NBA Second Half Betting Notes
By Teddy Covers
Snarling Bobcats
The betting marketplace is lagging behind the current realities of the Charlotte Bobcats. Larry Brown’s squad heads into the All-Star break as the No. 6 seed in the Eastern Conference. Their overall numbers show a very sharp home/road dichotomy. Charlotte is 19-6 straight up at Bobcats Arena but just 7-19 SU on the highway.
But when we take away the season-long numbers and concentrate on current form, the Bobcats are actually a better bet away from home. Charlotte is 6-5 SU in their last eleven road games following a 1-14 start. From a pointspread perspective, the Bobcats have been gold as road underdogs, going 13-8 ATS in that role dating back to November. Meanwhile, they’ve failed to cover four of their last five at home .
There is money to be made supporting the Bobcats on the road from here on out. There’s absolutely no fundamental reason why they can’t and won’t continue to notch straight up road victories in the immediate future, just as they have in recent games.
The Bobcats spent a good portion of the first half of the season struggling on offense, relying exclusively on their No. 3-ranked defense to win games. But those offensive struggles are a thing of the past, as all three of their perimeter scorers – Stephen Jackson, Gerald Wallace and Raymond Felton – have found their rhythm within Larry Brown’s offense, leading to an 8-3 mark to the over in their last eleven games.
The Bobcats biggest question marks come in the frontcourt. Power forward Boris Diaw has declined markedly from last year, plummeting in scoring, rebounds and assists. Center Tyson Chandler has spent nearly half the season on the sideline in street clothes with foot and ankle problems, just like he did last year in New Orleans.
In Chandler’s limited playing time, he’s averaging nearly as many turnovers and fouls (5.3 per game) as points (6.3 per game). For the Bobcats to continue their pointspread success, they’ll need at least one of those two frontcourt talents to step up.
Punchless Pistons
The Pistons have gotten much healthier in the last few weeks, with Richard Hamilton, Tayshaun Prince, Ben Gordon, Will Bynum and Charlie Villanueva all back in the lineup for head coach John Kuester. But just because they are finally healthy doesn’t mean that Detroit is morphing into a good team.
The Pistons are just 3-7 SU and ATS in their last ten games. Two of those three wins came against the truly hapless 4-48 Nets – a squad challenging the all-time NBA record for futility. Even against New Jersey, both games were competitive right through the final minute of play.
This is not just a recent slump for Detroit. We’re talking about a team that is 7-21 SU and 7-20-1 ATS in their last 28 ballgames. It’s worth noting that the Pistons have a grand total of ONE pointspread cover in those last 21 losses – if this team doesn’t win, they don’t cover in defeat. Detroit has been truly awful in the road underdog role, just 3-9 ATS in their last dozen tries.
Even when the Pistons bring their ‘A’ game at home, they can’t seem to win. In a recent game against Memphis, Detroit played their guts out. They shot well over 50 percent from the floor for more than three quarters and the Pistons had energy, gobbling up 17 offensive rebounds. As a team, they had 30 assists and only ten turnovers. Yet with the game on the line in the fourth quarter, Detroit had no go-to-guy. They missed their last eight shots and ended up losing by six.
The Palace of Auburn Hills doesn’t sell out these days, another half empty, lethargic NBA arena – a shell of the dominant homecourt that it once was. Since the week before Christmas, Detroit has lost at home by 30 against Toronto, 17 against New York, 11 against Chicago, 10 against Philly, 12 against Indiana, four against Portland, six against Memphis, 27 against Miami, five against Orlando and six against Sacramento. Even the patsies are looking at Detroit as an easy place to get a road victory.
Second-half schedules
The post-All-Star break stretch provides bettors with some unique scheduling situations. I’ve identified a pair of teams with exceptionally tough second-half slates, and a pair of teams that face a much easier second-half schedule. Watch out for these four squads ATS down the stretch – few bettors take the time and effort to identify long-term scheduling angles, which gives savvy bettors a chance to take advantage!
Tough:
Remember when the Lakers were playing all of those home games through the first ten weeks of the season? On Jan. 5, the Lakers had the best record in the league, in part, because no team in the NBA had played fewer road games – only 11 of them. They’ll pay for that after the All-Star break, with five multi-game trips and only 12 remaining home games. To make matters even worse, those road trips are against tough competition with 11 road games against teams that are above .500 at the break.
The Jazz don’t have any true homestands after the All-Star break. Their longest stretch without having to pack a suitcase will be two games. Utah plays 19 of its last 33 games on the road, with four road swings of three games or longer. They have at least one back-to-back on three of those four trips, and a whopping nine sets of back-to-backs in the final two months of play.
Easy:
The Chicago Bulls have only three remaining road games against Western Conference foes and none of those games take them out of the Central Time zone – at Minnesota, Memphis and Dallas. The Bulls have only one road trip of longer than two games after the All-Star break. Nine of their remaining 14 road games come against opponents with a losing record.
The 55 games that the Trail Blazers logged before the All-Star break were the most of any team in the NBA. Portland played ten straight games against opponents with winning records heading into the break. And Nate McMillan’s squad played a league-high 13 sets of back-to-back games over the first half of the season. Given that brutal schedule, the second half is relatively clear sailing, even though they have only one remaining homestand longer than two games.