3 NBA Player Prop Bets to Target on Wednesday 11/10/21

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.

Jayson Tatum Over 3.5 Assists (-115)

The per-game assist average for Jayson Tatum (3.3 per game) should bounce back up soon enough, and numberFire's projections see that happening tonight.

Tatum is projected for 4.1 assists over 37.9 minutes tonight, which works out to 0.11 assists per minute. Tatum is averaging only 0.09 assists per minute this season, in line with his four-year average, yet if you compare his potential assists to baseline expectations, he should actually be averaging 0.11 assists per minute.

Only 33 of Tatum's 79 potential assists (41.8%) have been converted by teammates. That's a full 8.7 points lower than the NBA average (50.5%).

Overall, Tatum's distributing should have him averaging 4.0 assists per game rather than the 3.3 he's actually recorded.

Using numberFire's 4.1 assists as his baseline, my simulation model views the over as 58.4% likely to occur.

Harrison Barnes Under 18.5 Points (-106)

There's a pretty big discrepancy between Harrison Barnes' points prop (18.5), his per-game average (22.5), and his projection (16.8) tonight.

So what gives?

Well, Barnes is lighting it up this season from the field.

His effective field goal percentage is 59.7%, up more than 6.0 points from his four-year average of 53.3%. Barnes' true shooting rate (67.2%) is also up from a four-year rate of 58.4%.

In fact, if you apply his four-year shooting splits to his projected shot volume (7.0 two-point attempts, 4.9 three-point attempts, and 3.7 free throw attempts), he would score just 15.8 points.

Barnes is a shooting regression candidate, so this is a spot where we probably shouldn't buy into the elite, outlier shooting rates he's put up this season so far.

Karl-Anthony Towns Over 2.5 Made Three-Pointers (-104)

If you looked at the Golden State Warriors' three-point field goal percentage allowed (30.6%, second-best in the NBA), you'd probably anticipate a tough night from beyond the arc for Karl-Anthony Towns.

However, three-point defense shouldn't be measured by field goal percentage allowed but rather by three-point volume and/or frequency allowed.

That's much more damning for the Dubs.

Golden State allows the second-highest three-point attempt rate (46.1% of shot attempts against the Warriors have come from beyond the arc) and the third-most attempts per game (40.5) in the Association. In fact, they actually allow the highest rate of threes to be classified as "open" in the NBA.

This should suit Towns well.

He's averaged 3.1 three-point makes on 6.6 attempts per game. That's a 46.7% rate, up from his four-year average of 40.3%, so he could get a bit colder in recent games. I'm not ignoring that.

However, the matchup doesn't seem as tough as some stats make it look. He should have plenty of open chances tonight.