I’ve been a big fan of basketball since I was a small child. I grew up in a suburb of Boston in the 1980s and the only team we could consistently count on to bring home the championships was the Celtics.
I placed my first bet on a basketball game at that time. I had a friend in junior high school that was a Lakers fan and he thought they were going to beat the Celts in the championships. I won $20. I was already a Celtics fan, but that win made me a lifelong fan of gambling too.
Obviously, a bet between friends is much different than a bet with a casino sportsbook. But in the end the concept is the same: someone wins money and someone loses money.
According to a Gallup poll from December 2017, Basketball is the 2nd most popular sport in the US. Which makes sense since the value of all the teams combined approach $60 billion.
For many years, the National Basketball League stood firmly with their major league sports brethren the National Football League, Major League Baseball, and the National Hockey League as well as their collegiate cousin the National Collegiate Athletic Association in opposing the legalization of sports betting (or really the expansion of it since it was legal for many years in a few states).
This opposition changed in 2018 when the Supreme Court overturned the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992 (PASPA) in the case of Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Association. PASPA prevented states that hadn’t legalized sports gambling before the passage of the law from enacting new legislation legalizing it.
It was backed by major sports organizations because they believed that sports betting could lead to game fixing among other reasons.
Most of the people who opposed PASPA believe that the real reason that sports organizations didn’t want legalized sports betting was that with all the possible avenues to place bets, there was no way that the sports organizations could get a piece of the pie.
After the Murphy case, the NBA saw that the “genie was out of the bottle” and with several states approving legalization legislation and many others proposing legislation that they needed to resign themselves that legal sports betting was a reality that they’d have to deal with.
In September 2018, the NBA took the first step in the acceptance of their new reality and formed a partnership with the MGM Resorts International as the official sportsbook of the NBA and the WNBA.
As part of the deal, MGM has agreed to pay the NBA $25 million over the next 3 years. In return, the MGM will get access to the NBA’s direct data feed. This feed gives MGM real-time data about games and could be used to enhance real-time in-game betting.
The deal that the NBA struck was used as a template for a deal that the MGM struck with the recently defunct American Alliance of Football (AAF). MGM was their official partner and in exchange, MGM got exclusive access to their data feed. Unfortunately for the AAF, they had money issues and ceased operations on April 3, 2019. The season was scheduled to end April 27th.
Even though MGM is the official sportsbook of the NBA and WNBA, it doesn’t mean that you can’t place bets with other legal sportsbooks. It just means that the MGM can advertise their official relationship and with the data stream, MGM will eventually have more options for gamblers to place bets as MGM will have the ability to turn real-time data into in-game wagering.
As of April 2019, you can legally place bets with sportsbooks in 8 states. These states are:
*Only via Native American sportsbooks
The list is expanding as 22 states currently have some sort of legislation that’s been proposed to legalize sports betting.
If you’re looking to bet with a sportsbook, you may have to do it in-person or over the phone. If you place a phone bet, you’ll most likely have to be in the same state that you place the bet.
Some states have approved mobile app betting. Casinos in Nevada, New Jersey, and Delaware have the option to bet via a mobile app. The governor of Rhode Island signed a mobile gambling bill into law on March 25, 2019, so it will be available in a few months there as well.
And while these states have mobile gambling available, you can’t bet from outside the state that operates the app. It’s okay to use the app if you’re visiting the state, but if you’re beyond their borders, you’re out of luck.
That’s not to say there aren’t options. You could find a sportsbook based outside to the US to try to take your bet. It’s a tough chore though due to the restrictions that the US has put on online gambling. Also, banks have online casinos blocked from credit or debit card transactions. Payment sites like PayPal also don’t allow money transfers to casinos outside of the US by US residents. So you may have limited options in how you proceed.
It’s important to note that some states restrict betting on teams within the state. This is a measure to avoid game fixing. You’ll want to check your local laws to see if that’s the case where you place your bet.
The NBA gives gamblers 82 days of games to bet during the regular season. This averages out to 3 games a week for 6 months out of the year for each team. With 30 NBA teams, that gives you an opportunity to bet on 2,460 regular season games to wager on.
But that’s not all, in post-season play, there’s the possibility of betting on another 105 games if all the post-season series go the full 7 games.
If 2,500+ opportunities to bet aren’t enough for you, then you’re in luck, because betting isn’t one dimensional. You don’t just have to pick a winner. You have dozens of different ways and things you can bet on during a game.
When I was growing up and started betting. I learned about odds and what the meant. I’d see a game and a team would have 3 to 1 odds meaning that if I bet a dollar, I’d win 3. I’ve also heard the expression “6 to 5, you pick ‘em” meaning that the winner of the game is a toss-up, but if you bet $6, you can win $5.
Sometimes I’d see the odds written as a fraction. For example, 3 to 1 would be written 3/1. I was very comfortable with these expressions and I got very attached to them.
Then money line betting start popping up.
It started for me when I would see boxing matches and I’d see one boxer with a positive number and one with a negative number.
Not living in Las Vegas or Atlantic City, I tried to find some explanation of what all this mumbo jumbo meant.
I tried looking it up (keep in mind this was several years ago and information of the web was in its infancy) and I got frustrated and gave up at the time. After all, there were still sites that gave odds the way I was used to and I just stuck with them.
But as time went on, I noticed that money line betting started popping up in other sports. I saw it in football, hockey, tennis, and yes, basketball.
