NBA Betting Guide for Wednesday 6/30/21: Taking a Side on a Tight Game 6
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.)
Phoenix Suns (-108) at Los Angeles Clippers (-108)
Spread: Los Angeles Clippers -1.0
Total: 215.5
The Phoenix Suns had an opportunity to close out the series on Monday but lost by 14 at home and now hold a 3-2 series lead. Now, Los Angeles holds a 3.4 net rating in this series despite the series deficit.
The bookmakers are seeing this game about as close to a pick'em as we get. The moneyline odds are identical, and the spread is just 1.0 points, favoring the Clippers.
Notably, the Clippers opened as 0.5-point underdogs at FanDuel Sportsbook, and the line actually got up to +1.5 before trending back down into favorite territory.
Though the spread and moneyline are close, numberFire's model is taking a pretty clear side, and that's on the home team. The Clippers are 65.4% likely to get the win, according to our model, making the Clippers moneyline a three-star recommendation out of five. That is tied to a 27.1% expected return.
By comparison, 63% of the bets and 70% of the money are on the Suns to win, though, so we have a discrepancy here.
Using recent and relevant data (i.e. the Clippers' data without Kawhi Leonard and the Suns' data with Chris Paul), my model would anticipate the Clippers to be 50.2% likely to win over thousands of simulations.
As for the spread, numberFire likes the Clippers to cover 61.6% of the time, leading to an expected return of 17.7% and a two-star rating.
We're seeing some big action on the Suns' side of things, though, via oddsFire. Thus far, 68% of the bet slips are on the Suns, and that's tied to 85% of the money, a differential of 17 points. That implies some heavy money on those bets (i.e. smart money).
Regarding the over/under, numberFire's model is lightly on the under, rating it as a one-star recommendation and viewing it as 53.0% likely.
The total is fairly split with the public: 45% of the money is on the under. With how heavy the public usually is on the over, this is noteworthy.
In total, five of eight games in this season series went under the posted total, and this series has stayed under the over/under by an average of 10.6 points.
The under is where I'll be starting tonight.
It's really hard to take a side on either the moneyline or the spread, but the Clippers have been the better side in the series in terms of the underlying data, numberFire's model really likes them, and my model sees it about as even as could be, so I'll lean on their moneyline tonight.
