NBA Betting Guide for Thursday 6/10/21: The Totals Make for the Best Bets Tonight
Betting on the NBA can get a little overwhelming throughout the season because there are games every day, and there's just a lot to track throughout the season and entering every night -- spreads, over/unders, injuries, and so on.
But you can rely on numberFire to help. We have a detailed betting algorithm that projects out games to see how often certain betting lines hit, and our oddsFire section of the site allows you to track movement in those lines and see where the action is coming from on particular games.
Where do our algorithm, our power rankings, and the betting trends identify value in tonight's games? (All odds from NBA Finals odds.)
Brooklyn Nets (+134) at Milwaukee Bucks (-158)
Spread: Milwaukee Bucks -3.5
Total: 234.5
The Brooklyn Nets will again be without James Harden, but that hasn't mattered so far in the series. Harden has played under a minute in the series, and the Nets are still up 2-0 on the Bucks.
In the series, the Nets have posted a net rating of 23.6 over the Bucks while shooting 58.9% in terms of effective field goal percentage, a full 10 percentage points higher than the Bucks' mark.
Brooklyn has now played 20 games without Harden but with Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving and are 11-9 in the split with a 6.3-point point differential, which would generally imply a winning percentage of around 71.0%. That would put their 20-game record at closer to 14-6.
Milwaukee at home has been stellar lately, having won 10 straight games and covering the spread in 7 of those 10.
numberFire's model is expecting the Bucks to pick up the win 75.9% of the time, making their moneyline a four-star recommendation out of five. Milwaukee -3.5 is rating out as a three-star recommendation in its own right.
Lastly, the over is getting one-star love from our model in the form of a one-star recommendation.
The betting public is backing Brooklyn to win (85% of the money) and cover (80%), which conflicts with the model, but there's agreement on the over, as 62% of the money is on the over in this game.
The over is the consensus pick, and the heavy money on Brooklyn without much line movement actually makes it easier to like the home side here, which our algorithm does.
Los Angeles Clippers (+134) at Utah Jazz (-158)
Spread: Utah Jazz -3.0
Total: 223.0
Game 1 of this series was tight, a 112-109 win for the Jazz. This was despite higher shooting efficiency for the Los Angeles Clippers (51.8% effective field goal percentage to 50.0% for the Jazz and a 57.0% true shooting compared to 54.7% for the Jazz).
Possessions were scarce, just 93 apiece, as each team chooses not to push the pace after made shots, defensive rebounds, or turnovers, generally. In their prior meetings this year, the over/under has stayed under three times and pushed once.
The under is the pick by the model, which is pretty typical, and it's rated as a four-star recommendation, the highest of any bet on the board for the night.
numberFire's model is liking the Jazz to get another win 71.1% of the time, giving us still value on their moneyline at -158, and the Jazz win this game by an average of 5.9 points. Utah -3.5 is a one-star recommendation.
The spread and moneyline bets are pretty split from the public, so it's looking like the under and the Jazz moneyline are top options here.
