Football bettors' post-Super Bowl guide to the NBA
By JASON LOGAN
The day after Super Bowl is an eye opening day for sports bettors. Plenty of us have had on football blinders for the past five months and have zero clue about anything off the gridiron.
With pigskin off the menu until the fall, the NBA bumps up to main event status in the sports betting industry – at least until March Madness rolls around. So, in order to get your football-soaked brain up to speed on what’s happened on the hardwood since October, we break down some of the biggest betting story lines in the NBA:
Hot-lanta Hawks
If you’re taking a gander at the NBA standings for the first time this season, you may be wondering what the hell happened to the Atlanta Hawks. Atlanta, a team good enough to make the playoffs but little else, has exploded over the past month and a bit.
The Hawks bring a 19-game winning streak into Monday, having covered in the first 15 games of that impressive stretch – an all-time high as far back as our NBA ATS records show. However, the market has adjusted and then some to Atlanta’s success, and books are now inflating their nightly spreads. That’s led to a 1-3 ATS mark in the Hawks’ last four games.
Atlanta is very reliant on the 3-pointer, shooting an NBA-best 38.8 percent from beyond the arc and picking up 28.5 percent of its total offense from distance – an always dangerous tendency. One off night from outside, and things fall apart. And, Atlanta just lost Thabo Sefolosha to a calf injury for the next six weeks, taking away one of its top defenders and an unheralded glue guy in the Hawks’ rotation.
If you’re thinking about rolling your football winnings into the Atlanta Hawks, you might be late to the party.
Cleveland is supposed to be good, right?
When LeBron James headed home for the 2014-15 season, the power shifted in the NBA and the Cleveland Cavaliers became the new NBA Championship favorite. Things got even sweeter for Cavs fans when the team traded for elite big man Kevin Love. But, much like the Miami Heat and Los Angeles Lakers – who also formed All-Star-rich rosters – Cleveland has gone through some growing pains (29-20 SU, 22-27 ATS).
Right now, the Cavaliers look like they have things figured out. Cleveland rides a 10-game winning streak into Monday’s date with the lowly Philadelphia 76ers, going 9-1 ATS in that span. A closer look at this stretch reveals that many of those wins came against bottom feeders - Lakers, Jazz, Hornets, Pistons, Kings and Timberwolves – so don’t be stunned if we’re a little hesitant to crown Cleveland NBA champs just yet.
Lebron & Co. have some tougher tasks ahead on the schedule, playing the Clippers, Pacers, Heat, Bulls, Wizards, and Warriors before the month is through. Betting the Cavs on the regular is a tough chore due to the massive inflation their lines receive, but the smarter bet has been on the Under.
Cleveland, with all that offensive firepower, has underperformed with the basketball, leading to a 16-32-1 O/U record – tied for the best Under bet in the league. The Cavaliers, much like Miami’s “Big Three”, have gone against the grain – everyone expecting a mountain of points each outing – and keep fans of the Under happy. Even if Love doesn’t play defense.
Warriors, come out and play
Even though you haven’t thought about the NBA since the Spurs downed the Heat in the NBA Finals, take comfort in knowing that the Western Conference is still where the big boys plays.
Outside of the Hawks, the next four top teams in the league come from the West. And seven of the 10 best records in the NBA belong to Western Conference franchises. At the very tippy top of that ultra-competitive conference sit the Golden State Warriors, at 37-8 SU and 29-15-1 ATS.
Golden State’s game plan is simple: We’re going to score more points than you. And it’s worked out pretty well so far. The Warriors were a license to print money early in the season, catching the betting market off guard with an 11-5 ATS mark out of the gate. But since then, betting Golden State has become a little more picky-choosey.
At home in the Bay Area, the Warriors have run the table – going 17-6-1 ATS this year. They score more (114.2 points per home), shoot better (49.8 percent), and drain more 3-pointers (11 per game) inside Oracle Arena.
Golden State plays the fastest pace in the NBA, averaging 101.3 points per 100 possessions, and lures opponents into this tempo – like it or not. That pace has forced foes to play well outside their comfort zone, which is why the Warriors are averaging 16.6 forced turnovers – fourth in the NBA.
You’d think a “shoot first, play defense later” type team at that pace would be smashing the totals every time it takes the court, but the oddsmakers have done a good job padding against those points, and actually has Golden State at 23-22 O/U on the year.
Big Bucks, No whammies
It could be the ho-hum state of the Eastern Conference or just that the Milwaukee Bucks have been so bad for so long that any improvement would be a shockwave through the NBA betting market, but things are OK in Brew Town.
Milwaukee is currently the second-best bet in the NBA at 32-15 ATS (20-6 ATS on the road) and sits sixth in the conference at two games over .500. Ah, the East. The Bucks are a starless team with six players scoring at least nine points a night and a bench that ranks No. 1 in the league – averaging 43.6 points from the reserves.
Milwaukee is extremely efficient on both ends of the floor, shooting a sterling 46.6 percent from the field but averaging a patient 98.7 points per game. On defense, the Bucks have limited opponents to just 97 points against and 43.5 percent shooting – ranked second in defensive efficiency at 0.986 points per 100 possessions. But the biggest thing playing into Milwaukee’s success against the spread is that they could be the least sexy team in the NBA.
From a lack of name-brand players to those terrible Xmas-inspired uniforms, the betting market isn’t going to suck the value out of the Bucks like it would Cleveland or Golden State. And they’ve held that value despite a rash of season-ending injuries to key players. Thanks to a deep rotation, Milwaukee has been able to absorb those blows and keep moving forward – like the NBA’s version of Rocky Balboa.
