NBA Betting Guide for Tuesday 2/1/22: Taking the Points Again
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.)
Miami Heat at Toronto Raptors
The Miami Heat have traveled pretty well this year.
They're just 14-13 on the road but have a spread-adjusted point differential of +2.1 and have covered in 55.6% of their road games while going over their own implied total by an average of 2.0 points and holding opponents to a -0.8 on their implied total.
The Toronto Raptors are 13-12 at home with a +3.0 point differential; however, adjusting for spread, they're a -0.1 at home. They've underperformed offensive expectations at home by an average of 2.0 points, as well, and have surpassed their implied total at a 44.0% clip.
We could need to adjust for the fact that Miami could be without Jimmy Butler and Kyle Lowry. Their medium-to-very-high-leverage net rating in that split is actually still +2.8, however.
Overall, numberFire's model likes the Raptors to win at a 53.4% clip, leaving behind a 46.6% chance for the Heat. My model views this as a 1.3-point spread in Toronto's favor.
That makes the Heat +3.0 a target tonight on the road, and their moneyline (+132) is in play, too.
Washington Wizards at Milwaukee Bucks
There's a pretty massive spread in this game: 11.0 points in favor of the 31-21 Milwaukee Bucks over the 23-26 Washington Wizards, who are without Bradley Beal.
The Wizards, in games without Beal but in non-garbage-time situations, have a net rating of +0.1. They're also 6-3 without Beal.
Adjusting for the Bucks' current health, I have them at a +8.0 in terms of net rating.
Accounting for pace and home-court, that leaves a lot less than an 11.0-point gap between the two sides. Overall, my model has the spread at 7.0 points for Milwaukee.
Washington, then, is 58.7% likely to cover, per my sims.
Denver Nuggets at Minnesota Timberwolves
While the 4.0-point spread in favor of the Minnesota Timberwolves, you'd probably expect better than a 51.2% chance they win, but that's where numberFire's model is landing on the T-Wolves' win odds.
It's no surprise, then, that the model has a two-star suggestion on the Denver Nuggets to keep it within four. They're 61.6% likely to cover, leading to an expected return of 17.6%.
Denver's also getting two-star love to win outright (+148). Those odds suggest a 40.3% win chance. Our algo has their odds at 48.8%.
All this despite the fact that Nikola Jokic is questionable? Yes. The Nuggets have bad splits without Jokic but have been extremely unlucky defensively and maintain an offensive rating of 110.8 even without him.
Over the past two seasons, road teams who were underdogs by 3 to 5 points covered in 52.1% of matchups by an average of 1.2 points.
