NBA

3 NBA Player Prop Bets to Target on Tuesday 5/18/21

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.

P.J. Washington Over 13.5 Points (+102)

PJ Washington and the Charlotte Hornets are taking on an Indiana Pacers defense that has been bulldozed by power forwards this year.

For the season, Indiana is permitting 23.0 points per game to opposing fours, and that number jumps to 26.5 over their last 15 games as the absence of Myles Turner has really hurt the Pacers' interior defense.

While Washington averaged only 9.8 points per game across his final five regular season contests, he had netted at least 16 points in eight straight games before that -- going for 20-plus in half of those outings.

Our model projects Washington to score 14.9 points today, and we're getting a pretty nice price on the over.

Jayson Tatum Under 3.5 Made Three-Pointers (-132)

The Washington Wizards didn't do much well on defense this year, but one thing they were pretty good at was limiting three-point tries. The Wiz allowed a three-point attempt rate of 36.8%, the sixth-lowest.

Tatum needs four triples to get to the over, and that's something he's done in only two of his last five games. He failed to hit more than three treys in any of his three matchups with Washington this season.

There should be a lot of possessions and points in this game -- the total is 233.5 -- but our algorithm has Tatum projected for just 2.9 made three-pointers.

Miles Bridges Under 18.5 Points (-104)

Back to the Hornets-Pacers game.

Miles Bridges closed out the year playing really well, posting big point totals of 30 and 27 over his final four regular season games. That has his points prop up to 18.5, and our model sees a lot of value on the under.

Other than his two blow-up games, Bridges had 17 and 15 in that final four-game span. He moved to the starting lineup in April -- and will likely start today with Gordon Hayward missing out -- and proceeded to average 19.1 points per game for the month. But that was propped up by unsustainable 46.7% shooting from three in April. His season-long three-point percentage is 35.4%.

We have Bridges scoring just 15.5 points in this one.