We are all sports enthusiasts and many of us like to take some time from playing our favorite Grande Vegas casino games to place some bets on sporting events. The most exciting time in any sport is when the championship is on the line. Both the National Hockey League (NHL) and the National Basketball Association (NBA) are fast approaching their championship series.
Many sports bettors will fail to make the proper adjustments for these late playoff series and will bet on hockey and basketball in North America like they would during the regular season. Here are some tips for betting on NBA and NHL late playoff games.
These sports are as different from each other as sports can be and the best betting strategy reflects those differences. There are three bets you can make: straight winner/loser bet; the spread; total points or over/under bet.
NBA
North American basketball is played by the fastest, tallest, and strongest basketball players in the world. The game is fast as each team has only twenty-four seconds to shoot the ball on offence. Because of the nature of the game teams will accumulate a total of 200 or more points per game.
During the regular season, the better team wins an overwhelming majority of its games. The home court advantage is big in the NBA. Many times one team has traveled and is playing a game after playing the night before whilst the home team has been resting for 24-48 hours.
In the playoffs, there are never games on consecutive nights so travel and fatigue are problems born equally by both teams. Neither team can be easily seen as the far superior team; for any team to reach this deep in the playoffs means that it is a formidable team.
In the playoffs, teams can make adjustments that they can’t make during the regular season. A player with a slight injury may sit out a game during the season. A veteran player often sits out the second of consecutive games. Slight injuries are insignificant in the playoffs as both the team and the players affected want to win the championship far more than they want to nurse a minor injury.
Michael Jordan played a playoff game with the flu. His body was raging with fever and he had energy only for offence. His teammates compensated for him on defense and he ended up scoring more points than any other player that game.
In basketball, the best player on offence touches the ball on every possession. He has many chances to help his team score by shooting or passing the ball. If the opponent double teams the best offensive player, he may pass the ball to an open teammate. Here is point number one: if the best player on offence on a team is a poor passer or too selfish to pass the ball or doesn’t have confidence in his teammates, he will shoot even when double teamed and his team will probably lose.
In the playoffs, the players the coach wants to play spend a lot more time on the court than during the regular season. That means that the relative strength of a team’s top eight players is more determining of the outcome of the series than the overall strength of the team.
In short, the NBA playoffs in the later stages come down usually to the play of each team’s best player. LeBron James has proven year after year that he can raise the level of his play in the playoffs as he has led his teams to the championship series almost by himself for many years in a row. At this stage, each team has a single superstar who is among the top ten players in the league and may be in the top ten of players in the entire history of the league.
NHL
This game is played on skates. It is fast and furious, intensely physical. In the NHL playoffs the only sound bet to make is the winner/loser bet. So many games go into overtime, that betting on the spread is completely out of the question and betting on the over/under is fraught with danger. Most games end up with a total of three to five goals scored.
Only one player plays every minute of these games: the goalie. The other players may play in bursts of one minute give or take. The intensity of every moment on the ice is extraordinary.
The goalie is the single most important player. A goalie who is running a hot streak when he stops nearly every shot can win a playoff series almost by himself. If a goalie is playing exceptionally well, betting on him to continue is probably the best bet.
Team speed is another major factor in the playoffs. Referees are loathe to call borderline penalties so slower teams—in hockey, slower is a highly relative term—might play as tight a game as they can get away with. Team speed is also a factor in fast break situations.
The NHL was a fighter’s league for decades. The early 1970’s was the Golden Age of Goons. By the 1980’s, the league realized that it needed to protect its best players from the physical mayhem they were being subjected to. Thus, the era of the goon, a big galoot who could only fight, ended. That meant that teams could add smaller, more skilled players to their teams.
An NHL team that doesn’t have speed throughout the lineup is at a decided disadvantage especially in the playoffs but it might cause the slower players to try to slow the game down. Their success in doing so is sometimes the winning formula.
The NHL still follows the 2-2-1-1-1 playoff formula. This means that playoff series are often tied after four games with the home teams winning each game. After that, the better team with the hottest goalie wins most of the games.
The Best of the Best
Many fans who are generally bored by basketball watch the finals because they pit the best against the best. Similarly, the finals in NHL hockey usually produce the most exciting hockey of all. As sports bettors, we should look for the smallest advantage one team will have over its opponent because at that level, any advantage will be a small advantage.
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