The Bulls and Pelicans have pulled off outright upsets as double-digit underdogs this week. With two more home underdogs and a heavy spread in Utah, will the theme of upsets keep rolling?
Betting on the NBA can be tricky, 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 games? All odds are from FanDuel Sportsbook, and all ratings are out of five stars.
Miami Heat at Atlanta Hawks
Hawks +1.5 (-110) - 2 Stars
The Hawks should be great betting value in both of these games in Atlanta -- provided they don't pull off a dominant win tonight.
Atlanta was actually the eighth-best home team in terms of net rating (+5.0) in their own building this season. We saw that in a dominant 29-point win over Charlotte during the play-in tournament.
When you've got a great shooter like Trae Young, he'll typically perform better at home. He shot 48.0% from the field at home versus 44.1% on the road. That'll be a nice boon off Young's shockingly-poor 11-for-32 (34.3%) effort in the first two games of this series.
Unsurprisingly, 79% of the moneyline bets in this one are on Miami after two dominant showings at home. Fading the public with Atlanta in this spot is likely the sharp wager with a line that was even startling to my cynical and contrarian eyes.
Milwaukee Bucks at Chicago Bulls
Over 222.5 (-110) - 4 Stars
For the first time this postseason, more games went over their projected total (two) than under (one) on Thursday. The market is finally correcting itself to the slower pace the NBA playoffs have brought this year.
As I sided with over 225.5 in this matchup on Wednesday, I'll side with our model and the over as this series shifts to Chicago. In fact, the Bulls' natural shooting lift at home makes it an even stronger bet than Game 2 was in Milwaukee.
Milwaukee still had a 112.9 offensive rating without Khris Middleton this season. Middleton is done for this series with a knee injury. It's Chicago's up-and-down shooting I'm concerned about, but the Bulls' 115.3 offensive rating at home was the fourth-best mark in the entire NBA.
numberFire's model -- with Middleton's injury factored in -- still sees this game heading over 71.1% of the time. Compared to the standard 52.4% implied probability at -110 odds, that is worth another bet on scoring in this one despite a heartbreaking 224-point final tally on Wednesday.
Phoenix Suns at New Orleans Pelicans
Phoenix ML (-120) - 3 Stars
See, I don't just fade the public blindly.
I don't know if it's because they're unaware of the hamstring injury to Devin Booker, but Phoenix is getting a nice amount of love with 69% of moneyline bets as a two-point road favorite.
Still, the Suns are the better team, and with a day to adjust, they should be fine. Phoenix had a +5.0 net rating this season during floor situations without Booker.
Even when you just account for the period of time the Pelicans had C.J. McCollum, they still just had a +3.4 net rating. Yeah, the Suns are really, really good.
numberFire's model still has Phoenix winning this game outright an absurd 67.5% of the time without D-Book. The -120 odds imply a 54.5% implied chance they do, so I'm comfortable making this my only multi-unit wager of the evening without any oddities of the spread or total to be concerned about.