Training Camp: Basketball Betting Guide For The Football-Deprived
There’s no getting around it – football season is almost over. That means the end of betting season for a number of players, but why close up shop now? There is money out there to be made, and over the next four months the basketball court is the best place to get paid.
It’s like hitting the easy button for handicappers. Moving from football to hoops gives you an opportunity to play in a less competitive environment where your sharp skills are more likely to pay off. You’ve got the same pointspreads, totals and betting terminology to use, a sport that’s simple to understand, and most importantly, hundreds upon hundreds of betting opportunities.
The worst thing about betting football is the 16-game NFL regular season – and even shorter for college football. If a sharp bankroll is built unit by unit, then there are only so many opportunities to reinvest your football earnings. Now look at the 82-game NBA regular season, and the incredibly bloated 344-team Division I in college hoops. Granted, “only” 259 of those teams have drawn betting odds this season. That’s still a giant platter from which you can choose the softest lines.
College basketball lines in the Bodog Sportsbook.
Those softest lines are in the NCAA’s middle and lower major conferences. Just as you may favor a smaller-market NFL team like this year’s Carolina Panthers (9-6-1 ATS), you can find tremendous value in the lesser-known college programs. Look at the ATS records some of these teams have already posted:
Niagara Purple Eagles (MAAC): 10-2
Middle Tennessee State Blue Raiders (Sun Belt): 8-2
Illinois State Redbirds (MVC): 8-2
Arkansas State Red Wolves (Sun Belt): 8-2
These are four of the six most profitable teams in college, and there are tons more where they came from. The more research you’re willing to do to learn about these smaller programs, the more money you’ll make. Statisticians like Ken Pomeroy and John Hollinger have made this process a lot simpler with their insightful number-crunching – much of which is available for free on the Internet. Although basketball isn’t divided into discrete plays like football, having only five players per team (and 12 per roster) with fairly specific roles lends basketball to this kind of analysis.
NBA betting in the Bodog Sportsbook.
You could make a pretty good living just by exploiting the casual bettor’s attachment to bad information. Nobody thinks the New York Knicks can play defense, simply because they allow 107.2 points per game, second only to Golden State (111.3) in the NBA. But the Knicks also play a very fast pace at 100.4 possessions per game, again second to the Warriors at 100.6. Some of those points opponents are scoring happen because they’re getting the ball more often after the Knicks have taken their shot on offense.
This is where the great value-handicapping buzzword “efficiency” comes in. There are six NBA teams worse than the Knicks in defensive efficiency, which John Hollinger measures in terms of points allowed per 100 possessions rather than per game. New York is far from a defensive juggernaut, but not nearly as bad as the casual bettor may believe based on all those high-scoring results. The under is 18-14 for the Knicks this year.
These are the differences between “real” value and perceived value that you want to exploit as a handicapper. If you’re already using efficiency-based stats to do your football analysis, you’ll have no problem doing the same for basketball. If not, here are some of the advanced stats that have credibility in hoops betting circles:
Team stats
Pace: Possessions per game
Offensive efficiency: Points scored per 100 possessions
Defensive efficiency: Points allowed per 100 possessions
Strength of schedule: A more advanced version of the SOS used by college bracketologists
Player stats
Points/rebounds/assists per 40 minutes (or 36 minutes) instead of per game
Player Efficiency Rating (PER): A useful overall Hollinger stat, but not a good indicator of defense
Roland Rating: A plus-minus stat, best used when looking at specific 5-man rotations
Effective Field Goal Percentage (eFG%) and True Shooting Percentage (TS%): Two ways of adjusting a shooter’s percentage to account for the value of 3-pointers and/or free throws
