NBA Betting Guide for Wednesday 4/27/22: Can the Road Teams Survive (and Cover)?
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. 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.)
Chicago Bulls at Milwaukee Bucks
Over (217.5) - 5 stars
Chicago Bulls Spread (+12.0) - 2 stars
The Bulls list both Zach LaVine and Alex Caruso as questionable tonight, two key injuries on the side of the underdogs.
Since the All-Star break and in medium-to-very-high-leverage situations, the Bulls have a net rating of -7.7 without them on the floor in 217 minutes. They still generate solid offense with a 54.9% effective field goal percentage (eFG%) and a 113.6 offensive rating.
The issues, then, naturally flash on the defensive side, as they have allowed a 121.4 offensive rating and a 59.2% eFG%. I should note that the 59.2% eFG% comes with a shot quality rating (or expected eFG%) of 55.0%. That's still bad defense, but their actual net rating is a little misleading.
The bad defense and still-passable offense, however, plays into the love for the over, which our algorithm sees hitting an astounding 77.4% of the time. It's a hammer spot, per the algo -- even if both were to miss.
For the Milwaukee Bucks, they list Khris Middleton as out. Without him since the deadline, their net rating is +6.5.
Using each team's relevant sample, my model projects a total of 228.0 points and sees the spread as Bucks -11.0. That agrees with numberFire's model, which prefers the over and has an interest in the Bulls to cover.
Denver Nuggets at Golden State Warriors
Under (225.5) - 4 stars
Denver Nuggets Spread (+9.0) - 2 stars
The preferences in this game are very similar to the first game of the night: a strong lean on the total and a moderate amount of interest in the underdog to cover.
numberFire's model gives Denver a 60.8% chance to cover, leading to an expected return of 16.1%. In the 25 most comparable games to this one historically in our database, teams representing the Nuggets have a slight 54.0% cover rate.
Notably, since the All-Star break, Denver has a meek 39.3% cover rate, a bottom-six mark in the NBA overall. But that's bogged down by a 29.4% home cover rate. On the road, the Nuggets are 6-5 against the spread and cover by an average of 2.9 points. They do this by going over their own implied team total 72.7% of the time. They've scored well on the road all season compared to expectation: not just since the break.
Yes, the Golden State Warriors have a great home cover rate since the break (8-3) but have done so by just an average of 1.4 points while, on average, underperforming their implied total by 2.6 points.
In total, our model likes this game to stay under with a 69.3% probability and the Nuggets to cover at a 60.8% clip.
