It’s time to continue our WNBA best bets today series by focusing on Ariel Atkins and Brittney Sykes props among other solid plays.
In turn, I’m back with another slates worth of WNBA Best Bets! Yesterday, we went 3-1 on our one game slate, improving my overall record to 8-3 on the season thus far. Today, we’ve got a couple of fun ones, with the Connecticut Sun kicking things off for us continuing their early season homestand, hosting the Washington Mystics.
The Sun look to build on their blowout win over the Fever to continue establishing confidence here in the early season. Connecticut looked great in their opener, with Alyssa Thomas notching a triple double while DeWanna Bonner dropped a 20-piece.
WNBA Best Bets Today
The Mystics played an extremely close game against the Liberty in their home opener, nearly repeating their opening day upset from last season only to fall 5 points short of New York. Ariel Atkins notched 20 for Washington, while Brittney Sykes had a stat-sheet stuffing 14 points, 10 rebounds, and 7 assists.
When I wrote about the Mystics before the season opener, I spoke a bit about how depleted their roster is with Natasha Cloud now in Phoenix and two-time MVP Elena Delle Donne taking the season away from basketball. I highlighted Sykes as a player who’s going to shoulder a huge offensive load in that piece, but she fell just one bucket short of our over on points at 15.5. Sykes looked like she was getting more comfortable scoring as the game went on, and as such,
I’m going back to the well on Sykes over 15.5 points, laddering up to 20+ points. I’m also going to be looking at Sykes’ points and rebounds prop, currently at 20.5 at FanDuel, to incorporate her rebounding into this play a bit too.
Brittney Sykes Best Player Prop: Brittney Sykes over 15.5 points and over 20.5 points + rebounds
Ariel Atkins is the other player the Mystics are looking to this season to carry them, evidenced by her 20 point outing in her season opener. Unfortunately, her scoring props have moved a bit out of the range of value, having moved all the way from 13.5 to 16.5 within just an hour of lines opening for this game. Rather than chasing smoke on Atkins’ scoring props, I recommend pivoting to her rebounding and assist props.
Atkins’ rebounds and assists lines are both set at 2.5, both too low considering the usage load that Atkins is shouldering this season. Atkins averaged 4.9 rebounds per 40 minutes last season (h/t Calvin Wetzel at Her Hoop Stats), having only averaged 25.1 minutes per game last season.
She played 35 minutes in the season opener, grabbing just 2 boards, but this seems like a fluke, a result of the way the ball bounced. With her minutes load and likelihood to regress toward those advanced rebounding metrics, we should see a bit more action on the backboard for Ariel Atkins.
Atkins averages just 2.3 assists per game on her career, but with no true point guard in the Mystics’ opening line-up, more playmaking responsibility should fall to her, playing ‘point by committee’ alongside Sykes. Atkins averaged 3.62 more assists per 100 possessions when not sharing the floor with Natasha Cloud last season (per pbpstats.com). I think the best way to attack these angles is together, hitting Atkins over 5.5 rebounds + assists at FanDuel. For a bit of extra action, sprinkle a same game parlay with Atkins 4+ assists and 4+ rebounds.
Ariel Atkins Best Player Prop: Ariel Atkins over 5.5 rebounds + assists
Our second match-up of the evening sees an Opening Day rematch, with Seattle Storm travelling to Minnesota to try to give the Lynx, who upset them on their home floor in the season opener, a taste of their own medicine. The Lynx beat the Storm by double digits as double-digit-dogs themselves, the scale of this upset largely due to poor shooting outings from the Storm’s superstar backcourt of Jewell Loyd and new arrival Skylar Diggins-Smith.
Loyd and Diggins-Smith combined for just 20 points on 7-32 shooting. Clearly, the two stud guards are learning to play with each other again, teammates for the first time since their college days as Notre Dame. I’m eyeing them both to bounce-back given this chance to get some revenge on Minnesota. In particular, though, I’m backing Skylar Diggins-Smith for a big offensive outing, with the lines-makers having moved her a bit too far down due to her rusty first game back after missing the 2023 season.
When we last saw Sky at full strength in 2022, she was a dark horse MVP candidate averaging 19.7 points per game and 5.5 assists per game, an absolute one-woman offensive system for Phoenix. FanDuel is hanging her points + assists number at 21.5, and that’s just way too low to me given the ceiling of offensive production Diggins-Smith holds. I’m taking the over on the combo prop, and will likely sprinkle some scoring alts for SDS as well.
Skylar Diggins-Smith Best Player Prop: Skylar Diggins-Smith over 21.5 points + assists
