NBA

3 NBA Player Prop Bets to Target on Tuesday 10/19/21

Brandon Gdula  —  @gdula13 Oct 19th, 2021
Will Kevin Durant light up the scoreboard without Kyrie Irving, or is the under the better bet on his prop number?

Player props can be useful in a variety of ways, from taking advantage of them straight up within the betting market 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 and simulations 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.

Kevin Durant Under 38.5 Points + Rebounds (-104)

Across a healthy projection of 34.3 minutes, Kevin Durant -- in a game without Kyrie Irving -- obviously has a path to getting to filling up the stat sheet, but it's the total in this Brooklyn Nets/Milwaukee Bucks game has fallen from 240.5 to 233.5 at FanDuel Sportsbook.

That's at least a tinge concerning for the scoring expectations. Durant's baseline points projection, per numberFire's algorithm, is 30.1, and he's also projected for 7.0 boards, which works out to 37.1 combined points and rebounds.

That's obviously 1.4 shy of the over -- a close call all things considered. The Bucks, last season, ranked top 5 in rebounding rate and top 10 in defensive rating, though, and with the downward-trending total, it's time to consider the under on the scoring-based props in this game.

Using Durant's per-minute numbers in games without Irving last season and multiplying it by his minutes projection, he's still at 37.2, in line with numberFire's projection and shy of the 39.0 he'd need to hit the over.

Joe Harris Over 2.5 Made Three-Pointers (-108)

A good long-term strategy for betting three-point props should definitely involve defensive tendencies, and I don't mean three-point field goal percentage allowed.

Teams have minimal impact on whether opponents make threes against them, so the better stat to look for is three-point attempt rate or the number of three-point attempts allowed per game.

The Bucks allowed the sixth-highest three-point attempt rate against in the 2020-21 regular season, and they were actually third in three-point attempts allowed per game.

That philosophy should give the sharpshooting Joe Harris extra chances to take and make threes.

Harris' baseline projection for made threes, per numberFire, is sitting at 3.0 even.

Using that number and his usual range (even without bumping up his three-point attempt rate against the Bucks' generous defense), Harris should be considered 60.4% likely to splash in three makes from deep.

Draymond Green Over 6.5 Rebounds (+106)

I always love a plus-money prop, which can be hard to find on a small slate.

But with the over on Draymond Green's rebound prop sitting at +106 (the under is -130), I wanted to dig in here. numberFire's baseline projection for Green is 7.3 rebounds across a minutes projection of 32.6.

Using a blend of Green's baseline projection, his historical deviation, and a regression-based deviation with his rebounding numbers, he should be considered 62.2% likely to go over his rebounding prop.

That would suggest odds of -165 on the over, so the high baseline for Green, per numberFire's projections, make the over a really promising plus-money option for the opening slate.