With the NBA opting not to play on Election Day, today gives basketball bettors the perfect chance to take a step back and dig into the season so far. A few teams have emerged as underrated by the books, while others appear overrated. Statistical and qualitative similarities between those teams point to some meaningful trends moving forward, and bettors should exploit that edge until the books adjust. Let’s take a look at some of the key NBA betting insights thus far. For more best bets, be sure to visit the OddsShopper tool.
Net Rating Correlating With Cover Percentage
This might seem obvious at first. Great teams probably lead the NBA in net rating, and, as everyone knows, good teams win, but great teams cover. But last year’s top-ranked team in cover percentage, the Memphis Grizzlies, ranked just fifth in net rating (+5.3). The next-best team, the Oklahoma City Thunder, ranked 27th (-8.0).
This year’s top-six teams in net rating, the Cleveland Cavaliers (+10.5), Phoenix Suns (+8.9), Milwaukee Bucks (+8.5), Utah Jazz (+6.5), Dallas Mavericks (+6.1) and Toronto Raptors (+5.5) have started the year a combined 42-19-1 against the spread. The Cavs, Bucks, Jazz and Raptors have covered at least 70% of the time.
Notably, this trend doesn’t hold for teams who are failing to cover. The Detroit Pistons (-9.5), Houston Rockets (-7.8), Los Angeles Lakers (-7.2), San Antonio Spurs (-5), Charlotte Hornets (-5) and Orlando Magic (-4.4) make up the NBA’s bottom tier. However, these teams are less noteworthy 26-37-2 against the spread. Two of those teams, the Rockets and Spurs, have even covered at least 50% of the time.
These trends are unlikely to persist as books adjust their priors and as teams regress to the mean. The Cavs will start getting favored by a wider margin now that they’re 8-2, and the Bucks will probably start getting too many points to cover due to their thin and aging roster. But bettors who blindly back teams that have fared well in net rating are up by a decent margin, so it’s a trend worth noting. Let’s dive deeper into more NBA betting insights.
Which Teams Are the Books Overrating?
If the teams covering with the least frequency aren’t the worst performers in net rating, who are they? They’re the teams that have most flagrantly failed to meet preseason expectations. The bottom-six teams in cover percentage are the Miami Heat, Los Angeles Lakers, Golden State Warriors, Minnesota Timberwolves, Brooklyn Nets and Los Angeles Clippers. They are a combined 19-46 against the spread.
These teams probably aren’t costing the books much money. It’s fair to assume that the public has eagerly supported a fair number of these big-market teams, allowing the books to hang worse numbers than they would for smaller-market ones. But as the public starts to turn on them, as fading Russell Westbrook and the collapsing Nets now seems like common sense, the books will probably shift the markets accordingly.
But it’s worth digging into why each of these teams (well, not the Nets and Lakers) has been overrated. The triumphant return of Kawhi Leonard probably earned the Clippers more respect than they deserved. Getting Rudy Gobert seems to have actually hurt the Timberwolves — Minnesota’s offensive rating is 106.2 with him on the floor but 116.8 with him on the bench.
Elsewhere, The Warriors have been experimenting with bigs like Jonathan Kuminga and James Wiseman, but both have been hindrances on offense and have cut their offensive rating by double digits. The Heat have played slower and less efficient behind a near-washed Kyle Lowry. He has hurt their offensive rating by a rotation-high 5.5 points, and only Bam Adebayo and Gabe Vincent have slowed Miami’s pace by a wider margin.
New Take-Foul Rules Make the Fastbreak More Important
The NBA’s decision to reward players victimized by take fouls with a free-throw and possession has made the fastbreak a much more significant part of the game. Only one of last year’s bottom-six teams in cover percentage also finished bottom-six in fastbreak efficiency. This year, two teams overlap — and the bottom-six teams in fastbreak efficiency are a combined 24-37 against the spread.
Five teams have fared more than one standard deviation worse in net fastbreak efficiency than the rest of the association: the Philadelphia 76ers, Miami Heat, Utah Jazz, Dallas Mavericks and Houston Rockets. They are also a combined 24-31 against the spread. Removing the outlier Utah Jazz, the only team to have covered in more than half of their games, and the remaining teams are only 15-28 against the spread.
Likewise, four teams have fared more than one standard deviation better: the Sacramento Kings, Indiana Pacers, Cleveland Cavaliers and Denver Nuggets. They are a combined 25-14 against the spread, and all four have covered in half their games or more.
When Will the Tank Race Materialize?
Before the season, most analysts expected several teams to sell out and tank for Victor Wembanyama and Scoot Henderson. Both players — especially Wembanyama — look like franchise-changing talents. But only two teams can get them, and the bottom three teams have the best chance of scoring a top-two pick. With a draft-class like this, tanking will certainly be one of the more intriguing NBA betting insights this season.
Some teams expected to tank, like the Utah Jazz and San Antonio Spurs, have started the season so strongly they may have hurt their odds of scoring a lottery pick. The Jazz even lead the Western Conference. That’s left the Orlando Magic and Houston Rockets as the leaders in the lottery race — followed closely by the Los Angeles Lakers, whose pick will end up in the hands of the New Orleans Pelicans.
The Lakers are unlikely to finish as a bottom-three team purely because they lack the incentive to do so. As a result, other underperforming squads should dial the pace back at some point — especially after the All-Star Break. This can create a headache for bettors. Backing big underdogs will probably become more risky than usual by the second half of the year.
Fortunately, nothing currently suggests that teams likely to enter the tanking fray, like the Spurs and Oklahoma City Thunder, plan to quit trying just yet. That said, bettors still need to carefully monitor injury reports for these teams, especially as the season progresses.