Luckily, I finally was able to find someone to explain it to me so that I could understand it. I’m certainly not an unintelligent man, but I’ve some issues with comprehension sometimes and I need to interact with whatever I’m working on to fully understand. It’s like not understanding how to sink a basket until you’ve actually done it.
So I was able to get the knowledge I needed to understand money line betting and once I understood it, it seemed quite simple and I wanted to bang my head on a table for fighting learning it for so long.
First, the most important thing to understand is that a money line bet is 2 different types of bets. The positive number has certain requirements and the negative number has certain requirements.
I’ll use this example:
When an oddsmaker sets a head-to-head matchup in any sport, they decide who they think will win and who they think will lose. The factors they use in making these decisions include:
Other factors may be included as well, but those are the basics.
In the example above, the oddsmaker has decided that they favor Boston to win. The number is used to determine how much you need to wager.
That represents the amount you need to bet to win $100. So a bet of $210 dollars will pay out $100 if the Celtics win. That means you get back the $210 plus the $100.
It’s a bit different. The number next to the plus sign tells you how much you win if you bet $100. So in the case of the Pacers, if you bet $100 and they win, you win $300 plus you get back the $100 you stake for the bet.
The money line doesn’t require you to bet $100 or in the case of the Celtics bet $210. This is the guide that sportsbooks use to payout. For instance, if you wanted to bet $25 on the pacers, you’d win $75 if they won. Or if you wanted to bet $10 on the Celtics and they won, you’d win a little under $5.
Money line betting isn’t just for choosing winners and losers. Most bets utilize the money line standard to determine payouts.
One of the more popular bets in basketball is the totals bet. This is one of my favorite types of bets because I don’t have to do much research into it.
This bet isn’t about the better team or wins and losses. It’s simply how many points will be scored in the entire game.
And you don’t need to be The Amazing Kreskin to determine the number of points. The oddsmakers do that for you.
Take a look at this example
In this example, the oddsmakers set the bar at 175½ points (the ½ point is to avoid ties, sometimes you’ll see it, sometimes you won’t, it depends on the oddsmaker).
With this bet, if you think that both teams will score 176 or more points combined, then you can bet $150 to win $100. If you think that the will score 175 or less, you can bet $100 to win $235.
The totals bets can be done for the entire game, a quarter, or a half. If they’re done for the quarter of the half, it is for the entire game up until that point, not for the points only scored in the period.
Another favorite of mine is the parlay bet. A parlay bet is a bet placed on the outcome of multiple games at one time. This could encompass all the games in a single day, a weekend, or a week.
The most common is the day and weekend parlay.
A parlay bet will require you to select a minimum of 3 teams to win their games. You have the option to choose more. Sometimes as many as 20, but usually it’s about 12. It will depend on how many games are being played that day or weekend. Because the league only has 30 teams, usually most sportsbooks set the parlay max at 12.
When placing a parlay bet, you pay a flat fee. Usually about $5. This bet then covers you for all the teams you select. The payout is based on how many games you have chosen.
But there’s a catch. All the teams you select must win. If you chose 12 teams and only 11 win, then you lose.
Here is an example of how a parlay may pay out:
Even though the bet is an all or nothing proposition, the low cost of the bet can allow you to be bold and choose several teams.
Also, keep in mind that the flat fee is the point of entry. In other words, it’s the minimum you need to wager to place the bet. You can bet $10 and potentially double your winnings or bet $50 and potentially win 10 times the amount on the pay table.
Some people like to play the long game, and if that describes you, then you may like futures betting. This type of bet is exactly how it sounds, you’re betting on a future event.
The most popular futures wager is the bet on who’ll win the world championship.
As the beginning of each season starts, oddsmakers will go through each team and decide on the odds of each team winning. Usually, the 2 teams in the championship from the year before are the ones that are the most heavily favored.
This bet is shown as a money line but has more than 2 teams, but that’s okay because it works the same. All 30 teams will have either a negative or positive number and you simply choose the one you think will win. If you bet on a team with a negative number, you pay that amount to win $100 and if you bet on a team with a positive number, you need to bet $100 to win that amount.
The big takeaway on a futures bet is that the further away from the event, the better chance you have at getting really good odds. As the season passes, the odds will change, which is logical because when the season starts, anything can happen, but as the season progresses, teams fall out of contention.
The championship isn’t the only futures bet. Bets can be placed on conference championships, MVP titles and more.
And here’s a fact to consider when placing your bet: only 8 teams in the last 30 years have won the world championship. So in all likelihood, your chances are 1 in 8 of picking a winner if you choose a past champion.
Prop bets, or proposition bets, are bets that can be made about any aspect of the game that’s not covered in a standard bet. These types of bets aren’t usually about the outcome of a game. Prop bets are usually about an incident that happens during a game or a season.
Sportsbooks will usually advertise a few prop bets for higher stake games and will be more prominent in championships games.
Some examples of prop bets include:
So as you can see there are many different types of prop bets you can place. Sportsbooks don’t often list many prop bets except for big games. Sometimes they aren’t set up to allow a lot of them. The trick is that sometimes you can ask them to take a prop bet. If you name the bet, they will come up with odds. The worst that can happen is that they say no.
Sports betting is going to grow immensely over the next few years and basketball is already trying to get out in front of fans and gamblers with their MGM partnership. It is likely that that partnership will expand as well. And you can check our top NBA betting sites to get in on the action.
With the impending explosion of sports betting opportunities, it’s a good time to start learning about how teams and players perform so you can have a leg up when sports betting comes to your state (if it hasn’t already).
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