Basketball is one of the most popular sports in the world. Millions of people all over the globe enjoy watching the sport in numerous leagues and tournaments year after year.
- Money line betting
- Handicap betting
- Totals betting
As a fast-paced end-to-end game, basketball offers bettors an exciting way to try and make a profit. For those who want to learn how to bet on basketball. We’ve explained a few basic bet types that are vital to basketball betting. Continue reading to find out more.
Spread betting
Money line markets are the most common and simplest market for a bettor to understand the cost of a bet. This form of basketball betting is simply placing money on a certain team to win the game. If you go to your preferred bookmaker you will see NBA games listed in the following manner:
Los Angeles Lakers -5.5 VS Boston Celtics +5.5
What this means is that if you bet on the Lakers to beat the spread, they must win by more than 5.5 points, or in other words, their winning margin must be 6 points or greater. However, if you bet on the Celtics to cover the spread, they have to win the game outright or lose by a maximum of 5 points.
Handicap betting
Once you understand how to bet on basketball using the money line, betting on the handicap can become a valuable tool when one team is heavily favored over their opponents. With handicap basketball betting, to counter the perceived bias in ability, bookmakers offer a handicap to level the playing field.
The handicap number (displayed as either + or – a value, such as +7.5 points) is factored into the final score to determine the game’s outcome for the purpose of the bet. This means that the handicap result is sometimes different from the actual result. For example, look at these two handicap bets:
Golden State Warriors: (+7.5) 2.050
Indiana Pacers: (-7.5) 1.862
If the Pacers won the game (100 – 96), bets on their handicap would actually lose. This is because for the purpose of this bet they started the game with -7.5pts, and therefore we have to subtract 7.5 from their final score. This makes the match outcome 92.5 – 96 in the Warriors’ favor. If the Pacers won 104-96, the adjusted handicap result is 96.5-96, which means the Pacers still win. This is referred to as “covering the handicap”.
Totals betting
Total betting (known as Over/Under) is betting type of combined all points that scored in a game that will be over or under a set number. Depending on the league or tournament, the number of points scored will vary significantly. In the NBA, point totals will land in the range of 180 to 220 points game to game, with the average in the mid 190 point range. In college and European basketball, you can expect to see point totals in the range of 120 to 160 points. For example, look at the totals odds for the Sacramento Kings vs Miami Heat below:
Over 210.5: 1.962
Under 210.5: 2.110