NBA

3 NBA Player Prop Bets to Target on Monday 2/22/21

Player props can be useful in a variety of ways, from taking advantage of them straight up (to the tune of cold hard cash) to measuring a player's potential to produce in daily fantasy basketball. Here we'll focus on utilizing our projections and a slew of other tools to help make money betting player props.

For this article, we are using the odds provided at Online Sportsbook to pinpoint spots where value can be had tonight.

Please note that betting lines and our player projections may change throughout the day after this article is published.

Mikal Bridges Over 4.5 Rebounds (-110)

Mikal Bridges' rebounding prop is rating out a smidgeon too low, per our model. We are projecting him for 5.4 boards, nearly a full rebound over his posted over/under.

Bridges and the Phoenix Suns draw the Portland Trail Blazers, who are just 19th in rebounding rate this season. Bridges himself averages 0.16 rebounds per minute, and we project him for 32.0 minutes. That totals 5.1 rebounds before tweaking it for the Blazers' slightly subpar rebounding rate.

Bridges has pulled in 6, 1, 6, and 5 rebounds over his past four games and has had at least 5 boards in 17 of 29 games (58.6%). Four of the times he fell shy of that number came when he failed to play 30 minutes. There's a lot of reasons to like the over on this number if he plays his projected minutes.

Marc Gasol Over 4.5 Rebounds (-110)

Here's another over 4.5 boards option. The Los Angeles Lakers face the Washington Wizards, who rank 23rd in rebounding rate. The Lakers are sixth.

Marc Gasol's rebounding rate ticks up a tad with Anthony Davis off the floor (10.2% to 10.8%). At his per-minute rebounding rate without AD (0.22), over the 24.5 minutes we project for him, Gasol should haul in 5.4 rebounds before adjusting for the Wizards' worse-than-average rebounding numbers.

The Lakers hold opponents to just a 44.9% field goal rate, 5th-best in the NBA, and that should lead to extra rebounding opportunities against a team that makes only 45.5% of their shots (12th-lowest).

Damian Lillard Under 8.5 Assists (-114)

Our model is pretty clearly on the under on this prop for Damian Lillard, as it projects him for just 7.2 assists against the Suns.

Though that seems low because he has averaged 7.9 assists per game on the season, the Suns allow just 7.6 assists per game to point guards, third-lowest in the NBA.

And it's not just point guards: the Suns allow only 22.6 assists per 100 possessions, also the third-lowest rate in the NBA.

Even if we use his elevated assist-per-minute-rate of 0.23 without C.J. McCollum and Jusuf Nurkic on the floor at his high projected minutes rate of 36.4, he's clocking in at 8.4 assists (it's 8.36 if we don't round).

Yeah, that's close to the posted prop -- but that's before factoring in the nearly eight-percent decrease in assist rate allowed by the Suns' defense. It makes sense that our model is low on Lillard's assist numbers for tonight.