February 13 - The first half of the NBA season comes to end with the All-Star weekend beginning on February 17. We present our own NBA power rankings from a sports betting perspective: Which NBA teams offer betting value, and which have been vastly overrated?
If you're going to bet on the NBA you have two choices: One, you can keep detailed records of your own, or Two, you can plunder the thoughts and analysis of professional sports handicappers. We opted for the latter and asked MasterBets, who sells NBA picks at Mycapper.com, an online sports handicapping service, to provide us with these handy NBA Power Ratings:
Certain teams with poor straight-up records actually offer a lot of value to sports bettors because they win games against the spread (ATS in the sports handicappers' lingo) - so a team like the Toronto Raptors has a 19-32 record but an amazing 29-20-2 ATS record! They have been a sports betting surprise this season, and a good one at that.
The San Antonio Spurs are the polar opposite. They have an impeccable 40-10 straight up record, and everyone knows how good they are, but their ATS record is an abysmal 23-26-1.
The key, as you might have guessed, lies not in how good or bad a team really is, but in the gap in perception between how sports bettors think a team will perform and how they actually perform. So, the Spurs are overrated from a sports betting perspective because people think that they will win by enough points to cover. Instead, they simply do enough to win and cost sports bettors a bundle in the process.
A team like the Seattle Supersonics have been very easy to make money on this season simply by opposing them against the spread. They are a woeful 18-32-1 ATS this season, and that number is even more skewed if you just take their road games into account. Teams that are very good ATS or very bad ATS can both make you money, it's the teams that cover 50% of the time that are hard to handicap and cash on with those sportsbooks.
Teams like the LA Lakers and Miami Heat, both 50% ATS in the first half of the season heading into the All-Star break, make sportsbooks a lot of money because they are so inconsistent. Sportsbooks would like to see every NBA team end up at exactly 50% ATS - that would mean a big profit to them. The Raptors have the best ATS record and they're only 9 games over .500, so you can see how complex it is to handicap the NBA.
It is possible to win betting the NBA, however, it just takes work. Avoid the media hype and focus on trends that you note, and which others might miss. Then go to an online sportsbook that offers good NBA lines and odds, and be selective.
If you fancy doing a Mrs Gretzky, and having a full go at sports betting like the pros (or the wives of pros, as the case may be), why not give Nine.com a bash? Readers of the Insider get a special deal if they remember to type in the secret coupon code (ooh), which you and only you can find below.
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