Betting: What is the best strategy to make money on the NBA Playoffs?
Jared Quay, Preston Johnson & Matt Moore of the Action Network discuss the best betting strategies for the NBA Playoffs.
Video Transcript
MAT MOORE: Jared, let's start with you. What are your thoughts on betting the NBA playoffs?
JARED QUAY: I love betting on the playoffs. I think this is the time where I feel like the NBA-- regular season you'll have a little more variants of stars not playing to their top potential, and you'll see some teams win. I think the playoffs you're going to see players play their best defense. You're going to see players score the most points. So usually, I like almost betting favorites. I think there's a lot of swing, too, when it comes to home and away games. I feel you can get some value there, but I think playoffs are probably my most profitable runs when it comes to betting NBA.
MAT MOORE: Preston, do you have a general approach that you like?
PRESTON JOHNSON: You gave some examples, and while you were asking the question, I was just thinking all of the above. There are a lot more derivatives and options to bet because of the actual series prices you mentioned. You can bet series prices mid series after there are adjustments made. Or you see a few of the games play out, and you're wondering what the matchups are going to look like ahead of time. You don't have to force it. There's also plus series games you can bet with. You can bet a team plus 2 and 1/2 series games won. So if they lose 2-4, or 3-4, or they win the series themselves, that's going to cash.
So there's definitely other ways to tackle an edge. And whether it's going to get down more liquidity, get down more money on your actual wagers, or to measure, OK, this is the series price for them to win the series versus plus 2 and 1/2 games within the series. And there's going to be different markets, and prices, and hedges accordingly. Game to game's also something else you should definitely be looking at. There's the Zig Zag Theory that's been a thing in the NBA for years. And there's the team down 0-2 going back home, shading heavily towards the team that's home down 0-2 in the first quarter and first half. It's hit as an angle for a lot of years.
Unders-- typically, the totals in series go down with each game played, right? Game 7 of a series is expected to have a lot fewer points than Game 1 of that same series between the same two teams. So there are things that people can look out for and watch in that regard, and I'm just trying to do all of it. You can't go wrong if you're trying to scout out as many edges as you can find.
MAT MOORE: 14 points for Jaxson Hayes now, tied with Embiid. Me personally, I'm due for probably a down year in the playoffs after I hit Heat series price versus the Bucks and hit Nuggets versus Clippers, which that was a big one. But I also took--
PRESTON JOHNSON: Nice.
MAT MOORE: I took a larger position on Nuggets plus 2 and 1/2 versus the Clippers. Everyone expected that to be a blowout. My best advice for getting playoffs, especially on a series level, if you can, go back and take a look. If you got 30 minutes, go back and take a look at how the matchups were played in the regular season. Not who won, but look at who had good games and who had bad games, especially amongst the starters, and you can start to figure out a lot of where the matchups lie as those things go. It was one of the reasons why I liked Utah versus OKC a couple of years ago based off of the matchups There's a lot of opportunities you can find for sneaky moments in the NBA playoffs.