NBA Betting Guide for Wednesday 1/26/22: The Jazz Can Still Play Despite Their Injuries
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 odds.)
Milwaukee Bucks at Cleveland Cavaliers
Tonight marks the third game in the four-game regular-season series between the Milwaukee Bucks and Cleveland Cavaliers. The series is tied 1-1 with both games coming in Milwaukee thus far.
The Bucks first won 112-104, and then the Cavs scored a blowout 119-90 in mid-December while sitting as road favorites against a thinned-out Milwaukee team.
Tonight, it's the Bucks who are favored on the road by 4.0 points.
Despite that, the model at numberFire likes the Cavaliers to cover.
Cleveland +4.0 is a three-star recommendation (i.e. a three-unit suggestion), and their moneyline (+146) is also a three-star play. The expected returns on those bets are 24.5% and 41.5%, respectively.
Over the past 10 games, the Cavaliers are 8-2 with a point differential of +3.3, and the Bucks are 5-5 with a point differential of +2.1.
Los Angeles Clippers at Orlando Magic
The Los Angeles Clippers are on a back-to-back after rallying from 35 points down to beat the Washington Wizards last night, and they enter this game as 1.0-point underdogs against the Orlando Magic.
The Magic have some injuries to overcome, as do the Clippers.
numberFire's model once again places three-star suggestions on the underdog here (Clippers +1.0 and Clippers' moneyline of -108).
The Clippers without Paul George are 10-13 with a non-garbage net rating of -5.6. The Magic -- adjusted for some injury news -- aren't exactly great, though, so the biggest issue here is really just how well the Clips recover after their comeback win.
Phoenix Suns at Utah Jazz
The spread for Monday's game between these two teams settled at 11.0 points in favor of the Phoenix Suns, yet the Utah Jazz were able to keep it within 6 points for a 115-109 loss, a recommendation we made here even when the spread was 9.0 points.
A big reason for that was that -- even without Donovan Mitchell, Rudy Gobert, and Mike Conley -- the Jazz have been good. They'll be getting Conley back now that they've had some rest, too.
In games with Conley but without Mitchell and Gobert on the floor, the Jazz have a medium-to-very-high-leverage net rating of +11.8 across 174 minutes. They're a good team, and the injuries aren't as daming as they seem.
Meanwhile, the Suns are without Deandre Ayton, JaVale McGee, and Jae Crowder. Without them on the floor but in games with Chris Paul and Devin Booker, the Suns have a non-garbage net rating of +12.5.
The difference, then, comes down to home-court advantage, really.
In what should probably be a pick'em, the Jazz are getting 3.5 points at home and are +136 to win. Both of those are four-star plays, per numberFire's model.
