How to Bet on NBA Games
Bet on NBA Games
As much as hockey is enjoyed around the world, and as great as the Olympic hockey tournament is, there is no major American sports league that enjoys international love quite like the NBA.
It is the premier basketball league, the second most popular sport around the world (only trailing soccer), and it boasts more than 100 international players from nearly 40 countries around the world.
The NBA is global, in its reach, and in the sportsbooks that offer NBA betting. And it dominates the sports betting calendar from its traditional start in October through the NBA Finals that end in mid-June.
NBA Season Structure
Don’t listen to the naysayers that claim the NBA regular season is too long. No one who bets on the NBA would ever say such a thing. It’s heresy. The NBA season is perfect as it is.
A normal NBA regular season is a 1230-game smorgasbord of sports betting magic. Each team plays 82 games, split evenly at 41 at home and 41 on the road. A total of 16 teams make the playoffs (eight from each conference), and 15 separate playoff series take place over the final two months of the season to eventually crown a champion.
That is roughly 90 extra playoff games for sports betting to take place, including the season-ending best-of-seven NBA Finals, which is like the Super Bowl of betting night after night.
If you like sports betting, you love the NBA.
Types of NBA Bets
The most common wager you’ll place on the NBA are bets on the outcome or point total of a single game.
- Point Spread: The most popular bet in all of basketball is to bet on the outcome of the game using a point spread. If you bet on the Lakers -7.5, in order for you to win your bet, the Lakers need to win the game by at least eight points. If you take the underdog Timberwolves in that game, even if they lose by seven points, you still win your bet.
- Of course, the downside with a bet like this is the genuine possibility that garbage time baskets at the end of the game can blow your bet.
- Moneyline: If you’ve been burned one too many times by those end-of-game points, a moneyline bet removes the uncertainty of last-minute shots covering the spread. That’s because when betting the moneyline, there is no point spread, only a win or loss. Instead, leveling the difference between the favorite and underdog are odds.
- A bet on the Lakers might pay -170, which means that for every $170 you bet, you will win $100. A bet on Minnesota might pay +160, which means that for every $100 wagered, you can win up to $160.
- Totals: Also called an over/under bet, the beauty of a totals bet is that the winner of the game does not matter. All you are betting on is the combined points scored in the game and if that total will go over or under the posted line. Garbage time points at the end of the game can also blow this type of bet, so even though the winning team doesn’t matter, a totals bet still has its stresses.
Made most famous by the Super Bowl, proposition bets are a big part of any NBA bettors’ weekly action. These range from individual player bets, like how many three-pointers will James Harden hit tonight, to seasonal bets, like who will lead the NBA in scoring.
Prop bets also can involve team accomplishments, like which team will get the most points from its bench in a given game or most offensive rebounds. You can also bet the over/under on NBA team win totals for the season, as well as the winners of individual awards, like the league MVP.
Just like with single-game NBA betting, betting on the NBA Playoffs will lean heavily on a lot of point spread, moneyline, and totals betting. But during the playoffs, you can also bet on the series – either the winner of the series outright or prop bets on how many games it will take for a team to win.
There is also an expanded list of available player and team proposition bets, which grows even bigger by the time the playoffs reach the NBA Finals.
As with other sports, there will be odds posted on who will win the NBA Finals, the Conference Finals, will a team make the playoffs, etc. All of these types of bets can be placed months in advance at a sportsbook’s estimated odds. As the season progresses, the odds change, but the odds that were in play when you placed your wager are locked in.
Sometimes called in-play betting or in-game betting, live betting has become one of the most popular and exciting ways to bet on the NBA. These are bets on games that are already in progress, and the fast pace of the NBA makes it the perfect sport for live betting.
As the game progresses, the point spread on the game, half and quarter, are constantly changing. Individual prop bets come and go and change as the game moves along. There are buyout options, second chance betting, and a number of other individual and team bets that can only be wagered live.
Live NBA betting is not something that can be done in a brick-and-mortar sportsbook and is best done on a mobile device with a fast and flexible platform that can keep up with the constantly changing odds.
NBA Betting Strategies
There are a lot of teams playing a lot of games, and it can be overwhelming to keep knowledgeable about it all. So don’t try. Stick to what you know and what skills and knowledge you can expand on. If you live on the west coast, study the west coast teams. The information on those teams is likely to be the easiest to find.
Once you dial in on an area in which you can more easily become an expert, study a team’s home and road tendencies. Keep track of playing time, injuries, scheduled rest days for players, fatigue, and any motivating factors that might influence a game by a couple of points. Is a player returning to face his old team? Is a coach fighting for his job? Learn it all.
Keep notes. If you’re going to take the time to study the NBA teams, study yourself too. Good note-taking on the bets you place and if they are successful can help you spot trends. Do you tend to overvalue a team at home? Are you missing on teams that are playing on consecutive nights? Are you hitting on some teams more often while losing more often on others?
All of this information can help you become better at spotting your strengths and weaknesses and making the appropriate adjustments in your sports betting. If you are going to be betting over and over again, make sure you learn from your mistakes and your successes.
One thing you never want to do is chase a loss. Make a plan going into a night of NBA betting, and stick to it. If you drop your three early games, don’t suddenly decide to bet on three later games that you had previously ignored. There was a reason you weren’t going to bet them, to begin with. Trying to cover a loss is the absolute worst reason to change your mind.
You will have bad nights. It’s the nature of NBA betting. But if you create a good long-term strategy and stay the course, those bad nights will be few and far between.
The most important note about NBA betting – never bet more than you can afford to lose. We all get into NBA betting with the hope of making money, but it doesn’t always work out. If you can’t afford to lose it, don’t bet it.
Sports Betting How To Guide
How Money Line Works?
Moneyline betting is by far the easiest way to place a sports wager. There are no point spreads to parse, no garbage-time free throws to ruin your betting day, and no last-minute meaningless touchdowns to take you from a winner to a loser.
How to Bet Odds
When we, as sports fans, learned our multiplication tables, we aced the number 7. Seven, 14, 21, 28, 35, 42 were easy because we all watched football on the weekends. Multiplication by sevens, then add a three, a six after a missed PAT.
How to Bet on NFL Games
Baseball is America’s pastime, but football is America’s crazed passion, with its weekly schedule of games, millions of television viewers across the country and the world, and the billion-dollar stadiums that serve as Sunday cathedrals in 32 American cities.
What is the Spread?
If you are a golfer or have ever played on a bowling team, think of a point spread like a handicap. It is a way for two teams of differing abilities to play each other on equal footing. The better team, and the favorite in the game, gives a certain amount …
