.

NBA Player Props & Picks

Victor Oladipo, Under 25.5 PTS + REB + AST (-120)

Victor Oladipo finally made his debut Thursday night for the Miami Heat. Oladipo started, but it was a very quiet debut. He played only 23 minutes and put up six points, three rebounds, and five assists. It was a sloppy night for him, with three turnovers and five fouls, and he also shot an ugly 2-of-8 from the field.

It's tough to draw much from one debut in limited minutes, but it's immediately apparent that Oladipo will not be reprising his ball hog role from 20 games in Houston. This will be a very different team setting for Dipo. He's the third option for the Heat at best, and some nights he may fall further down the food chain if Duncan Robinson, Tyler Herro, or others are hot.

Oladipo's minutes will rise as he acclimates to his new team, no doubt, but he's not going to be playing 40 minutes anytime soon again. Expect Miami to be very cautious ramping Oladipo up. The Heat have their eye on the long game here. They don't need Oladipo to play 40 minutes or jack 20 shots up. They went out and got him to play tough defense, work hard, and fit a role on this team, just like everyone else. This is the smallest role Oladipo will have on an NBA team since his breakout Most Improved Player campaign.

We project Oladipo at 28.6 minutes, continuing to ramp up but nowhere near his Houston load, and we've got him at 14.3 points, 3.8 rebounds, and 3.2 assists. Miami is a much more balanced scoring team, so I expect Oladipo's PPG to be down from his usual output. I'm less concerned that Oladipo made only two shots in his debut and more concerned that he only took eight.

This is an overall Oladipo fade until we see him produce big numbers in Miami. At our projections, he'll get to just 21.3 PRA, giving us some real clearance here. I'll play the under to -140.

CJ McCollum, Over 3.5 3-pointers (+112)

CJ McCollum was off to by far the best start in his career before he got hurt and missed two months. McCollum was putting up career numbers through the first 12 games of the season. He was scoring 27.6 points per game on a ridiculous 4.9 made threes on 11.3 attempts, knocking down over 43% of his treys, and he also added 4.3 rebounds and 5.3 assists per outing.

When McCollum finally made his return after those two months on the sidelines, it was a slow ramp up. He played under 28 minutes in each of his first four games back and struggled to find his shooting stroke, and it was fair to wonder if that opening season hot stretch was just that — hot shooting that had cooled off and disappeared.

The last six Blazers games have answered that question with a resounding no. McCollum hasn't gone anywhere, and neither has his huge shooting volume. Over these past six games, McCollum is back to 37.2 minutes per game, clearly at full strength now. And during that stretch, he's scoring 23.0 PPG and back to taking 10.0 threes per game, a massive volume, making 3.3 of them per night and adding 6.2 rebounds.

This is absolutely massive 3-point attempt volume for McCollum. He's now averaging 10.9 3-point attempts in his 18 full-strength games and making 4.4 per game. He's over 3.5 threes in 13 of those 18 games, hitting this over 72% of the time, and that includes three of these last six games, even with his blistering 3-point percentage down a bit from that hot start.

Count on the volume to give us a great shot here. McCollum has attempted at least seven 3-pointers in every single one of these 18 games, and he's had double-digit attempts in two-thirds of them. When you're shooting that often, you've always got a good shot at hitting at least four.

I'm all over this at any even number and would play to -110 if necessary.

Svi Mykhailiuk, Over 12.5 PTS (-105)

We're going with two sharpshooters in the finale on tonight's slate, and Svi Mykhailiuk is our weapon of choice for the Thunder. Mykhailiuk came over to Oklahoma City at the Trade Deadline, and it looks like the Ukrainian has finally found a real home.

He's averaging double-digit points at 10.3 PPG over eight games with the Thunder, and that's in only 22.5 minutes per game. That minutes load is going up, though. Mykhailiuk has started the last three games and playing almost 29 minutes a game, and he's getting a lot of shots up too. Svi has taken double-digit field goal attempts in five of his last seven games.

Our Props Tool likes all of Mykhailiuk's overs tonight, but I'm not sold that the passing we've seen is real. He had 10 assists in five games off the bench but just one in three games as the starter. That happens sometimes to role players who taken on a smaller role as a starter and don't get as much time on the ball. I'm sticking with just the points here, because everybody knows why Svi is out there, and it's to shoot the rock.

Mykhailiuk is scoring a point every 2.2 minutes with Oklahoma City. We only need 27.2 minutes at that rate to hit our over, and Svi has played at least that many in all of his OKC starts. Add in Portland's wretched defense and I like our chances at some points.

We project Mykhailiuk at 15.2 points, and I'll play this over to -125.