NBA Betting Guide for Monday 4/24/23: Will We See Scoring on Monday?
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 FanDuel Sportsbook.
Where can we identify value in tonight's NBA odds?
(All offensive rating, defensive rating, and net rating splits come from PBPStats.com and account for medium-, high-, and very high-leverage situations unless otherwise noted. All injury news and notes come from the official NBA injury report unless otherwise noted.)
Milwaukee Bucks at Miami Heat
Over 216.5 (-110)
The Milwaukee Bucks find themselves trailing 2-1 to the Miami Heat while Giannis Antetokounmpo has played a total of 10 minutes before a back injury.
Antetokounmpo is questionable for tonight's game. Jimmy Butler is also questionable but is fully expected to play.
Through three games in the series, Miami is averaging 124.3 points with Milwaukee at 118.0 even with the Bucks putting up just 99 in Game 3 for a total of 242.3 points per game.
There are reasons to like points once again, and these teams are shooting at a super high rate in the series. Miami has a 64.9% effective field goal percentage (eFG%) with the Bucks at 58.7%. Both of those would be season bests, so regression is inevitable.
However, we're still operating with two above-average offenses and roughly average defenses based on current splits. Since the All-Star break, each side here has at least a 63.0% over rate, thanks primarily to allowing opponents to get over their implied totals at least 67.9% of the time.
Basically, the defenses are a bit overrated at this point, and that means the over makes sense.
Memphis Grizzlies at Los Angeles Lakers
A Lean: Over 220.5 (-110)
This series has been pretty close overall despite point differentials of 16, 10, and 10.
Through three games, the four factors are razor-thin (via Basketball-Reference).
| Team | Pace | eFG% | TOV% | ORB% | FT/FGA | ORtg | PPG |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LAL (2-1) | 97.9 | .524 | 11.7 | 24.6 | .195 | 113.0 | 110.7 |
| MEM (1-2) | 97.9 | .493 | 11.9 | 24.5 | .181 | 107.6 | 105.3 |
Yes, the Los Angeles Lakers are sweeping the four categories, but the only real advantage pops up with the eFG% race. With that said, they are a really strong team with LeBron James, Anthony Davis, and D'Angelo Russell all healthy and active together. In that split, they are 10-2 overall including 8-4 against the spread.
The Memphis Grizzlies are generating the fourth-worst shot quality rating of all playoff teams (the Lakers are sixth-best).
I don't really find a lot of interest in the spread or moneyline, personally, though numberFire's model likes the Grizzlies to cover at a 67.1% rate.
Where my model and numberFire's align is with the total, which requires a bit of a scoring uptick from what we've seen through three games (with an average of 216.0 per game).
Going back to the eFG% race, the Lakers (52.4%) would rank 23rd on the full season with the Grizzlies (49.3%) ranking 30th on the year.
The defenses are good, yes, but not quite that good to keep those numbers suppressed forever, and the pace here is actually pretty good for a playoff series.
