Player props can be useful in a variety of ways, from taking advantage of them straight up within the betting market 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 FanDuel Sportsbook to pinpoint spots where value can be had tonight.
The prop-betting experience on FanDuel Sportsbook is getting even more fun. You can track your player props with real-time updates and place in-game props with ease.
Please note that betting lines and our player projections may change throughout the day after this article is published.
Marcus Smart Under 13.5 Points (-122)
For the most part, Marcus Smart scored the ball really well against the Milwaukee Bucks last round, but the defense of the Miami Heat should be a much tougher challenge.
In the regular season, Milwaukee was 14th in defensive rating while Miami ranked 4th.
Smart played in six games in the last series, and he went under 13.5 points three times. The decider was his shooting from deep. He hit multiple threes in each of the three games in which he scored at least 14 points, and he made only one triple in the other three outings.
For the year, Smart averaged 12.1 points per night, and our projections don't see him being super involved offensively in Game 1. We have him scoring 12.0 points on just 9.8 shots.
Bam Adebayo Over 9.5 Rebounds (+108)
The Boston Celtics have done a lot of things well in the playoffs, but rebounding is one exception. In these playoffs, the Celtics rank just 10th in rebound rate (48.7%) among all postseason teams.
Bam Adebayo can take advantage.
Bam had eight or fewer rebounds in each of the last four games of Miami's series with the Philadelphia 76ers as Joel Embiid ate into his rebounding totals. Boston doesn't have an Embiid-type big and has been playing Al Horford a ton of minutes at center with Jayson Tatum and Grant Williams at forward -- although Robert Williams should see more run in this series.
Adebayo averaged 10.1 boards per game in the regular season, and Boston has allowed 13.9 rebounds per game to the center position in the playoffs.
We project Bam to snag 9.5 rebounds tonight -- right at this line. With the over at +108 and the under priced at -132, the over is the side to be on.