In today’s market, obtaining value in the NBA games is becoming more and more difficult. With the live odds feeds available to both players and sportsbooks, finding significant differences in numbers is becoming a rare thing. More likely, for the average handicapper, by the time they get around to making their plays, the value has already been pounded out of the games by the sharps. Getting the wagers right before the game incorporates many uncertainties like whether a player is going to play and how will he be used if he’s carrying an injury, or will a team change their approach for that exact opponent.
That’s why many recreational punters like betting during the halftime break. It’s a short period of about 15 minutes during which the line can fluctuate considerably as the bookmakers are using only the basic handicapping approach to come up with the opening line and allow a more dynamic movement to match the money flow. Public bettors use it as an opportunity to lock in a guaranteed win on their full game wager, and other times change sides if a bet isn’t going their way. Pro punters also enjoy the extra value on known terms available, so there’s a lot of action going on. To find out how to get the best out of the halftime betting and also explore the world of the first half betting, I’ve covered different scenarios that can happen while betting on NBA games.
Understanding the halftime spread and total points lines
Most of the bookies rely on the full time expectations for the halftime offer. If the favorite gave 7 points before the game and is leading by 5 after two quarters, the halftime spread will likely be set at 3-3.5 points. Similarly, if the total points expectation before the game is 220 points and 120 points are scored in the first half, you could expect the game line of 230 points at that point, or 110 for the second half only. The figures change in extreme scenarios, but the books are following a simple logic here. If a team is better by 7 points for the entire game, it’s better for 3.5 points for a half, despite already leading by 5. Scoring 120 in the first half in the points case won’t deter the oddsetters from expecting 110 again, although they might adjust a bit if something significant happened in the first half, like an injury to a key player.
It’s a good logic too, as the books don’t actually expect teams to score 110 points in a half, but to average 110 over the course of many halves in the same setting. They expect the number to regress to the mean and are actually baiting you in overreacting to what you have seen in the first half.
There are different kinds of logic people tend to apply at the halftime. There’s a ‘panic’ logic – oh, no my team is losing by 15, they’re going to lose this in a blowout. The ‘contrarian’ logic – my team is going to break out of this funk, they are better than this. There’s also ‘freeze’ tactics that says – this game is not going as expected, I’d better stay clear of any further wagering.
All of these are natural reactions and I don’t blame you for following any kind of reasoning. We are used to weigh the good and bad in so many of our actions in our lives and manage to navigate through the maze of dangers fairly successfully, so trusting your thinking is not something you’d like to avoid at all cost. Of course, in this business, it’s very important to carefully separate the important factors from the noise. With the halftime betting, you must understand what in the first half caused the result at the break and this is more of a basketball knowledge than the betting itself.
Are one team’s shots falling because of the unexpected bad defense of the other team, some players getting hot, or they are doing some things better/in a different way? How is the game called – are the refs happy to send players to the free throw line or allow more contact on plays than usual? Is the tempo of the game frantic or are the players walking up and down the court? How about the foul trouble situation – perhaps the team that is trailing had to survive awkward player rotation due to some significant players foul count?
These are few of the many questions you should consider. It’s not an easy task to do with the limited time during the break, but most of them are easy to spot even before the halftime whistle. Just remind yourself not to watch the game as a fan, but as a basketball expert. Keep the stats sheet close and try identifying what caused parts of it that don’t fit the expected. If everything has gone as accepted, the less likely you’ll have any value on second half odds.
But if a pre-game favorite of a 10 points is leading by 21 points at the halftime, you’ll spot a pick-em offer at the half, suggesting that the two teams are of equal quality, which is certainly not the case, but you still need to answer question on why that team is leading by 21 instead of the expected 5 points. Have they shot 60 percent? Are they putting an extra effort and dominating the ball game? Maybe the other team can’t figure out how to attack their defense – is this something that their coaches can solve during halftime and couldn’t give proper instructions during time outs? Will the leading team push hard or will they cruise in the second half? Questions, questions.
