{"id":6871,"date":"2009-01-07T08:12:38","date_gmt":"2009-01-07T13:12:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.capperspicks.com\/blog\/?p=6871"},"modified":"2023-02-07T07:26:25","modified_gmt":"2023-02-07T15:26:25","slug":"basketball-betting-guide-70109","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/cappers\/basketball-betting-guide-70109\/","title":{"rendered":"2009 Basketball Sportsbook Betting Guide"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0Training Camp: Basketball Betting Guide For The Football-Deprived<\/h2>\n

There\u2019s 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. \u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s 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\u2019ve got the same pointspreads, totals and betting terminology to use, a sport that\u2019s simple to understand, and most importantly, hundreds upon hundreds of betting opportunities.<\/p>\n

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, \u201conly\u201d 259 of those teams have drawn betting odds this season. That\u2019s still a giant platter from which you can choose the softest lines.<\/p>\n

College basketball lines\u00a0in the Bodog Sportsbook.<\/h2>\n

Those softest lines are in the NCAA\u2019s middle and lower major conferences. Just as you may favor a smaller-market NFL team like this year\u2019s 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:<\/p>\n

Niagara Purple Eagles (MAAC): 10-2
\nMiddle Tennessee State Blue Raiders (Sun Belt): 8-2
\nIllinois State Redbirds (MVC): 8-2
\nArkansas State Red Wolves (Sun Belt): 8-2<\/p>\n

These are four of the six most profitable teams in college, and there are tons more where they came from. The more research you\u2019re willing to do to learn about these smaller programs, the more money you\u2019ll 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\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

NBA betting<\/strong>\u00a0in the Bodog\u00a0<\/strong>Sportsbook<\/strong>.<\/strong><\/h2>\n

You could make a pretty good living just by exploiting the casual bettor\u2019s 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\u2019re getting the ball more often after the Knicks have taken their shot on offense.\"\"<\/p>\n

This is where the great value-handicapping buzzword \u201cefficiency\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

These are the differences between \u201creal\u201d value and perceived value that you want to exploit as a handicapper. If you\u2019re already using efficiency-based stats to do your football analysis, you\u2019ll have no problem doing the same for basketball. If not, here are some of the advanced stats that have credibility in hoops betting circles:<\/p>\n

Team stats<\/strong><\/p>\n

Pace: Possessions per game
\nOffensive efficiency: Points scored per 100 possessions
\nDefensive efficiency: Points allowed per 100 possessions
\nStrength of schedule: A more advanced version of the SOS used by college bracketologists<\/p>\n

Player stats<\/strong><\/p>\n

Points\/rebounds\/assists per 40 minutes (or 36 minutes) instead of per game
\nPlayer Efficiency Rating (PER): A useful overall Hollinger stat, but not a good indicator of defense
\nRoland Rating: A plus-minus stat, best used when looking at specific 5-man rotations
\nEffective Field Goal Percentage (eFG%) and True Shooting Percentage (TS%): Two ways of adjusting a shooter\u2019s percentage to account for the value of 3-pointers and\/or free throws<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bodog Sportsbook takes you to back to training camp with this week’s article on basketball betting for the football-deprived….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":68,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[258],"tags":[8151,1979,8149,3938,4207,4631,504,4040,8153,8154,744,747,8152,759,8150],"class_list":["post-6871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cappers","tag-2009-basketball-odds","tag-basketball-betting","tag-basketball-betting-help","tag-basketball-odds","tag-college-basketball-betting","tag-college-basketball-odds","tag-gambling-odds","tag-nba-basketball-betting","tag-nba-basketball-betting-lines","tag-nba-basketball-odds","tag-nba-betting","tag-nba-lines","tag-ncaa-basketball-betting-lines","tag-ncaa-betting","tag-understanding-how-to-bet-on-basketball"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/68"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6871"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6871\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":106766,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6871\/revisions\/106766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}