What’s your approach when you handicap the NBA Playoffs?

Betting the NBA through the extended regular season is one thing. Betting best-of-seven playoff series takes on a totally different approach when it comes to handicapping the individual games.

Upsets are rather common during the NBA regular season.

Going back over the NBA betting results for this past season, favorites won 68.1% of their games straight-up. That rate slips to 50.1 % when you factor in the closing point spread.

That tells you just how good today’s professional oddsmakers really are setting those lines.

The home team won 54.4% of the time SU and 48.3% of the time against the spread.

The best bet for NBA regular season games was road favorites with a slight 52.4% edge against the closing number. For anyone who likes to wager on NBA totals, the results were basically even at 50.4% for the OVER on the final combined score.

As you can see, there was no significant edge for any one bet overall.

True handicapping is all about finding the edge in a particular head-to-head matchup.

In a playoff format that tends to heavily lean towards the favored team, you need a solid reason to bet underdogs this time of the year.

MORE NBA PLAYOFF INFO > TIPS FOR BETTING NBA PLAYOFF SERIES PRICES

One handicapping tip to keep in mind is that the edge for betting favorites does dimmish a bit as each round of the NBA postseason wears on. Once you move to the conference finals and the championship NBA Finals round.

The difference between the favorite and underdog could come down to home court advantage.

Straight-up upsets will take place from time-to-time in individual playoff games. But they are much farther and few between in the postseason. The best team from each conference does tend to advance through each round. This sets up the most anticipated showdown in the best-of-seven NBA Finals.

One of the biggest factors affecting your handicapping efforts in the NBA postseason is any significant player injuries. Two teams at full strength can be evaluated on pure face value. Trying to factor in the impact of a key player injury becomes much more difficult to do.

Home court is another important aspect of postseason NBA games.

Two teams that are evenly matched on paper are more than capable of blowing each other out on their home court from one game to the next. The seven-game NBA playoff series follows the standard 2-2-1-1-1 format.

Home court really comes into play when a series advances to games five, six and seven.

Coaching and past playoff experience are two more factors that need to be taken into consideration come playoff time. The Milwaukee Bucks come into this season’s playoffs as defending NBA champions. That still counts for something in any tight matchup. 

The Phoenix Suns are the clear favorites in the West after winning the conference regular season by eight games to earn the No. 1 seed. Wagering on a Bucks vs. Suns final in a NBA futures bet adds immediate value to those odds.

Betting against the favorite on a continual basis in the NBA postseason is the easiest way to burn through your betting bankroll. This may sound boring, but going chalk this time of the year makes the most betting sense.

When handicapping the games, you basically have to look for reasons not to bet the favorites both SU and ATS.

Before you head off, our last handicapping article was golf based. Go take a look at best bets for betting on professional golf.