How NBA Betting Fans Can Profit From Early Offensive Surge

Mark Strotman

October 26th, 2018

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The NBA has never seen offense quite like this. We’ll get the disclaimer out of the way early, that it’s a small sample size we’re working with before the calendar flips to November.

Some of this will taper off, regress to the mean and even out. Then again, we saw these kind of historic numbers during the preseason, too.

Maybe these wild offensive numbers are here to stay, and NBA betting fans can cash in because of it whether it’s on over-under game totals or player prop bets.

NBA Over-Under Best Bets

So, certainly teams have gone over more than they’ve gone under, right? Correct. Basketball bookmakers such as 888Sport will certainly adjust to this influx of ridiculous offense sooner than later, but as of now the over has been popping up far more often than not.

Consider: There have been 66 games in the NBA this season. The over has hit 38 times, the under has hit 27 and one game has pushed. That’s a 57.5 percent success rate on the over.

Only nine teams have gone under more than they’ve gone over. The other 21 are at .500 or have “winning” records going over the point total. Friday night offers seven more opportunities at 888Sport to take advantage.

Top NBA Teams to Bet Over 2018-19

NBA Over-Under Betting Tips

Pace

It’s the fun new buzzword in NBA circles, but pace matters. A lot. It’s the average number of possessions a team uses in a single game. It’s dependent on the opponent as well – if Team B uses more of the shot clock pace will be slow no matter how fast Team A plays – but it’s paramount when considering point total bets.

And the pace in the league this season is the fastest/highest it’s been since 1986. Specifically, the average team is using 101.4 possessions per game. That’s up more than four possessions from just one year ago (97.3).

Transition baskets, 3-pointers and superb athletes have the game being played at a rate we haven’t seen in more than 30 years.

Points

The backbone of over bets. Already this season we’ve seen two 50-point scorers in Blake Griffin and Steph Curry, and seen Zach LaVine become the 17th player in NBA history to begin the year with four 30-point games.

And already we’ve seen the New Orleans Pelicans hang 149 points in a game, and the Los Angeles Lakers score 142 points and LOSE. Yes, scoring has never been this good. Teams are averaging 112.3 points per game this year, the highest mark in the league since 1970 (116.7).

Of course it’s early, but through games played October 25, 42 players are averaging 19.0 points per game or more. To put that in perspective, here are the number of players who averaged 20 or more the last seven seasons: 26, 34, 24, 18, 23, 12 and 17.

Offensive Efficiency

Pace is up and points are up, so that means efficiency is up, too. That is, the number of points per 100 possessions a team is scoring.

Thanks to the absurd amount of 3-pointers teams are taking and making, the league average efficiency is 110.3. That’s up almost two whole points (that’s a lot) from a year ago, and it’s easily the highest of all-time.

The league average for field-goal percentage has topped 41 percent, the first time that’s happened since 1992. And 3-pointers are actually off the charts.

A year ago teams averaged 10 3-pointers per game for the first ever. This year that number has already boomed up past 11 3-pointers per game. The games are high scoring and fast, but they’re also efficient like we’ve never seen before.

We’ll also add here, as it pertains to efficiency, that turnovers are also down. Even as teams are speeding things up, bringing more opportunities to turn the ball over, they’ve gone down. Teams are averaging just 13.9 turnover per game, the first time that league-wide number has ever been below 14.0, and that’s not even pace-dependent.