If you scroll back up to the beginning of this text, you can find the part that said that halftime wagering is easier as there aren’t that many presumptions as in the full time wagering. This is still true. Don’t be discouraged by the number of the questions I’m putting up here. You won’t have to answer all of them, just a couple per game, depending on what’s happening. I’m just trying to put more of them here so you could understand what different kinds of doubts you need to resolve before you decide if the added halftime value is good enough for a bet or not.
Common created value
If the underdog is winning, then the general public always wants to take the favorite that is losing. When that happens, especially with a double-digit favorite down, bookmakers account for the expected influx of wagers. You’d expect that the true value is lying with the winning team, but the stats show that this is one of the rare occasions where the public perception is right. But by looking at this scenario more closely, you’d find out that it’s an artificially created value in the bookmakers’ conscious attempt to limit the hedge opportunities.
Take the Game 5 of the NBA Finals as an example. The Warriors were favored to win by 8.5 points before the game. If they had opened up a 20 points margin by the halftime break, the bookmakers won’t have given you a GSW -4 line as it would open up an opportunity for all that have bet Golden State prior to the tip off to create a middling interval of (-8.5, -24) if they take the Cavaliers. The books would shade the line and mitigate the middling opportunity by offering Cavs as a 4-point favorite. This way, the interval would slip to (-8.5,-16) but it would artificially create a value on the favorite that drove the second half numbers of ‘better’ teams up.
To put it in simple words, in extreme situations, when the public team is favored to win by a significant margin, and either is winning or losing by double than the full time output, the value is likely to be on the favorite. In all other scenarios, the bookmakers’ awareness that the public loves the jolly will create enough of a value to punt on the underdog, if all the in-game factors are normal.
These results go in hand with the sports psychology. Underdogs tend to perform better in the first halves of games. Usually their mentality is to ‘have a go’ from the start rather than sit back and wait to be beaten by a better team on paper. They have nothing to lose. Unfortunately for them, underdogs don’t often see the job through to the end, but will continue their best in close games. When they fall behind by a wide margin, they can easily give up. On the different end of the specter, when they unexpectedly lead by much, the reality sets in at the break and they get complacent.
So that’s the basic story about the spreads, but what about the halftime total points offer? The value on total points in NBA games doesn’t come from the same origin, and this leads me to the first half betting.
First half betting in the NBA
This is the most overlooked offer compared to the available, but also the value it often hides. While the spread betting on the first half is not of a particular interest, as the performance of the teams largely fluctuates – it is a hard fact that no game can be won in the first half – the first half total points betting can be exploited.
The bookmakers track how the NBA teams score per halves and adjust their expected lines for a half accordingly. Take an average NBA game played by two average NBA teams.
The total points for the entire game would be set at about 211 points, and the first half figure would be at 104.5 or so. More points are scored in the second half on average, as the overtime points count toward that total. The first half is 24 minutes. The starters usually play fewer minutes too. Now look at the Game 5 of the Golden State Warriors vs. Cleveland Cavaliers NBA Finals – the projected total points line was set at 231, while the offer for the first half was 121.5. Just by taking a look at first quarters of this NBA Finals series, it seems logical to have it this way.
But these results in either of the two things: either the 121.5 points for the first half held a value on the under bet, or, if it’s fair, the line of 110 points for the second half the books were expecting held a large value on overs. Therein lied the opportunity to bet on either the first half of the halftime offer on total points.
You have to see which bet works for you depending on your expected line. The only additional advice here is to always treat the first half bet separately from the total points for the game. You may decide to lower the stake, but don’t pass on it just because you’ve already taken the under for the entire length of the game.
So, now that the NBA season is over and the Golden State Warriors having been crowned as the new NBA Champions, with several months to go before the tip-off to the new season, you will have plenty of time to test out my advice and polish your decision skills using random training set from this NBA season.
Good luck and stay tuned with Get More Sports for more interesting NBA articles coming up!!!
