3 NBA Player Prop Bets to Target on Tuesday 11/16/21

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.

James Harden Over 9.5 Assists (+110)

With just three games on the slate, we have fewer chances to find massive gaps in prop odds, so I'm okay going a bit heavier on plus-money chances when reasonable.

We have that with James Harden's assist prop at +110. numberFire projects Harden for 9.8 assists across 35.6 minutes. That works out to 0.28 assists per minute.

That's up pretty significantly from a four-year rate of 0.23, yet it's in line with his in-season rate of 0.27 and his expected rate of 0.26 (based on a league-average conversion rate on his potential assists).

With the plus-money odds, it's appealing just knowing the median projection outperforms his actual prop.

If I use his baseline projection of 9.8 assists, then my simulation model sees him as 54.3% likely to go over, meaning the over odds should be -119.

Donovan Mitchell Over 4.5 Assists (-112)

A trend emerged in my props research. That's going to be on overs. And that's going to be on assists.

Donovan Mitchell is projected for 5.6 assists tonight across his 34.3 minutes (0.16 per minute).

His in-season rate is 0.15, so that checks out, and while that's a bump from his four-year average of 0.13, it's in line with his expected assist rate of 0.15 per minute, based on the underlying conversion data.

Mitchell, at a baseline of 5.6 assists, rates out as 64.6% likely to hit the over on his prop, according to my simulation model.

That would make the over in play up to -182 odds.

Tobias Harris Over 3.5 Assists (+104)

I took a good look at under options tonight, but nothing really jumped out, so it's three overs.

Though I don't usually go that route, we have two of these coming at plus-money odds.

Tobias Harris has averaged 4.4 assists per game and should be averaging 4.0 assists per game, based on an NBA-average conversion rate. That's still above this plus-money prop.

Further, numberFire's model anticipates 4.2 assists for Harris while the 76ers are thinned out.

Over the past two years with Joel Embiid and Danny Green off the floor, Harris averages 0.13 assists per minute across 380 minutes. This season, his mark is 0.16 without them on the court.

Even the lower 0.13 assist-per-minute rate (same as his in-season rate and expected rate) across his 34.6 projected minutes would lead to a baseline of 4.5 assists.