NBA Betting Guide for Thursday 4/27/23: Can the Hawks Keep It Close and Cover 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. 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.)
Boston Celtics at Atlanta Hawks
Atlanta Hawks +7.0 (-110)
The Hawks extended the final remaining first-round Eastern Conference playoff series by covering a 13.5-point spread in Game 5 and winning it outright by a score of 119-117 despite not having Dejounte Murray in the lineup due to a suspension.
Now, with Murray back and in Atlanta, the Hawks are still underdogs -- but by roughly half as many points this time around.
In Game 5, Atlanta got off to a solid start, winning the first quarter 30-27 before losing the second quarter 39-28 and trailing by 8 at the half. Down 10 to start the fourth quarter, Atlanta ripped off a 37-25 period to win by a bucket.
They shot 46.3% from beyond the arc in a game that featured fewer than 10 turnovers for each team.
The loss for the Boston Celtics was an unfortunate one, as they outshot the Hawks 59.8% to 56.8% in terms of effective field goal percentage (eFG%) and took care of the defensive glass well, holding Atlanta to a 15.0% offensive rebounding rate.
Using the four factors as a guide, my model thought the expected final score was 117.6 to 113.8 in favor of Boston.
A notable outlier was free throw shooting (and a lack of volume for both sides). Boston got to the stripe 13 times and made 7. Atlanta was 10 of 10 from the line.
Accounting for health, home court, and other factors, my model likes the Hawks to be able to cover and thinks the spread should be 5.0 points.
numberFire's algorithm also likes the Hawks to cover and views Atlanta +7.0 as a two-star option for tonight's slate.
The Hawks' moneyline (+245) is also in play, and numberFire's model sees them winning 40.0% of the time -- suggesting odds of +150.
