When the Odds Zig, It's Time to Zag: Fading Expectations in the NBA

Yesterday, we recommended playing all the team totals to go OVER and game totals to go OVER.

The hunch produced 9 wins and 6 losses.  

The OVER the total betting brigade was inspired by Friday's games, which all soared OVER the betting totals.  The supposition was – teams have been cooped up for months.  The first game when play resumed was certain to be inspired, motivated, and up-tempo.  Add perhaps some skittishness with the COVID crisis, and maybe defenses wouldn't be playing as tight.

Of course, these angles are tough to predict.  Once they happen, and and the public catches on to trends, oddmakers make adjustments.  And so, we will make some adjustments, also.

Sunday features six games.  Look for more UNDERs that OVERs.

Why?

Answer:  The theory is that the market has over-reacted to recent results.

Take a look at all the game totals from Saturday's NBA games:

215

218

220

231

220

Now, take a look at the totals for today's (Sunday's) NBA games at Spreads.ca:

236

230

227

242

237

Totals are up about 10 points per game!  Pure speculation here:  Oddmakers and the public are over-reacting.  That means we may have found value fading this over-reaction.

The hypothesis justifying today's across-the-board wagers is that first game,  playing conditions and motivations were ripe for plenty of offense.  But now that each team already has a game under its belt, performances may revert back to norm/the mean.  So, the contrarian is banking that these totals are now too high.

We could be wrong.  But this is anticipation and trying to make adjustments.  We aren't betting teams.  We are betting numbers.

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