Basketball is one of the world’s 10 most popular sports in terms of active participation and spectatorship, and it’s also one of the easiest and most popular sports to bet on today’s safest online sportsbooks.
If you are new to basketball betting and want to know how you can start placing strategic wagers on top leagues like the NBA, the WNBA, the EuroLeague, and many other top-flight professional basketball leagues and competitions, you’ve come to the right place.
Here is everything explained in a nutshell about betting on upcoming basketball matches, which should hopefully make your life a little bit easier when you bet on this sport.
Revealed here are the main types of bet types you will most likely come across, as well as the different odds formats and implied probability rates explained, and the latest trending bets.
This article is specifically for sports bettors living in the United Kingdom and list of online basketball betting platforms.
It’s considered one of the easiest sports to bet on because there are nowhere near as many different bet types compared to sports such as football, which often have hundreds of individual markets for each match.
You can typically find pre-match basketball bets, where you can wager long before the event starts, and in-play or live basketball bets, where you can place more informed wagers as the action unfolds that reflect what’s actually happening in the game.
In your average basketball game, there are numerous chances for both teams to score points, more than games like hockey or football, for instance.
With that in mind, the fact that more points are scored in a basketball match reduces the randomness factor compared to other ball sports, and it’s one of the main reasons that the better team usually wins more matches than in football.
This reason alone is also why the best teams have a greater chance of making the playoffs at the end of the season. Most people who bet on basketball simply back the winner, which means it’s super simple compared to other sports. There are no draws or ties in this sport.
If the game is tied at the end, it goes into overtime, which is why you will find match bets that include overtime. You can also find handicap bets because of the nature of basketball scoring.
The handicap option either gives the underdog team hypothetical extra points before the start of a game, or the favourite team has points hypothetically taken away from their tally.
Handicap betting in NBA matches involving iconic players like LeBron James essentially makes the odds fairer, especially in uneven matches where one team is far superior to the other.
It also helps to use an odds format that you are familiar with and to try to understand what the implied probability rates are for those odds before placing any bets.
The main three odds formats are decimal, fractional and moneyline odds. The good news is that most sites allow users to display the odds in your preferred format. For example, 100/1 would appear as 101.00 in decimal odds or +10,000 in moneyline odds. 100/1 odds mean there is only a 1.00% implied probability rate this outcome will occur.
The easiest way to figure out what the odds mean for any market is to use a free betting odds calculator on a trusted iGaming review site like AskGamblers. This useful tool can help you get the most out of your bets by showing you your potential winnings based on how much you are about to bet with the odds you are offered for any given market.
Here are a few NBA bets that are currently trending. At the time of writing, Oklahoma City Thunder are the odds-on favourites to win the NBA Championship outright, followed by the Boston Celtics and the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Other trending bets right now are for Oklahoma to win the Western Conference outright, Boston Celtics to win the Eastern Conference outright, Los Angeles Lakers to win the Pacific Division and Orlando Magic to win the Southeast Division.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is the current odds-on favourite to win the NBA Most Valuable Player, and Stephon Castle is the favourite to win this year’s NBA Rookie of the Year, to name just a few trending NBA bets.
When betting on the NBA, it helps to have a basic understanding of the game and the league. To help you place more informed bets, you should also try to stay on top of the latest NBA news and gossip and try to gather as many relevant statistics as possible to help you place more strategic bets.
Finally, the most important thing you can remember is to gamble responsibly, which means only betting on licensed online sportsbooks and leveraging a range of safer gambling tools to ensure you don’t exceed your budget.
Deposit limits, session time reminders, spending caps and win/loss limits are just some of the most effective and reliable responsible gambling tools sports bettors have at their disposal today. Limits can typically be set in under a minute on any trusted basketball betting sites that you decide to join.
