Betting on Basketball

The National Basketball Association (NBA) is the leading basketball league in the world.

Thirty teams are divided into two 15-team conferences, the Eastern Conference and the Western Conference. And each conference is further divided into three 5-team divisions.

The season starts in October and ends in June – with teams playing a regular season of 82 games, with a series of playoffs to follow for the best of them. The playoffs produce a Western Conference winner and an Eastern Conference winner, and these two sides clash in the NBA Finals.

Games are divided in four quarters, with the winner being the team with the most points in total at the end. If the scores are level the game goes to overtime. As with all our American sports bets, overtime counts towards the result of the bet.

The Bets

Betting is very straightforward. We can bet on sides to win their division, their conference, and to win the NBA Finals. And there are always plenty of attractive bets on individual matches along the way.

We can either bet a side to win a match ‘straight up,’ with no handicap to overcome. Or we can back them on the match handicap, where one team receives a head start from their opponent – or gives up a start.

There are usually some good bets to be had on the ‘total match points’ in the NBA, perhaps more of these ‘totals’ bets in the NBA than in other American sports. We simply have to decide whether the total match points in a specific game will be under or over the bookmakers’ estimate – but with huge points totals the norm in this sport, we sometimes see strong opportunities to take advantage of a ‘shaky’ bookmakers’ line.

See the Betting Terms Explained section on the website for more on how these types of bets work.