NBA Betting Guide for Thursday 3/17/22: How to Bet the Pistons/Magic 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. You can also track spread bet percentages at NBA odds.

Where do our algorithm, our power rankings, and the betting trends identify value in tonight's games? (All odds from NBA odds.)

Detroit Pistons at Orlando Magic

There's just one game on the NBA schedule tonight as the NCAA men's tournament takes center stage, and despite just the one game, the injury list is still pretty lengthy.

The only bet that our model is recommending is the over (219.5), which is a two-star (or two-unit) recommendation. Our algorithm likes this game to hit 220-plus points with a 59.0% probability. That leads to an expected return of 12.7%.

While the Orlando Magic have played to the over in just 40.0% of their past 15 games, they themselves have gone over their own implied total in 80.0% of those by an average of 3.3 points.

The Detroit Pistons have played to the over at a 50.0% clip in their past 15 (7-7-1) and also have surpassed their implied team total 80.0% of the time (by an average of 6.4 points).

Our model notes negative expected returns on the spread (Orlando -3.0) and moneyline offerings, so it's sticking with just the over.

You can bet the Magic total (111.5) with -104 odds on the over. The algorithm projects them for 113.3 points.

Also, using numberFire's baseline score (113.3 to 110.5) in my model, there's some value on the Magic to win by 11-plus (+280).