NBA

NBA Betting Guide for Friday 11/5/21: Who Has the Edge in the Grizzlies/Wizards Matchup?

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 you can track line movement within games and compare odds over at the oddsFire section of the site.

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 at Detroit Pistons

It's a heavy spread tonight for the home side here: the Detroit Pistons are 11.0-point underdogs.

Detroit played last night, a 109-98 loss to the Philadelphia 76ers, so they're on a back-to-back, but that's not too damning.

Unsurprisingly, while double-digit home underdogs with a day of rest disadvantage since 2016 won outright at just a 21.3% rate, they covered the spread at a 57.4% rate.

That bodes well for the Pistons' chances to keep it close against the Brooklyn Nets.

Based heavily on each team's early-season estimated ratings, my model views the Pistons -- with homecourt advantage factored in -- as 9.0-point underdogs.

numberFire's model views the Pistons +11.0 as a three-star recommendation, meaning a three-unit wager is in play.

They are 64.9% likely to cover, leading to an expected return of 23.8%.

Memphis Grizzlies at Washington Wizards

There's a tight spread here in a matchup between two teams with 5-3 records.

The home Washington Wizards are one-point underdogs. There's an even moneyline on each side at -108.

Our model at numberFire sees it just about as close: it views the Wizards as 53.9% likely to get the win over the Memphis Grizzlies.

There's a 5.8% expected return on investment on the moneyline for Washington and a 2.7% expected return on the Wizards to cover.

Notably, teams representing the Wizards won 15 of the 25 most comparable games to this one historically (60.0%) and covered in just as many.

The Wizards have a +3.5 spread-adjusted point differential, as well, besting the Grizzlies' -1.5 mark, according to my in-season database.

Overall, my model points to the Wizards being 4.5-point home favorites when factoring in home-court advantage.

San Antonio Spurs at Orlando Magic

Unders have been all the rage this season, and only 36.4% of games -- per my database -- have gone over this season.

Eventually, that'll have to correct a bit, and here's a game shaping up to play well to an over (213.0).

numberFire's model views this game going over 213.0 points at a 58.2% probability, leading to an expected return of 11.1%.

Based on each team's estimated ratings, my model would've set the over/under at 216.0 here, and it sees the over as 62.6% likely.

The San Antonio Spurs have gone over their own implied team total in 5 of their 8 games (62.5%), and the Orlando Magic have done so in 5 of 9 games (55.6%).

They've gone over by 3.2 and 3.3 points, on average, relative to their own implied totals.

In an extremely under-friendly season, the Spurs and Magic have been going against the grain. Plus, the underlying data still likes the over on this one, even if we look past the early-season, team-level trends.