RBD shifts his handicapping focus to the NBA, breaking down a Celtics vs Pacers total pick using early-season betting models and trends.
Boston Celtics at Indiana Pacers
NBA Betting Preview
Boston Celtics at Indiana Pacers
Friday, December 26th, 7 PM, EST
College and pro football are starting to wind down so it’s time to shift my handicapping efforts to my Basketball Battle with the Books.
Lessons Learned
Lesson Number One:
A divided focus is not a good thing in most endeavors, and definitely true for handicapping.
Up until now I’ve been putting most of my time and effort into finding bets to make on football, but I’ve been keeping my basketball charts updated daily. Because…
Lesson Number Two:
In the past, I’ve jumped into handicapping basketball blindly, having collected no data until after the football seasons ended.
That’s a mistake.
This season I’ve been keeping statistics all along so that when I start betting on basketball I’ll have a foundation of data to work with, culled from my own handicapping models.
As always, I’m employing the usual suspects: two models for Wrong Favorites and two models for totals, as well as a couple of subcategories for each.
Here’s what I’m working with thus far:
WF1: 24-28
WF2: 19-22
T1: 23-24
T2: 26-17
Not much to work with there, most of them hitting around .500, nothing to play ON or Fade.
The only model kicking out bets worth making (as long as Reversion Towards the Mean doesn’t kick in yet) is T2 at 26-17.
It’s hitting at a solid 60%.
But here’s where it gets even better.
In the subcategory of Ov/Un, the play breaks down to 12-5 Ov, 14-12 Un.
That’s a very profitable 70% on the Over.
And I have one tonight.
Let’s dig into the standard stats that most handicappers look at.
Boston is 13-16 Ov/Un.
Indy is 10-20.
Those are some ugly numbers for someone looking to play the Over.
Combined, 23-36.
According to those numbers the Over only has a 39% chance of winning.
Ugh.
Maybe it gets better when I break it down into Boston on the Rd and Indy at Hm?
Let’s take a look.
Boston on the Rd is 5-9 Ov/Un.
Indy at Hm is 8-8.
Combined 13-17, 43%.
The odds of hitting the Over just increased by 4%!
Yay for me! (Yes, that was sarcasm.)
Let’s check the chess board from one other angle, applying the total on tonight’s game.
This one opened at 220 and is already up to 221′.
So what’s the Ov/Un record for Boston and Indy in games with a total of 221′?
With a total of 221′ Boston would be 16-13 Ov/Un, a winning record.
Indy would be 18-12.
Combined, 34-26.
That’s 56%, a much better number than the 39% and 43% numbers noted above but still 2% under the number I normally use to pull the trigger on making a bet, 58%.
How about the H2H (Head-to-Head) angle?
These teams met just four days ago.
Final score?
Boston won, at home, 103-95.
That’s a combined 198.
Ugh.
That’s 24 points under what I need tonight.
Double ugh.
I looked at that box score and both teams had poor shooting nights.
Or, did they both just play solid defense?
I don’t know, I didn’t watch it, which harkens back (harkens??!!) to what I just wrote about the other day here in my recap article where I talked about knowing to NOT trust the Green Bay Packers in the 4th quarter in their game against the Bears – because I watched their last three games and gained additional insight.
To be the best you can at handicapping you need to watch games and learn the tendencies of the teams and their coach.
So I’ll try to watch the NBA games I bet on this season (and, bored, will likely end up channel flipping, looking for something interesting.)
My play:
Bos/Ind Ov 221′
Record: 0-0
This is my first NBA article.
Oh yeah, almost forgot to mention.
I’m leaning on one other factor for tonight’s games – FLOW.
It’s a recurring theme in my articles, talking about how there’s a rhythm to life, a flow. When things are going well they tend to go well in all aspects. Also true is the opposite of that – when it rains, it pours.
I’m having a really good week (see the photo attached to this article) and I’m hoping it continues through the weekend.
