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NBA Finals Player Prop – Since his return from injury, Dallas guard Jaden Hardy has gotten consistent minutes off the bench. In each of the past six games, he has played between 8 and 12 minutes.
To get an estimate of his expected points, let’s use his points per minute from the regular season. His 7.3 points in 13.5 minutes per game gives a rate of 0.541. Assuming he plays 10 minutes, this gives an expected point total of 5.4.
Hardy went over 4.5 points in Game 1 of the NBA Finals against Boston, although most of his 13 points came in garbage time. There is value in Jaden Hardy, over 3.5 points, -142 at FanDuel.
Michigan Panthers at Birmingham Stallions, UFL Conference Championship Game – Birmingham has had its challenges of late. DC John Chavis is no longer with the team, and they struggled against Michigan last week in a 20-19 win.
However, Birmingham had five players with All-UFL honors, and QB Adrian Martinez most likely wins Most Valuable Player award. Quantitative analyst Edward Egros has a least squares ranking system for the UFL, and this model predicts Birmingham by more than 6 points at home versus Michigan.
Edward likes Birmingham -5, -105 at FanDuel (game that kicks off at 3pm Eastern on Saturday). Check out all of his excellent UFL analysis.
Euro 2024 player ratings – With the conclusion of the club season, ESPN published their list of top 100 players. They use a wisdom of crowds approach that polls over 50 people on the ESPN staff. They list the top 10 goalkeepers and the top 30 defenders, midfielders and attackers.
Let’s look at the top three countries by numbers of players on their 2024 Euro roster:
- France, 11. The French excel on defense, as they can’t put all five top 30 players on defense at their positions at one time. Centerback William Saliba is the second ranked defender, as his Arsenal team allowed a Premier League best 29 goals this season.
- England, 10. The English excel with attacking players with stars like Harry Kane (2nd), Phil Foden (8th) and Bukayo Saka (9th). 29th ranked Jack Grealish didn’t even make England’s roster for Euro 2024.
- Germany, 10. The Germans have their strength in the midfield with players like Toni Kroos (4th) and Florian Wirtz (6th). They could have more players from the top 100 but unfortunately can’t play two goalkeepers at once. Germany seems like they will play Manuel Neuer (6th) over Marc-Andre Ter Stegan (5th).
While Germany doesn’t have elite attacking players like France’s Kylian Mbappe or Kane, the ESPN FC 100 suggests the same quality over the starting line ups as England and France. In addition, Germany has home field in Euro 2024.
Kyler Murray, Arizona Cardinals – Murray missed the first half of the 2023 season with an injury. When he returned, Murray led Arizona to three of their four wins for the season. This included an upset road win at Philadelphia.
However, The Power Rank’s underlying numbers do not look good for Murray. The most predictive passing metric is success rate. A play is a success on offense if it gains the following fraction of yards towards the next 1st down:
- 50% on 1st down.
- 70% on 2nd down.
- 100% on 3rd, 4th down.
Murray had a 40.1% passing success rate, worse than the NFL average of 42.3%.
Murray seemed to do well in protecting the ball, as he had a 1.9% interception rate. His rate was better than the 2.3% NFL average in 2023, and Murray has never been worse than NFL average in any of his five seasons.
However, my research has shown that interception rate is not predictive. In addition to interception, you should look at passes defensed, or plays in which the defense gets a hand on the ball. Bad ball rate, which includes interceptions and passes defended, looks at how often a QB puts the ball in a dangerous position and is an excellent predictor of interceptions.
While Murray has had a better than NFL average bad ball rate in his first four seasons, his 14.4% bad ball rate in 2023 was worse than the NFL average of 12.1%. He got fortunate with interceptions.
Basketball humor – Chicago Bulls star Scottie Pippen got elbowed in the face. The refs respond by pulling him off the court so play could continue (:28 run time).
Smarter sports betting in less than 5 minutes
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