The NBA is the pinnacle of professional basketball, a league that pits the world’s best players and teams against each other over the course of a grueling and dramatic season every year.
Millions regularly tune into the NBA not just in the US, but around the world, and huge swathes of this audience enjoy placing bets on the league. With such a dense schedule during the regular season, bettors have ample opportunity to wager on the action.
Like any form of sports betting, NBA betting requires research, attention, and adaptability. Before you do anything, though, you need to ensure you choose the right supplier to place your bets with.
It’s best to go with a reputable and reliable bookmaker who has established themselves as a safe and successful provider. You need to be assured that not only any money you deposit is safe but also any personal details you may also have to provide is secure too.
Plus, you want a supplier with as many NBA betting markets as possible so that you have more options to gamble with, meaning more ways of winning.
There are plenty of ways to bet on basketball, but the most common is betting on the Moneyline. You look at an upcoming NBA game and simply place a bet on which team you think will win.
The underdogs will have a “+” in front of their odds, while the favorites will have a “-” in front of theirs, giving you an idea of who is expected to win according to the bookmakers and other bettors.
The corresponding numbers after these symbols indicate your potential winnings. The ‘positive’ odds state how much you would win from a $100 bet. For example, odds of +150 would win you $150 on top of your $100 wager, meaning you’d take home a total of $250.
The ‘negative’ odds reveal how much you would need to stake in order to win $100. So, odds of -160 mean you’d have to wager $100 to win $160. So, for you to win the same reward as betting on the underdogs, you’d need to risk more money when betting on the favorites.
Another popular form of betting on single games is totals betting, wherein you place a wager on the total number of points scored by both teams combined. This is also referred to as over/under betting, as you can bet on whether the total score will be over or under a certain number.
Sportsbooks will list potential score totals with half points to ensure that your bet either wins or loses. These scores will then have odds for the ‘over’ (more points being scored in the game than that number) or ‘under’ (fewer points being scored).
Similarly, you can also bet on the points spread. Here, you are not betting on the outcome of the game, but rather the difference in points between the two teams.
If you bet on the favorites, you’re betting that they’ll win by at least a certain margin. If you bet on the underdogs, you’re wagering that they won’t lose by more than a certain number of points.
For example, a spread offered in a certain game could be 6.5. If you bet on the favorites, they must win by seven points or more in order for you to cash in. If you bet on the underdogs, they need to either win the game outright or lose by just six points or fewer.
Prop bets are another form of wager where the result of the game is irrelevant. With prop bets, you’re betting on the occurrence of a certain event in a game, or perhaps across the course of a season.
For example, you might bet on a player having a certain number of successful passes in a game, or how many fouls there’ll be in a match.
Futures are bets that focus on events farther into the future (hence the name) and usually deal with entire competitions. In the case of the NBA, common future bets are on which team will win the Finals, or perhaps which teams will top the Conferences.
Here, each team will have odds relating to their chances of prevailing in that bet selection. For example, the Milwaukee Bucks are one of the favorites to make it all the way through the playoffs next season and win the Finals, having done so last season.
In terms of general NBA betting tips, it is advised to keep an eye on injury news and fitness updates of players. With such a packed schedule, the NBA sees quite a lot of injuries but, crucially, an absent player has more of an effect than in other sports.
An NBA team has five players on the court at any one time, meaning if a key player is sidelined through injury, this will have a larger impact on that team’s chances. Before placing your bets, make sure you know who is fit and expected to play.
As one of the most-watched sporting leagues in the US, the NBA attracts huge numbers of bettors, and so there are countless ways to gamble on the league.
