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Team Prop
Also known as: Team Proposition, Team Total
A team prop is a bet on a single team's statistical performance in a game, independent of the opponent's score or the game outcome. Common team props include team totals, first-half scoring, and team-specific milestones.
Team props isolate one team’s output. The most common team prop is the team total (points scored by that team), which separates the two halves of a game total into individual sides. Team totals are useful for bettors with an asymmetric view: they expect one offense to perform well but don’t have a strong opinion on the other side of the game.
Other team props include first-half team totals, first-quarter scoring, race-to-X (first team to reach a given score), and team-level milestones (rushing yards, total turnovers). Each one is a slice of game state with its own pricing logic.
Worked example. NBA game: total is 224.5. Team A’s team total is 113.5 (-110); Team B’s is 111 (-110). The implied team totals don’t perfectly sum to the game total because the lines are quoted with their own juice. Elite Picks’ model projects Team A at 116 points and Team B at 110 (combined 226). The model agrees with the game total over but identifies more value on the Team A side: model says Team A goes over 113.5 about 58% of the time vs. the implied 52.4%. Backing the team-specific over isolates the conviction and avoids dependency on Team B’s output.
Team props are valuable for bettors with detailed team-level models but no view on the matchup overall. Elite Picks’ game-level projections produce expected score distributions for each team independently, so team total props are priced from the same underlying distribution as the game total and the spread. When the team-side projection is sharper than the combined-total projection, the team prop is the right vehicle.
Example
An NFL team total of 23.5 (-115/-105) means the over wins if the team scores 24 or more, the under wins if they score 23 or fewer, regardless of the opponent's score.