NBA Betting Guide for Monday 5/8/23: A Deeper Look at Shooting Splits

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.)

New York Knicks at Miami Heat

Over 206.5 (-110)

The Miami Heat hold a 2-1 series lead over the New York Knicks entering Game 4 in Miami, where the Heat won by 19 (105-86) on Saturday behind 28 points from Jimmy Butler, who played through an ankle sprain that -- once again -- has him listed as questionable for Game 4.

After a total of just 191 points in Game 3, the over/under is set at 206.5 for Game 4, and that seems a bit too low. The first two games of the series posted an average of 212.5 points, and the only thing that changed in Game 3 was the shooting efficiency.

Both teams held an effective field goal percentage (eFG%) over 50.0% in each of the first two games. In Game 3, the Heat shot 42.8%, and the Knicks shot 38.5% in terms of eFG%.

The pace actually quickened by a few possessions in Miami, so all we need is better shooting, which there are reasons to think we'll get.

Via PBPStats, each team owns a shot quality (expected eFG%) of 53.0% since the series started, tops among all teams since their second-round series started. But their actual eFG% numbers for the full series are now below 50.0% due to the putrid shooting in Game 3.

numberFire's model likes the over as a two-star suggestion.

Golden State Warriors at Los Angeles Lakers

Los Angeles Lakers Moneyline (-144)

The main storyline in this series has been a gap in free-throw numbers followed up by scoring distribution.

The Los Angeles Lakers have gotten to the free-throw line 83 times and are shooting 75.9% from the stripe. The Golden State Warriors are 27 of 39 from the line (69.2%).

This has created a cavernous differential in free throws per field goal attempt (one of the four factors) of .237 for the Lakers and .092 for the Warriors.

Given this gap with largely similar numbers in the three other categories, the underlying data suggests that the Lakers' actual point differential (+2.7) should be larger (+5.5), which is certainly something of which we should take note.

The Warriors currently are benefitting from strong shooting from both Stephen Curry (46.4% on 28 three-point attempts) and Klay Thompson (47.2% on 36 attempts). Those outpace career averages of 42.8% and 41.6%, respectively, for context.

As a result, they're averaging identical outputs of 23.3 points per game with no other Warrior above Andrew Wiggins' 14.0, and only Jordan Poole (10.7) is also above 7.0 points per game in the series.

The Lakers have six scorers in double-digits (if we count Lonnie Walker, who has played two games in the series).

Overall, the numbers are pretty efficient for this matchup, but I'm leaning toward the Lakers to win outright at -144 odds.