As one of the most popular sports in the United States, NBA basketball was the first to resume action last year in the Orlando, Florida bubble. Across much of the nation, the 2019-2020 NBA season was the first where gamblers could bet legally on professional basketball outside of Nevada. Fans responded in a big way as even the pandemic shortened season saw plenty of wagering action.
The Los Angeles Lakers won their 17th NBA title in October, capping the oddest season in NBA history. While the league took a few months off. the sportsbooks and oddsmakers went right to work, handicapping futures and totals bets in front of the 2021 season.
As the season wears on, fans and the wagering public are once again up against the bookmakers. Here are some of our most useful methods for fine-tuning your basketball betting.
Do Your Research
One of the best ways to start making more from your basketball bets is to be willing to put in the necessary time and effort. There are a lot of sites out there from which to gather information. Sites such as Basketball-Reference for player and team stats, to Betting.com, which offers wagering tips, odds comparisons, and other key information you can use to place stronger bets that have a better chance of winning.
The smart bettor makes full use of all information available. By comparing the odds with different providers, you’ll be able to get the very best prices, every time. This makes a lot more sense than always sticking with a single betting platform and never taking the time to look for higher odds elsewhere.
Schedules Are Important
There are certain sports where schedules aren’t a key factor for gambling enthusiasts, but basketball is not one of them. In this game, scheduling is absolutely huge and can make or break a team’s chances of success in any given game, as fatigue quickly builds up when players have a lot of games in a single week.
When considering placing a bet on a game, take a look at the recent schedules of both teams. In many cases, you might find that one of the teams has played more games recently and had to travel much further too. This will usually mean that the players will be more worn out, potentially allowing for some underdog upsets and big wins for you.
Bouncing Back
There are many different betting strategies used by basketball enthusiasts, and some of them tend to work a lot better than others. One popular strategy that has a proven track record of success is to try and bet on teams that are due to bounce back after a big defeat. It might sound complicated, but it’s actually quite easy to carry out this strategy.
All you need to do is take a look at teams that are still ranked as favorites even after losing by 15 points or more in their previous game. This means that the oddsmakers truly favor those teams, indicating that they have a lot of strong players who will want to bounce back after such an embarrassing loss. Stats show that this strategy pays out around 6 times in 10.
Avoid Betting with Your Heart
A common mistake that a lot of newbies and inexperienced gamblers can make when it comes to basketball betting is to bet with their hearts, rather than their heads. What we mean by this is that a lot of people like to bet on their favorite teams or players purely because they want to see them win, rather than considering the value and probabilities of those kinds of bets.
It’s much smarter to avoid betting on your favorite team at all, as this will prevent any kind of bias creeping in and affecting your strategy. Try to focus on teams and games that you have no personal investment in, as this will allow you to make more informed, evidence-backed bets and develop a more professional approach to basketball betting, rather than just going with your gut or pinning all your profits on the players you like most.
