NBA

3 NBA Player Prop Bets to Target on Wednesday 5/19/21

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.

DeMar DeRozan Over 6.5 Assists (-130)

I know the juice is -130 on this one, but the other two props in this piece are plus-money options, so I'm going to roll with it.

numberFire's algorithm is anticipating DeMar DeRozan to generate 7.1 assists tonight against the Memphis Grizzlies over 36.5 minutes (which works out to 0.20 assists per minute). His full-season average is right around there at 0.21 assists per minute.

He has averaged 7.2 adjusted assists per game over his past 15, and the Grizzlies allow roughly the NBA average in assists per game over the final 10. There's no reason to adjust his assist-per-minute rate drastically given the matchup.

Therefore, he would need to average 0.19 helpers per minute over his projected minutes workload to hit 7.0 assists.

Using his baseline projection and seasonal deviation in assists, DeRozan should be 60.2% likely to hit his over.

Andre Drummond Over 10.5 Rebounds (+106)

Andre Drummond has a small working sample with LeBron James and Anthony Davis, but it's actually been kind of good for his rebounding numbers.

Drummond has averaged 0.41 rebounds per minute with the Lakers thus far, but when sharing the court with James and Davis over 74 minutes, that's up to 0.50.

numberFire projects Drummond for 27.0 minute and 11.7 boards, which easily makes the over make sense. But at the 0.50-board-per-minute rate in that sample, he should get to 13.5 rebounds. Even at the 0.41 mark, he'd get to 11.1.

None of this even adjusts for the fact that the Golden State Warriors are allowing a top-10 number of rebounds per game over their past 15.

Stephen Curry Under 5.5 Three-Point Makes (+124)

Are we going to feel good waiting to see if this pans out? No. Does it make sense mathematically? It sure does. Here's why.

Over the past 15 games, the Lakers have allowed only 29.8 three-point attempts to opponents, easily the lowest rate in the NBA and around 86.4% of the NBA average in that span. We should naturally expect fewer three-point attempts from Stephen Curry than his usual rate, as a result.

Adjusting Curry's per-minute three-point attempt rate (0.37) for the matchup and anticipating him for 36.5 minutes (our model's projection), he should get up 11.6 three-point attempts. At his full-season rate of 42.1%, he should make 4.9 of them. Let's be generous here and project him for 12.0 three-point attempts. He would need to shoot 50.0% on them to make six treys.

He has shot 50.0% of better from three in 25 of 63 games (39.7%). He has made six or more threes in 26 of 63 games (41.3%).

In three games against the Lakers this season, Curry has taken 12, 7, and 7 three-point attempts and made 3, 2, and 4, respectively. That works to an average line of 3.0 makes on 8.7 attempts.