NBA

3 NBA Player Prop Bets to Target on Wednesday 5/12/21

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 NBA Finals odds 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.

Evan Fournier Over 17.5 Points (-118)

The Boston Celtics draw the lowly Cleveland Cavaliers' defense tonight, which is good news for Evan Fournier's points prop.

Our algorithm is projecting him for 21.7 points, so yeah, there's a lot of room to work with here.

Cleveland ranks dead last in defensive rating over the past 15 games, allowing 119.4 points per 100 possessions.

In six games with the Celtics against bottom-10 defenses, Fournier has averaged 17.3 points per game but scored at least 18 points in four of them. He had a two-point game in there to ruin the data.

On a per-minute basis, Fournier averages 0.56 points in that sample, and we project him for 34.4 minutes tonight. That rate would get him to 19.3 points.

Using numberFire's projection for him and his variance as a Celtic, Fournier should be around 67.1% likely to go over 17.5 points.

Lonnie Walker Over 2.5 Three-Pointers Made (+162)

Hey, let's get weird.

I mean, process-wise, this makes sense. It's just that it's not common to get a prop with +162 odds that seems reasonable.

Lonnie Walker is projected for 32.9 minutes for the San Antonio Spurs against the Brooklyn Nets, who have allowed the second-most three-point attempts over the past 15 games, around 112% of the NBA average.

Walker averages 0.18 three-point attempts per minute this year and is shooting 36.3% from deep. The rates work out -- over his projected minutes -- to get him to 6.6 attempts and 2.4 makes.

Sure, that's shy of the 3.0 we need, but the +162 odds help adjust for that. Based on his typical variance, he's a true coin flip to get to 3.0 makes, meaning we're getting some legitimate value on his over prop given the juice.

Jordan Clarkson Over 4.5 Rebounds (-104)

Jordan Clarkson is projected for 4.9 boards over 32.2 minutes against the Portland Trail Blazers, who are 10th in rebounding rate over the past 15 games but certainly not an outlier.

On a per-game basis, they rank 18th in that span.

Clarkson's rebounding rate of 0.15 per minute increases to 0.17 per minute against middle-third rebounding teams. That difference looks small, but it's the difference between 4.8 and 5.5 boards over his 32.2 projected minutes.

Using Clarkson's baseline projection and his typical range of outcomes in the rebounding department, he's 58.2% likely to get to 5.0 rebounds.