Basketball has soared to new heights in terms of popularity, and in turn, reached unprecedented levels of profitability. Its rise to prominence has coincided with the widespread legalization of online sports betting, so it’s no surprise to anyone that hoops sits among the most heavily bet sports in the world.
Interested in becoming an NBA bettor? Welcome to the club! It’s one of the easiest and most fun leagues to bet, and the action is almost nightly. Jumping head-first into betting on basketball can seem intimidating at first, especially if most terms are foreign to you.
Fear not, we have you covered. Keep reading to learn everything you need to know about NBA betting, including odds, different types of bets, and where you can find the best and most current tips and advice.
NBA betting, explained: A complete guide to betting on basketball
The first step to becoming an NBA bettor is learning the basics of betting in general. You’ll need to know how to read odds, the difference between spread, moneyline, and over/under bets, and the meaning of other terms like “parlay,” “player prop,” and “futures” bets.
This comprehensive guide should familiarize you with all the basics you’ll need to begin your NBA betting journey, which hopefully will result in you becoming a confident and successful sports bettor.
NBA Bet types and understanding Odds
Many different types of bets exist across all sports, including the NBA. Basketball odds are pretty straightforward to understand once you know the three basic and traditional betting terms:
- moneyline
- point spread
- over/under total
These are oddsmakers’ projections for how a game will turn out, including winner/loser, margin of victory, and final score combined points. Let’s go into a little more detail.
NBA Moneyline
The concept of basketball moneylines is simple: each team in a set matchup is assigned a number — either positive or negative — that represents their odds of winning. When bettors pick the straight-up winner of the game and put money on it, they’re betting the moneyline.
The negative number (usually -105 or greater) typically represents the odds for the favorite, also known as the team the sportsbooks expect to win. The positive number (typically +100 or greater) represents the odds for the underdog, or the team less likely to win the game.
You will always win less of a payout on a winning bet with negative odds, and profit more on the payout of a winning bet with positive odds.
Moneylines allow oddsmakers to set and tweak odds for games based on each team’s implied win probability. No sportsbook would ever give you 2-to-1 odds on an outright winner if that team was widely known to be the superior of the two in a matchup.
We often see lopsided or uneven matchups in the NBA regular season, NBA Cup or even playoffs. Moneyline odds allow bettors to pick straight winners while also enabling sportsbooks to limit their liabilities attached to overwhelming favorites.
How to read Moneylines
Reading moneylines is simple. Favorites have negative (-) odds, with the number indicating how much you would need to risk to make your potential profit $100. Underdogs have plus (+) odds, with the number indicating what you would win on a $100 bet.
Let’s say you have some interest in betting the Celtics over the Hornets. If Boston is listed as a -350 favorite, that means you would need to risk $350 to net a profit of $100 if the Celts win.
If you think the Hornets will pull off an upset, you could bet $100 on them at +350 and walk away with a $350 profit if Charlotte indeed pulls off the W.
NBA Spread
Another way for oddsmakers to set odds for a game is through the spread. This is the process by which oddsmakers analyze both teams in a matchup, consider their strengths, weaknesses, and other factors, and assign a point spread that predicts how much the favorite will win by.
Betting the spread swaps out the moneyline odds for points. The favorite has points taken away from it, and the underdog receives those points.
If a team is projected to win, that favorite must win by the set amount — the spread — to cover. Similarly, teams projected to lose can only cover if that underdog either (a) wins or (b) loses by fewer points than the set spread.
Let’s go back to the hypothetical Celtics-Hornets game. Boston was listed as a -350 favorite, which could roughly translate to a -8 favorite against the spread. That means you would have to bet on either Boston to win by more than eight or Charlotte to lose by fewer than eight.
If the Celtics win by exactly eight, it’s a push and your initial wager would be refunded (for that reason, sportsbooks typically add a half-point to every spread amount, since teams can’t win or lose by a half-point).
Point spreads always have a second set of odds alongside them, which indicate the cost of placing the bet (also known as the “vig” or the “juice”). Most point spreads have a vig of -110 — to win $100, you would need to risk $110. Vigs can be adjusted depending on betting action and can vary from book to book.
