3 NBA Player Prop Bets to Target on Wednesday 5/5/21

Player props can be useful in a variety of ways, from taking advantage of them straight up (to the tune of cold hard cash) to measuring a player's potential to produce in daily fantasy basketball. Here we'll focus on utilizing our projections and a slew of other tools to help make money betting player props.

For this article, we are using the odds provided at NBA Finals odds to pinpoint spots where value can be had tonight.

Please note that betting lines and our player projections may change throughout the day after this article is published.

Ben Simmons Over 6.5 Rebounds (-105)

Our model is projecting Ben Simmons for 7.3 boards against the Houston Rockets over 33.1 minutes, so it's pretty clear where we can lean on this prop.

The Rockets rank 27th in rebounds per game allowed to opposing point guards (7.2 per game, around 110% over the NBA median at the position). They're up to 21st in rebounding rate since the trade deadline but are 29th on the full season.

Even if we're a little stingy here and just include all matchups against below-average rebounding teams, we see that Simmons has a per-minute average of 0.26 rebounds. That rate would get him to 8.6 rebounds over his projected minutes load.

Using even the lower 7.3 projection from numberFire's model and Simmons' seasonal rebounding deviation, he should be around 60.1% likely to hit the over.

Russell Westbrook Over 1.5 Three-Point Makes (+180)

We're getting heavy plus-money on this prop for Russell Westbrook, which we need because the +180 odds suggest a probability of 35.7%.

Westbrook has made multiple three-pointers in 19 of 58 games (32.8%). That should get us on the under, right?

Well, there's more to it.

The Milwaukee Bucks allow the fifth-highest three-point attempt rate in the NBA and the third-most three-point attempts per game. They come in around 112% of the NBA average in that department, so we should expect Westbrook's usual rates to increase.

His 0.11-three-point-attempt-per-minute rate would get him to 3.9 attempts over his projected 35.5 minutes, but that per-minute number spikes to 0.15 against teams that allow a top-five three-point attempt rate, which would lead to 5.3 attempts in that span.

Though he's actually shot 43.2% in those eight games from deep, that's not really something we can cling to. Instead, we should look at the season-long rate of 31.4%. Making 31.4% of the 5.3 attempts would get him to 1.7 makes tonight. At +180 odds, that's very welcomed.

Better yet: in two games against Milwaukee this year, Westbrook has averaged 4.0 makes on 8.5 attempts per game, exemplifying the effect of matchups against teams that allow a ton of threes. If he shoots 31.4% over 8.5 threes, he should make 2.7.

Bradley Beal went 4 of 7 against the Bucks in his one game against them and is +132 to go over 2.5 three-point makes, by the way.

Michael Porter Jr. Over 7.5 Rebounds (-110)

Our algo is big on Michael Porter Jr.'s rebounding prop and projects him for 8.8 boards tonight against the New York Knicks across 36.1 minutes, which works out to 0.24 per minute, the same as his full-season rebounding rate.

Over the past month, the Knicks allow a league-average number of rebounds per game in April to opposing small forwards, which isn't anything to worry about for MPJ. Similarly, over the past 15 games, they're just league-average in rebounding rate. It doesn't make much sense to bump his rate up or down.

To prove it: against middle-tier rebounding teams (19 games), he's right at 0.23 boards per minute -- still enough to get him to 8.3 rebounds across his projected minutes rate.

Given the median projection of 8.8 rebounds and his seasonal variance, he should hit the over 68.3% of the time.