Now that the NBA season is finally back in full swing after a worldwide sports blackout, it’s time to learn all you need to know about NBA betting.
While baseball might still hold the title as America’s national pastime, in this modern era, football and basketball are arguably more popular. You see it in viewer numbers, attendees (when people could still go to in-person games) and you see it in the betting world.
Steph Curry and LeBron James are just a couple of names that ignite the passion of basketball fans and avid bettors. But if you’re coming from another corner of the sports betting world, you might find things work a little different in the NBA.
For example, if you’re used to betting on NFL games or, God help you, soccer, then you’re going to hit a learning curve on how to properly wager on a sport that typically throws up 100+ point games.
Your best bet (see what I did there?) is to use the spread method of betting. You’ve probably heard of it but let me explain “betting the spread” to you in a nutshell. Spread betting is where you don’t simply bet on which team is going to win or lose. Instead, you bet on how much or how little they will win or lose by.
Let’s say you have the LA Lakers going up against the Golden State Warriors. If you’ve done your research you’ve seen how a similar match-up between the teams has played out, and you know what injuries will give which team an advantage or disadvantage. All of this, plus a bettor’s intuition, should give you a pretty good idea what we’ll see on the scoreboard at the end of the fourth quarter.
The spread might look like this:
LA Lakers: +12
Golden State Warriors: -12
That means that LeBron and team must win by at least 13 points for you to win the spread, while Steph and team must not lose by more than 13 points for you to win that spread.
There are plenty of other nuances that factor into spread betting on an NBA game, but this is it in its essence. If you plan on getting into NBA betting, you’re going to want to do your research and master betting the spread.
