NBA

NBA Betting Guide for Tuesday 4/25/23: How to Handle 3 Huge Spreads in Potential Closeouts

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.)

Atlanta Hawks at Boston Celtics

Atlanta Hawks +13.0 (-110)

The Boston Celtics carry a 3-1 series lead over the Hawks back to Boston, and Atlanta is going to be without Dejounte Murray due to a league suspension.

That helps to explain the 13.0-point spread in this matchup.

Mathematically speaking, the Hawks are still pretty viable with a core of Trae Young, Clint Capela, and Bogdan Bogdanovic active but with Murray off the floor. Their net rating in that split that spans more than 1,200 possessions is +7.5.

The Celtics are at a +6.7 in games with both Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown active.

Of course, with home-court advantage and some other factors in here, my model has the Celtics heavily favored -- but not by 13.0 points.

numberFire's model also likes the Hawks to cover 62.1% of the time.

Series-ending games can end in blowouts, of course, but the data really does think the Hawks can hang one more time even without Murray.

Minnesota Timberwolves at Denver Nuggets

A Lean: Over 221.0 (-110)

An overtime victory in Game 4 helped the Minnesota Timberwolves avoid a sweep by the Denver Nuggets, but they have quite the uphill battle ahead if they're going to pull off the reverse sweep.

In their defense, they're the most likely underdog winner of the night with a moneyline of +370 and a single-digit spread of +9.5.

But with that said, they have been outclassed on the floor by 10.7 points per 100 possessions in the series. A big part of that is that the Timberwolves are shooting 51.8% in terms of effective field goal percentage (eFG%), which would basically be a league-worst on the full season.

The Nuggets' offense is rolling by contrast with a 57.2% eFG%, and they're not turning the ball over enough or letting Minnesota grab enough offensive rebounds to close the gap easily.

The best route here is the over at 221.0. My model thinks this game scores 222.5 points with numberFire's totaling a more hefty 227.2.

Los Angeles Clippers at Phoenix Suns

Phoenix Suns -12.5 (-106)

The nightcap may not be one worth staying up for, as the Los Angeles Clippers are without both Kawhi Leonard and Paul George for this Game 5 matchup.

They're 3-11 on the season without both of them active and hold a horrid net rating of -15.9 in that split. If you account for the presence of Russell Westbrook, though, the net rating improves substantially to a -2.3 -- albeit over just 292 possessions. Typically, I'm looking for around 500 possessions to stabilize.

The Phoenix Suns can close it out and move to 12-1 in games with Kevin Durant, Devin Booker, Deandre Ayton, and Chris Paul active together. Their net rating in that split is +9.0.

It might be hard to find points for the Clippers, and with how good the Suns have been in recent games with their revitalized core, we have to trend away from the long-term data and account for the injuries that are impacting tonight's game.