NBA Betting Guide for Monday 12/13/21: Siding With the Home Teams Tonight
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 you can track line movement within games and compare odds over at the oddsFire section of the site.
Where do our algorithm, our power rankings, and the betting trends identify value in tonight's games? (All odds from NBA Finals odds.)
Sacramento Kings at Toronto Raptors
The theme of the night within numberFire's game projections are -- for the most part -- moderate value on most of the games. We're talking a lot of two-star recommendations (two-unit suggestions).
We get that with the 12-14 Toronto Raptors against the 11-16 Sacramento Kings.
The bet recommendations come in the form of the Raptors' moneyline (-190), which suggests a probability of 65.5%. numberFire's model gives the Raptors a 74.1% win probability. That leads to a three-star suggestion for their moneyline.
The two-star recommendation comes in on their spread (-4.5). The median projected score here is 118.0 to 110.0, a tidy gap of 7.0 points. They're expected to cover at a 57.9% rate, leading to an expected return of 10.6%.
The Raptors have covered in just 23.1% of their 13 home games (3 total), but that's screaming for some regression based on their skill gap over the Kings; the Raptors are 16th in our power rankings while the Kings are 23rd.
Milwaukee Bucks at Boston Celtics
Looking at recent results, there's a clear favorite in this game, and that'd be the Milwaukee Bucks, who are 4-1 in their past five games. The Boston Celtics are an inverse, 1-4.
The Celtics, though, are coming off of a five-game road trip against some strong teams: the Utah Jazz, Portland Trail Blazers (the lone win), Los Angeles Lakers, the Los Angeles Clippers, and the Phoenix Suns. To account for the road trip, the Celtics have had two days of rest.
The Bucks played yesterday at the New York Knicks.
Since 2016, home teams with two days of rest-facing teams on a back-to-back have won outright at a 66.4% rate and covered in 51.5% of such games. The C's also get Jaylen Brown back from injury tonight.
numberFire's model rates the Celtics' spread (+1.5) and moneyline (+100) as two-star recommendations. They're considered 55.2% likely to win outright.
Washington Wizards at Denver Nuggets
The Denver Nuggets are fairly heavy favorites (their spread is -4.0, and their moneyline is -168), but the moneyline isn't heavy enough, according to numberFire's model.
They are rating out as 72.6% likely to win, outperforming their implied moneyline odds of 62.7%. The expected return of 16.3% leads to three-star-suggestion territory.
The Nuggets, at home, are 7-4 with a point differential of +4.8 and a spread-adjusted point differential of +1.4.
The Washington Wizards, on the road, are a respectable 7-8 with a -3.7 point differential. Their -3.0 spread-adjusted point differential is the third-worst road mark in the league.
The moneyline is the primary recommendation based on numberFire's model, but the spread (Denver -4.0) is a one-star play. Adjusting for injuries, my model views the Nuggets as 9.0-point favorites, so I'm keen on the spread and the moneyline myself.
