NBA

3 NBA Player Prop Bets to Target on Wednesday 6/2/21

Brandon Gdula  —  @gdula13 Jun 2nd, 2021
Will Ben Simmons be freed up to clean the glass without Joel Embiid? What does the data say about his rebounding prop?

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.

Ben Simmons Under 9.5 Rebounds (-115)

With Joel Embiid listed as doubtful for tonight's game, the rebounding prop for Ben Simmons is quite high. Our algorithm thinks it's too high and projects him for just 7.8 boards across 35.6 minutes (0.22 per minute).

Simmons' full-season rebounding rate -- including the playoffs -- is 0.24, but if we look at the large regular season sample of Simmons' rebounding with and without Embiid, the under still makes sense.

Simmons averaged 0.21 boards per minute while sharing the floor with Embiid in the regular season and 0.23 without him, via NBA.com. Using that 0.23 mark at his projected minutes rate, he would gather 8.2 boards.

We have seen Simmons go wild on the glass without Embiid in the playoffs, gathering 0.49 rebounds per minute over a tiny 31-minute sample. (For anyone wondering, that's a 17.4-rebound pace across his projected minutes.)

The small-sample data is likely inflating the over/under line here, and we should be liking the under.

Ja Morant Over 7.5 Assists (-106)

Ja Morant has put up 4, 7, 7, and 12 assists in his four games against the Utah Jazz in the playoffs, so only one of them would have resulted in the over here, but it was the most recent game -- for what that's worth.

Morant has been playing tons of minutes (35.9 or more in all four games of the series) and is projected to do so again: our model is anticipating 40.1 minutes from the point guard -- as well as 8.7 assists.

Using that 8.7 mark as his baseline and considering his seasonal variance in assists, Morant should be 69.4% likely to get to 8 helpers and hit the over on this prop.

Dillon Brooks Under 21.5 Points (-116)

Dillon Brooks has averaged 25.5 points over 33.6 minutes in four games against the Jazz this series, and thrice did he go over this point total (he's put up 31, 23, 27, and 21 points in his four games).

But he's done that by shooting 51.9% from the field, a full 10 percentage points higher than his regular season field goal percentage (41.9%).

That's led to a per-minute scoring rate of 0.76 in the playoffs, compared to 0.59 for the regular season.

Though the shot volume is up (19.8 field goal attempts per game in the playoffs versus 15.4 in the regular season), this is a pretty torrid efficiency streak for Brooks.

numberFire expects Brooks to put up 18.8 points in this game across 34.4 minutes. That projection with his seasonal variance should make the under 65.3% likely.