The National Basketball Association is by far the strongest and the most popular basketball league in the world. As such, it belongs to the top-four professional sports leagues in the United States. The likes of Michael Jordan, LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, etc. have all contributed to an even greater rise in popularity in the last couple of decades.
In such circumstances, the connection between the league and sports betting becomes inevitable. As of 2018 and the PASPA repeal, some states have allowed their citizens to place online real-money wagers. According to the stats, the NBA has expectedly dominated the list of the most wagered competitions, alongside the NFL.
We have thus decided to dedicate a special article to the NBA betting options, naming the most popular ones. The article has been written with the support of basketball betting tips expert at BettingTips4You.
1 – Moneyline
This is the simplest of all markets. If you are new to the sports wagering world, we would recommend you to stick to it. You basically get to predict the winner of the game. You are not bothered by anything else but the team to win the match. However, the odds play a big part with this market because you’ll frequently find a certain team heavily favored over the counterparts.
You can thus have the Los Angeles Lakers to beat the Sacramento Kings at the odds of -500. You’d thus need to bet $500 to win $100 in this case. Moneylines are great when you are looking at an evenly-matched contest between two similar sides in terms of quality. You can then get reasonable odds offered for any team to win.
Another decent use of the moneyline market is when you are not buying the low odds on a certain team, expecting their rivals to provide a much bigger resistance than expected. Using the example from above, you could back the Kings to make an upset and beat the Lakers at the odds of +333.
2 – Spreads
Spreads or handicaps are highly popular NBA markets among experienced bettors. These markets come in quite handy just when you have a clash between a big favorite against an underdog.
For example, you are convinced that the Lakers are going to destroy the Kings but you can’t make enough profit by backing them just to win at the -500 odds. Do not worry because the sportsbooks will do the job for you to make sure that each team has equal chances of winning. They do so by taking a certain amount of points from the favorites and giving it to the underdogs.
In our example, the Los Angeles Lakers would be taken 9.5 points, so your betting options would look like this:
- Lakers -9.5 @ -110 Odds
- Kings +9.5 @ -110 Odds
In this scenario, you have the option to back the Los Angeles Lakers to win by ten or more points difference or the Sacramento Kings to win or lose by fewer than ten points difference. You get equal odds on both picks.
3 – Totals
If you do not want to mess with the outcome of the game, you can always turn to totals. By betting on this market, you are predicting whether the total number of points scored by both teams combined will be higher or lower than the line offered by sportsbooks. This is how it would look like with our example:
- Los Angeles Lakers v Sacramento Kings – Over 215.5 points @ -110 Odds
- Los Angeles Lakers v Sacramento Kings – Under 215.5 points @ -110 Odds
As you can see, the odds are identical to those offered by spreads. The rest is very easy to understand as you back whether the total number of points in this game will be higher or lower than 215.
If you want to check the latest betting picks, visit www.bettingtips4you.com.