NBA Betting Guide for Monday 11/15/21: Analyzing an Injury-Riddled Pelicans/Wizards Game
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.)
New Orleans Pelicans at Washington Wizards
There are some key injuries affecting this game.
Zion Williamson is out for the New Orleans Pelicans, and Bradley Beal (and others) are out for the Washington Wizards.
numberFire's model views the Wizards as 68.5% likely to net the win, making their moneyline (-190) a one-star recommendation.
They are rating out as 52.6% likely to cover the 4.5-point spread as home favorites.
Across the 25 most similar games to this one in our database, teams representing the Wizards won 64.0% of the time.
My model is taking a bit of a stronger stance, however. Using relevant samples without Zion and Beal, my model sees the Wizards as 8.5-point home favorites.
They're 70.5% likely to win as a result. In total, then, both models like the Wizards to take care of business.
Denver Nuggets at Dallas Mavericks
It's the road team that our model is siding with for this game in the Western Conference.
The Denver Nuggets (+5.0) and their moneyline (+168) are getting one-star treatment, according to our model.
Even without Michael Porter Jr. on the floor, the Nuggets have a +3.6 net rating. They're also a +5.8 in overall point differential and a +4.3 in spread-adjusted point differential. That indicates that they're outperforming expectations.
The Dallas Mavericks' -1.6 point differential is tied to a spread-adjusted point differential of -4.3, so they're underperforming compared to opponent expectations -- the opposite we've seen for the Nuggets.
My model sees this game as a straight pick'em, so taking the points is easy to justify.
Houston Rockets at Memphis Grizzlies
There's four-star love from numberFire's model for the over (220.0) in this matchup between the 1-12 Houston Rockets and the 6-7 Memphis Grizzlies.
The Grizzlies have had their games go over at a 38.5% rate (actually close to the NBA average, given the weird scoring to start the season), and the Rockets are at 30.8%.
Perhaps more notably, 61.5% of opponents have gone over their own implied team total against the Grizzlies this season. That's the second-highest rate in the NBA.
The Grizzlies are allowing 113.1 points per game over their past 10, and the Rockets are at 112.1 themselves.
numberFire's model is anticipating a total score of 229.6 points, and there's a 67.4% probability that this game goes over the total.
That leads to an expected return of 28.6%.
