NBA Betting Guide for 1/19/21: Is There Any Value in These Two Games?
Betting on the NBA can get a little overwhelming throughout the season because there are games virtually 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.)
New Orleans Pelicans at Utah Jazz
These two teams have a pretty sizable gap in terms of estimated net rating to start the season. The Utah Jazz are 5th in the NBA at +5.4, and the New Orleans Pelicans are 20th at -1.9.
Along with this, numberFire likes the Jazz moneyline at -240. Those odds imply a 70.6% probability, but we view the Jazz as 77.0% likely to win. We're considering it a three-star bet out of five. The betting action is in agreement, with 66% of the tickets and 73% of the money backing the Jazz to win outright.
The over at 217.5 points also looks good.
numberFire's algorithm views the over as 66.3% likely to occur, implying a return of 26.5%. The median projected score is 116.9 to 108.9 for the Jazz (225.8 total points), leaving room for error on the over. My betting model views it similarly with an expected over/under of 226.8 points and the over as 68.5% likely to hit.
The betting trends are also on the over: 68% of the tickets and 66% of the money has come in on the over.
Oklahoma City Thunder at Denver Nuggets
There's less value on this game overall, but numberFire's favorite bet is the Oklahoma City Thunder +10.0. Our algorithm views it as a three-star bet out of five and the Thunder as 62.1% likely to cover that spread. Our median projected game total is 110.6 to 104.5 for the Denver Nuggets, a 6.1-point gap. The betting trends are more split on this one (45% of the tickets and 49% of the money are on the Thunder to cover), but that's definitely not something that should get us to distrust the model.
It's a tougher case for the over/under. There seems to be a sizable discrepancy in tickets (62%) and money (77%) on the over, though. That differential indicates heavy bets are on the over. numberFire's algorithm suggests the under, actually, is the preferred play, rating it as a two-star bet out of five. My model does prefer the under as well by a good margin. Of our 25 strongest predictions -- the games that most closely resemble this game historically -- 23 of them hit the under.
The Thunder +10.0 seems like the best bet in this game, but the under is still more appealing if you had to pick, despite the betting indications.
