NBA Betting Strategies: Tips to Maximizing Your Winnings

One of the great things about professional sports is that when one season ends, we always have another one starting.

While the MLB is entering the final stages of the playoffs on the road to the World Series, we have the NHL and NBA ready to begin.

My NBA Betting Strategies Analysis

For basketball fans, the real action begins on October 22nd, although we will have some preseason games to look forward to ahead of the opening tip.

Some of you are probably already wagering on the preseason games, while others will be waiting until the real action begins.

Either way. NBA betting strategies are an absolute must if you want to end the season with more money than you started with.

Here are a few NBA betting tips that should hopefully help you in the long season ahead.

Establish a Bankroll

It may seem like a pretty basic thing to suggest, but all too many players get excited about the start of the season, throwing out bets to try and get out to a fast start.

The NBA season is long, and if you don’t have your bankroll in mind, no NBA betting strategy is going to prevent you from losing your money quickly.

Be aware of how much you can afford to play, and potentially lose, and always have your bankroll in mind before placing any bet.

Be consistent with your wagering and don’t blow a chunk of your money on a wager that looks like a “sure thing” as those generally don’t exist.

Start Slow

Over the years, we have seen potential favorites get out to a slow start, while dark horses and underdogs come storming out of the gate.

It often takes time for teams to get into the swing of a new season, so keep your bets on the lower end of the scale until you begin to get a handle on every team in the league.

As soon as trends start to develop, you can then start to make better bets that increase your chances of winning, as opposed to basically going in blind and hoping for the best.

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Track Injuries

Like it or not, injuries play a major role in professional sports, and they also have an impact on how a game might play out.

Each team only has 5 players on the court at any given time, so it is possible for a couple of star players to dominate and essentially put their team on their back.

If that player goes down for an extended period of time with an injury, it is not uncommon for the team to struggle, even if they had previously been on a hot run of form.

There will also be times when those players choose to play though a niggling injury, which can again have an impact on their performance and the potential outcome of a game.

Teams might well have a strong starting 5 but be weak on the bench, so get to know each squad as well as you can and the drop off that may occur with one replacement to the starting 5.

Pay Attention to the Schedule

With this one, I am talking specifically about road trips, especially those that are longer or that have a lot of games in short succession.

No matter how good a team is, they might have a tough time hitting the road and playing 3 or 4 road games in the space of a week.

That trip can take a toll, as can back-to-back games on consecutive nights.

It is not uncommon for the second game in as many nights to be a grind for a team, especially when they are traveling to play them.

Pay Attention to the Odds

Just because a game looks like a slam dunk does not mean that you should be wagering that game.

There very often tends to be lopsided matchups on the schedule on any given night, which makes betting on the favorite a bit of a waste of time.

Is it really worth dropping $100 on a huge favorite to make a minimal profit, knowing full well that favorites do lose. You need to look at the risk and reward and decide if that one game is worth it.

There are always plenty of other options on any given night, so take the time to select the games that you feel confident about and which will be a better investment in terms of returns.

Odds can also shift dramatically once the injury reports are released, which takes us right back to one of the NBA betting strategies we mentioned earlier.

Check out the Rivalry

There are a couple of things to consider when looking at the matchups on the daily NBA schedule. You might have a game that looks like a sure bet, but when you dig a little deeper, it might end up being closer than expected.

Every team in the NBA has a rival that they always seem to struggle against, even when they look pretty far apart on paper.

You may also have situations where bad blood began brewing in an earlier meeting, which could carry over into the next time those teams meet.

Every game has some subplot or story going on that could well have an impact on how things play out.

We need to close this out with one of our best NBA betting tips, which is to only play the games you feel confident about.

It is certainly tempting to want to have action going in every game, especially on a night where there might only be 2 or 3 games on the schedule.

Playing every game will eat up your bankroll quickly, so be disciplined and stick to the matchups that you have studied from top to bottom and found to be worth wagering on.