NBA Betting Guide for Friday 1/20/23: Does Denver's Scoring Surge Mean an Automatic Over?
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. You can also track spread bet percentages at FanDuel Sportsbook.
Where do our algorithm, our power rankings, and the betting trends identify value in tonight's NBA odds?
(All offensive rating, defensive rating, and net rating splits come from PBPStats.com and account for medium-, high-, and very high-leverage situations unless otherwise noted. All injury news and notes come from the official NBA injury report unless otherwise noted.)
Miami Heat at Dallas Mavericks
Dallas Mavericks +1.0 (-110)
Dallas Mavericks Moneyline (-102)
Though the Mavericks are on a three-game losing streak, the data here points to a victory for them at home over the Miami Heat.
Miami is an average road team (11-12 overall with a point differential of +0.1 but an adjusted net rating of -1.1). At home, Dallas is 16-7 outright with a +5.7 adjusted net rating.
Overall, the teams are pretty healthy, but accounting for the studs when actually active, we see the Mavericks with a relevant net rating of +2.9 for this game with Miami at +1.8.
Accounting for home-court advantage in addition to that net rating gap, I have the Mavericks favored, and numberFire's model has the Mavericks as 58.9% likely to cover the 1.0-point spread.
Los Angeles Clippers at San Antonio Spurs
San Antonio Spurs +7.0 (-110)
You may think that because the Los Angeles Clippers have Paul George and Kawhi Leonard they'll stomp the Spurs.
But in games with both George and Leonard active, their record is 9-7, and they are just 8-8 against the spread. Their net rating on non-garbage-time possessions is +3.7, though.
What does it all mean? Well, accounting for the Spurs' health, their relevant net rating is actually -2.9, which ain't half bad.
Once we account for home-court advantage and rest, the Spurs are sitting at 5.4-point underdogs in my model. numberFire also has the Spurs +7.0 as a one-star play.
Indiana Pacers at Denver Nuggets
Under 240.0 (-110)
It feels tough to go against a Denver Nuggets over because they just keep scoring. They have at least 115 points in 12 straight games with an average of 121.1 per game in that span. Even in that blistering span, however, the over is just 6-5-1.
The Indiana Pacers, too, are allowing a lot of points lately (126 or more in three straight). But their road games have gone over just 40.9% of the time, primarily because they find ways to limit opposing offenses. They've allowed opponents to go over their implied team total in 36.4% of games in road matchups.
But the bigger issue is the Pacers' scoring. Their relevant offensive rating for this game is only 107.9 once we account for the absence of Tyrese Haliburton. With Haliburton off the floor, the team's offensive rating falls by 7.4 points, and their defensive rating improves by 4.2 points, as well. Those are under-friendly tweaks to make to the model.
