NBA Basketball Betting: Way Too Early NBA Hoop Observations #2

It’s barely the beginning of NBA basketball betting season but that doesn’t mean that we can’t start trying to ‘get ahead of the marketplace’ and figure out what’s what with the teams and players in the league.  We posted a couple of observations yesterday and here’s a couple more—hopefully, these nuggets of handicapping wisdom will lead to some winning bets!

WAY TOO EARLY NBA HOOP BETTING OBSERVATIONS #2

--THE GOLDEN STATE WARRIORS ARE A MESS...IS THEIR LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL?

We’re nearing the two week pole of the NBA season with most teams having played around a half dozen games.  The good news is that every team in the league has at least one win.  There’s also just one remaining undefeated team—the Philadelphia 76ers who it should also be pointed out have played just four games at the time of this writing.  That’s tied for the fewest games to date.  Five teams have only one win—The New Orleans Pelicans and Golden State Warriors have highly publicized injury issues.  The Warriors are in the worst shape of the two as their roster is completely unrecognizable at the moment.  Klay Thompson is unlikely to play this season, Steph Curry is out at least three months and a number of their better role players have also been sidelined of late including Draymond Green (day to day) and D’Angelo Russell (ditto).  For Saturday’s home game against Charlotte their starting lineup:  Eric Paschall, Glenn Robinson III, Willie Cauley-Stein, Ky Bowman and Jordan Poole.  Hard to believe that this is the same team that flat out dominated much of the past 5 or 6 years.

The Warriors were overvalued to start the season but now that they’ve suffered a downright insane confluence of injuries could they actually end up being undervalued?  Very likely.  The ‘public’ has completely written off Golden State this season and in terms of them competing for a NBA title that’s probably valid.  They’ve also gone from being a matchup that opposing teams ‘circled’ on their schedule to one that even the worst team thinks they’ll be able to ‘phone in’ and win.  Warriors’ pointspreads are already seeing insane adjustments—for example, against the Charlotte Hornets on Saturday they closed a +6 home underdog to an opponent that came into the game with a 1-3 record on the year.  Golden State lost by 6 and pushed against the spread.

One thing that won’t happen is for the Warriors to ‘tank’.  They may lose a lot of games but they’ll show up and compete every night.  And don’t be surprised if they go on a solid pointspread run the rest of the way.  They’re a well coached team under Steve Kerr and there’s now no pressure to win whatsoever.  In a strange way, this could be the best thing that ever happened to Golden State.  It’s almost uncanny in it’s similarity to the 1996-97 San Antonio Spurs experience.  That year, the Spurs missed the playoffs for only the fourth time since they joined the league in 1976.  Chuck Person missed the entire season and David Robinson played only 6 games due to back and foot issues.  They fired head coach Bob Hill and the General Manager took over coaching duties.  That doesn’t always work out but in this case GM Gregg Popovich did a ‘pretty fair’ job.  The Spurs won only 20 games after winning 59 the year before.  As a result, they ended up in the draft lottery where they won the top pick and used it to select Tim Duncan.  Two years later, they won another NBA title.

--ARE THE NEW YORK KNICKS ACTUALLY IMPROVING?

Not all one win teams are created equally.  Let’s throw out Golden State (for now) and New Orleans (the Pelicans will be a different team with Zion Williamson in the lineup).  Of the three remaining one win teams, two have a winning record against the spread.  1-4 Washington failed to cover for the first time this season on Saturday and are now 4-1 against the number.  The New York Knicks are 4-2 against the spread and play another one win team—Sacramento--on Sunday.  New York has had injury issues but now have a legit bigtime scoring weapon in first round draft pick RJ Barrett.  Barrett is now the co-second favorite to win Rookie of the Year at +300 along with Zion Williamson.  Both players are just behind Ja Morant at +275.   Barrett is averaging 17.7 PPG and his performance—along with the entire team’s performance—will improve once the Knicks get their top two pointguards back in the lineup.  Frank Ntilikina started at the one guard position against Boston on Friday and played fairly well, scoring 10 points though he’s not much of a playmaker.

Last season, the Knicks were ranked #22 in team defense allowing 113.8 PPG and #28 in team offense scoring just 104.6 PPG.  That gave them the #28 differential in the league at -9.2.  We’ll give them a pass on offense for now given their backcourt injuries but they’ve shown some dramatic improvement on defense where they’re now #14 in team defense allowing 108 PPG which—if you’re scoring at home—is an improvement of 5.8 PPG.  Keep in mind that this is despite the absence of a few of their best backcourt defenders.  They’ve already improved their differential to -7.1 per game.  Once they get past their injury situation they’ll start to show even more improvement.

The ‘public’ still doesn’t realize that things are looking up at MSG and probably won’t for quite some time.  Keep an eye out for opportunities to bet on the Knicks, particularly after guards Elfrid Payton, Dennis Smith, Jr., Kadeem Allen and Reggie Bullock get healthy.  The Eastern Conference just doesn’t have much depth so if the Knicks start to ‘gel’ that could foreseeably make the playoffs.