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, and our oddsFire section of the site allows you to track movement in those lines and see where the action is coming from on particular games.
Where do our algorithm, our power rankings, and the betting trends identify value in tonight's games? (All odds from NBA Finals odds.)
Minnesota Timberwolves at Charlotte Hornets
The Minnesota Timberwolves are a very different team with and without Karl-Anthony Towns, and so we need to account for that. Towns returned on Wednesday to play 30.9 minutes and shoot 8-of-15 from the floor but did double-double with 18 points and 10 rebounds against the Los Angeles Clippers.
In total, the Timberwolves have been a +2.8 in net rating with Towns on the court and a -8.9 without him. That's over 163 minutes, around 3.5 games. With Towns and without D'Angelo Russell, they're a +3.1 (albeit over 73.0 minutes).
Despite the Timberwolves being solid in a small sample with Towns, both our algorithm and the betting trends are backing the home team here. numberFire's algorithm views the Charlotte Hornets -3.5 as a two-star recommendation out of five and their moneyline (-156) as a three-star recommendation out of five.
oddsFire shows that 77% of the bets and 86% of the money is coming in on the Hornets to win outright, and right around 75% of each is coming in on the league-average Hornets to cover the spread.
Memphis Grizzlies at Los Angeles Lakers
There are two heavy favorites on the moneyline that numberFire likes as three-star recommendations: the Los Angeles Lakers (-320) over the Memphis Grizzlies and the Boston Celtics (-350) over the Detroit Pistons. I'm going to highlight the Lakers here for a few reasons.
The main one is that they're just a better team than the Celtics and have an ELO-based adjusted point differential of +7.1 compared to Boston's +2.1. Yeah, the Grizzlies are better (+0.3) than the Pistons (-2.8), but when we get a top-three team with a reasonable moneyline, that's something.
The -320 odds suggest the Lakers are only 76.2% likely to win, but numberFire puts them at an 81.4% likelihood. That seems toit, but it's still good for an 8.5% expected return.
We also can look to the point spread (Lakers -7.0). numberFire projects the home team to win 115.1-105.3, a gap of 9.8 points. They are 55.8% likely to cover.
More than 90% of the bets and money are on the Lakers' moneyline, and another 63% of the ticket and 59% of the money is on them to cover the spread.
Cleveland Cavaliers at Portland Trail Blazers
The Cleveland Cavaliers have now fallen to the 30th-ranked team in numberFire's power rankings. The 10-16 Cavs have a nERD rating of 29.3, which means we expect them to win 29.3% of their games. That implies an expected point differential of -6.2.
The Portland Trail Blazers are 19th in our rankings with a 45.7 nERD (which is attached to an expected point differential of -1.3. That's a gap of 4.9 points (with no homecourt adjustment). Home teams have won by an average of 0.69 points this season, so it's not that nice of a boost, but there's a slight advantage if we view it from that angle. Anyway, the spread is -3.5 for the Blazers.
My ELO-based adjusted point differential ratings show the Blazers as a -0.7 (18th) and the Cavs as a -6.5 (27th), which is a gap of 5.8 points.
numberFire, then, sees value on the Blazers' spread (-3.5) and moneyline (-164). The spread is a two-star recommendation, and the moneyline is a three-star recommendation. numberFire gives Portland a 71.6% chance to win; the moneyline implies a 62.1% chance to win.