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 can we 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.)
Sacramento Kings at Golden State Warriors
Over 236.0 (-110)
There's an unusually early West Coast start time for Game 6 between the Sacramento Kings and Golden State Warriors at 8:00 p.m. Eastern, but that's because of the nightcap being in Los Angeles.
Through five games in the series, the Warriors are maintaining a 55.0% effective field goal percentage (eFG%; 6th in the playoffs), nearly five full points greater than the Kings' 50.4% (13th in the playoffs).
Golden State is also finding ways to be competitive on the glass against a Kings team that was eighth in defensive rebounding rate in the regular season. The Warriors have slightly improved their regular-season offensive rebounding rate (24.4%) in this series (24.9%).
By my count, home teams in closeout games since 2016 (excluding the bubble season) are 7-6 in a pretty small sample, but home teams trailing entering a Game 6 are just 13-23, so there's probably something to that despite the seed discrepancy for each side tonight.
Trends are great and all, but what does the individual matchup look like for tonight?
The main angle for me is the over (236.0). My model thinks this game scores 239.8 points tonight, and numberFire's algorithm likes the over as a two-star play, as well, and projects a total of 241.1.
I also like the Warriors' moneyline (-310), but numberFire's model sees more value in the Kings at +250, so I'm okay with agreeing to disagree and focusing on the total.
Memphis Grizzlies at Los Angeles Lakers
Los Angeles Lakers Moneyline (-200)
We get a tighter spread in the nightcap between the Los Angeles Lakers (-4.5) and Memphis Grizzlies.
Neither team is shooting well in the series. The Lakers have a 50.3% eFG% with the Grizzlies at 48.5%.
Everything else in the four factors is, more or less, even, though LA is ahead in the free-throw department and is heading home -- a good sign for that category.
Long-term models are not fully capturing the Lakers' turnaround since getting healthy and starting to gel together, but it's also possible that the returns for the trio of LeBron James, Anthony Davis, and D'Angelo Russell are a bit too good to be true.
After all, their net rating together is +8.7, and they're notching an elite defensive rating (106.9) in games with all three active.
For me, the best play here is the moneyline and for the Lakers to close out the series at home.