NBA Point Totals aka Over/Under
People love betting the over/under, also known as the total, and the majority of casual bettors almost always prefer to bet the OVER. Betting the total is simple: the sportsbook lists a projected points total for a game, and you either bet on the two teams to finish with a combined score OVER or UNDER that total.
This couldn’t be more simple. If the total combined score winds up higher than the projected total, then the OVER wins. If the final score total is lower than the projected total, then the UNDER wins.
NBA Parlays
Parlays are wildly popular. In short, parlays allow bettors to combine multiple bets (also known as legs) in one big bet for a larger potential payout. The odds of winning are longer because all bets in the parlay must win for the entire parlay to cash out even a penny. Thus, the potential reward is greater.
Bettors only need to combine two legs to make a parlay, but the most popular parlays tend to be in the range of 3-5 legs. The more wagers bettors add to parlays, the bigger the potential payout and the bigger the risk.
Sportsbooks such as BetMGM typically allow bettors to add between two and 12 games in a basketball parlay. Some books will also allow you to incorporate player or game props, also known as over/under stat props.
How to calculate a Parlay payout
Now that you know the definition of a parlay and how you can bet one, let’s quickly break down how to calculate a parlay bet value.
Once you figure out the odds for each matchup, bet, or prop, just divide what the total payout would be by the bet amount.
Let’s imagine a $100 parlay bet on these teams:
Celtics (-150)
Hornets (+170)
Knicks (-120)
Boston: -150 to win 100 with a payout of $250 250/150 = 1.6666
Charlotte: -100 to win 170, with a payout of $270 270/100 = 2.7
New York: -120 to win 100, with a payout of $220 220/120 = 1.8333E
Each of those three numbers we calculated is your multiplier. Now, just multiply those numbers to get your parlay odds. 1.6666 x 2.7 x 1.8333 = 8.2495.
That final number is 8.25, meaning your winnings would work out to be 7.25 for every dollar you bet on that particular parlay. Translation: your $100 bet just turned into a $725 win.
If you hate math or just don’t want to go through the bother of calculating your parlay odds manually each time, have no fear. Most sportsbooks do the legwork for you, and you can also find a ton of independent parlay calculators all over the Internet.
NBA Player Prop bets
Player prop betting has become wildly popular, much like fantasy sports has risen to such popularity since the turn of the 21st century. Props allow you to bet on a player going OVER or UNDER a set statistical amount.
If the Timberwolves’ Anthony Edwards has a set point total of 24.5, you can bet on whether you think he will go OVER 24 points or UNDER 25 points. The side that is slightly favored might have a little more juice (or “vig”) so the sportsbook can cut into your potential profit and get a larger cut of your payout if you win. The side that’s less likely (or generating less action or betting interest) will see slightly longer odds and a better potential payout.
You can bet over/under player props on all sorts of statistics. You can also bet yes/no props for various hypothetical situations, like “Will Anthony Davis record a double-double for the Lakers?” or “Will Devin Booker lead the Suns in assists?”
NBA Futures bets
Another fun method of betting on basketball is the futures market, which allows you to bet on whether or not something will happen in the future. You can place futures bets on teams to win the NBA Cup, the Eastern or Western Conference Finals, or the NBA Finals, among many others.
You can also bet on players to win NBA MVP. As these are far less likely to predict way ahead of time, these futures bets often yield longer odds and therefore carry much higher potential payouts.
NBA Betting tips and advice
The biggest piece of advice new bettors should follow: stay on top of things. Watch the games — all of them — as often as you can. You can sign up for League Pass and ingratiate yourself in all things NBA. The more you know about the league, the more you will learn about stats, understand projections, and become proficient in assessing matchups and win probabilities.
The second major piece of advice is to make research part of your everyday life. Utilize TeamRankings.com, one of the best statistical and betting trend resources on the Internet. They track betting odds, trends, cover rates, and split-stat data like home vs. away, rest vs. back-to-backs, and much, much more.
Another way to stay informed is to follow sportsbooks like BetMGM’s blogs and betting insights. Sportsbooks often share public betting data for specific games and futures, which provides insight into how oddsmakers view matchups and future events as well as how the public has perceived said games and shifted the odds.
