3 NBA Player Prop Bets to Target on Thursday 7/1/21

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.

Brook Lopez Over 13.5 Points (-110)

I'm going with a theme for today's props, and it has to do with the Milwaukee Bucks' splits without Giannis Antetokounmpo, who is listed as doubtful for tonight's game.

Also, I mean, these are grounded in numberFire's projections, which is always a key. Our model projects Brook Lopez for 14.8 points across 31.9 minutes, easily putting him in the over territory on this prop of 13.5 points.

Lopez has averaged 0.47 points per minute without Antetokounmpo, according to PBPStats, and across 31.9 minutes, that would lead to a baseline projection of 15.0 points.

Even at the 14.8 mark, we should expect Lopez to be 59.6% likely to get to 14 points or more, based on his season-long variance. That would imply over odds of -146.

P.J. Tucker Under 5.5 Points (-120)

While Lopez is on par to score better without Giannis, P.J. Tucker may not exactly light up the points column yet again.

Tucker did score 8 points last game on 7 shots but had put up 3, 1, and 4 in three games prior, ultimately leading to a series average of 4.0 points over 30.5 minutes.

numberFire's model is anticipating 4.8 points across 35.1 minutes for Tucker, which works out to 0.14 points per minute. That's his actual per-minute scoring rate without Antetokounmpo this season, as well. He doesn't exactly get a big boost there.

If we assume a projection of 4.8 points, I'm seeing Tucker as 59.0% likely to fall shy of 6 points tonight across a thousand simulations.

P.J. Tucker Over 1.5 Assists (+146)

Tucker may not score more, but he could touch the ball more often, and that is a reason to like the over on his assist number at pretty heavy plus-money odds.

Tucker is projected for 1.8 assists in his 35.1 minutes (0.05 per minute). Again, that's actually his rate without Antetokounmpo, so the expectation should actually be closer to 2.0 assists than to 1.0.

That's not reflected in the odds at all.

We should be viewing Tucker as 60.9% likely to go over his prop total tonight, suggesting over odds of -156 rather than +146.