The Los Angeles Lakers won the 2020 NBA title just a month ago, but the new season will be getting underway promptly on December 22nd, 2020, so be sure to check out all of the top NBA betting sites for February 2021 as well as all the bonuses and promotions they offer below!
Look no further because we’ve got all the best odds for the NBA’s Championship 2020/2021 from the top sportsbooks! Team Los Angeles Lakers +250 +225 Los Angeles Clippers +550 +500 Milwaukee Bucks +650 +700 Brooklyn Nets +350 +350 Boston Celtics +1600 +1500 Miami Heat +2200 +2800 Denver Nuggets +2000 +2200 Philadelphia 76ers +1400 +1600
The NBA consists of 30 teams divided into two conferences; one Eastern and one Western. At the end of the regular season, the top eight teams from each conference qualify for the NBA playoffs. The NBA employs a bracket-style playoff format that pits the top seeds against the lowest ones in seven-game series that lead up to the NBA Finals, which sees the winners of the Eastern and Western Conference squaring off for basketball supremacy. After winning the title this past season, LeBron James’ Los Angeles Lakers are being touted as the favorites by most betting sites, currently sitting at league-leading +350 odds on 888sport. Knowing how the season format works is important if you intend to bet on futures and playoff games, but if you want to have success in NBA betting on a weekly basis, there’s no question you also need to stay up to date with all the relevant NBA betting news, and we’ve got you covered here all season long!
There are a bevy of options when it comes to the different ways in which you can do your betting on the NBA. To that end, we’ve broken down the eight most popular types of wagers you’ll come across on the majority of betting sites: NBA Moneyline → A moneyline bet for the NBA simply means a straight up pick ‘em bet where you pick a team to win, and if that team wins, so do you. However, the heavier the favorite, the lower the odds on their moneyline, but that also means that the bigger the underdog, the higher the odds on their moneyline. The higher the odds, the higher the payout. NBA Point Spread → Point spread betting is a way to level the playing field when the teams aren’t evenly matched. If the Lakers are in first and the Bulls are in last and the two are playing a game, you’d be hard-pressed to find someone willing to bet on the Bulls. However, oddsmakers will give the underdog team points, let’s say 10.5 in our example, to make it more appealing to bet on either side instead of just the favorite. If you take the Bulls at a +10.5 point spread, that means if they lost by 10 or less, you win your bet, but if they lose by 11 or more, you lose your net. On the contrary, when you take a team that’s listed as a -10.5 favorite, that means they don’t have to just win, they have to win by more than 10.5 points for you to cashout. NBA Totals → You can either bet over or under on an NBA total: if you bet the over, it means you think the two teams playing in the game in question will combine to score more than that number, and if you take the under, it’s the opposite. For example, if you bet the over on a game with a listed total of 216.5 and the game finishes 110-106 (216 points) you’ve lost your wager, but if either of those teams scores another point, making the total 217 (over 216.5), you will have won your bet. NBA Prop Betting → A prop bet (or proposition bet) is basically a bet on whether or not something that doesn’t have a direct affect on the result of the game will occur. This can be anything from how many points a team might score in the game, in a quarter, or in a half, to how many points, rebounds, assists, steals, or blocks a certain player might produce. The options are not exactly limitless, but it will seem like that as you scroll through all of the different wagers you have to choose from. Live NBA Bets → As the name would suggest, these types of bets are the kind that bettors can make while the game in question is being played, ‘live’. Those with a good knowledge of which teams are good and which aren’t can often count on profiting when a good team goes down early in a game and their live moneyline or spread odds for winning go way up, allowing you to bet on a favorite with much higher odds than you might otherwise have gotten. NBA Futures → Future bets are those wagers for which you usually have to wait a significant amount of time before seeing a payout, but they also usually have pretty high odds, which can make for some really valuable future bets if you know what you’re doing. Some bets, such as over/unders on team wins, must be placed before the season starts, but most other future bets can be placed at any time, with the odds updated on a regular basis. These bets include who will win the NBA MVP, who will win the title, finals MVP, who will win the Eastern and the Western Conferences, who will be Rookie of the Year, and so on. NBA Parlays → Parlay betting is a way to increase your odds without necessarily compromising your original bets. For example, if you are sure about three teams winning but they’ve all got odds lower than Lil’ Jon, you can parlay those three bets together to get yourself more attractive odds. For example, if you have three favorites all listed at -200 odds, you can combine the trio in a parlay bet and get much tastier odds in the +230 to +240 range. That does mean, however, that all three bets must hit for you to get a payout. So, a little more risk, for a lot more reward.
Even if you think you know what you’re talking about when it comes to the NBA, it’s still important to come in with a betting strategy if you mean to have any meaningful success. Here are a few strategy examples you might consider employing. Trim Your Hedges → Hedge betting is the safest way to bet, ensuring you never lose big—but you never really win very big either. Basically, hedging is when you place a second bet against your original wager when you’re becoming less certain that your original bet is any good, this way, you’ll come away with at least a little something no matter what the result of the game is. Great Players (And Teams) Are Great For A Reason → Great players are great, period. And the same goes for great teams. That’s not to say you should bet on the best teams every night because they’ll never lose, because that’s insane. This strategy works best in two situations: in the playoffs, when you can almost always count on the best players and best teams to play their best, and when one of the aforementioned star players or top teams gets into a rut and their odds start rising or their over/unders start dropping. The best always bounce back sooner rather than later, and you can count on that. Tired Teams Slack On Defense, Not Offense → Here’s a doozy even you diehard bettors will enjoy: the B2B2B method. The good folks at TheSportsGeek.com did some research, and they found that this method hits at about a 59 percent clip, which is simply a beautiful number in betting circles. The B2B2B method goes like this: you find a game in which both teams are playing the final leg of a three-games-in-four/five days stretch. Most people think that when teams have played three games in four days that their fatigue will affect their ability to score the basketball, but the opposite is in fact true. When you think about it, it makes a lot of sense: when guys are tired they stop doing what takes the most effort, which is defense. The situation doesn’t arise as often as you might like, but it is quite profitable when it does show up.
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Every different book will have its own unique quirks, but most can be counted on to give you a similar lineup of guidelines. Below we have laid out a few of the rules for our top sportsbooks (888sport, Betway, Sports Interaction), but it’s always important to check with your preferred site just to be sure. Unless otherwise stated, every bet, whether moneyline, point spread, prop, or total will include any and all overtime periods required to decide the final outcome of the game. NBA games cannot end in ties, so they will play as many five-minute overtime periods as they need until they have a winner. The exception to the above rule is any and all Win/Draw/Win bets, which are less common but which will not include overtime and are settled based on the final score at the end of regulation. At least 43 minutes of the regular 48 must be played in the NBA game in question for any bets to stand. If the game is stopped for any reason before that, all bets are void. For any player proposition bets to have action, the player in question will need to start or at least see the court. When betting the affirmative on player double-double or triple-double prop wagers, the player in question will need to have put up 10+ in two (for double-double) or three (for triple-double) of the following five categories: points, rebounds, assists, steals, blocked shots.
