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In the old days, NBA betting took place with people placing wagers on their favorite teams or hometowns teams. Over the past decade, bettors have turned to statistics to better understand how a team compares to an opposing squad. They use this comparison to come up with better picks.
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In the past few years, gamblers have taken it to another level as they have started utilizing the NBA’s advanced statistics which teams use in analyzing their performances. But not all of us are familiar with these advanced metrics and because we know it is going to be very useful to you, we’ve come up with an article that will help you use these advanced stats when making NBA bets.
True Shooting Percentage
The True Shooting Percentage is a more accurate measure of a team’s shooting efficiency. While the traditional Field Goal percentage counts only two-point baskets, true shooting percentage also factors free-throw shooting and three-point shooting.
For a long time, field goal percentage has been used as a metric to gauge a team’s shooting capability. However, it does not recognize a team that goes often to the foul line and makes its free throws. So when evaluating which teams have the better offense, look to utilize the true shooting percentage statistic.
Assist to Turnover Ratio
The Assist to Turnover is an indicator of how efficient a team is on the offensive end of the floor. The statistic is derived by dividing a team’s total assists by the total number of turnovers it commits. The higher the rating, the more efficient that team is on offense.
Assists lead points so the team with the higher assist to turnover ratio is one that can score more points while taking good care of the ball. A team that has a lower ratio is one that turns the ball more often. Turnovers are a crucial part of a basketball game. It gives the opponent more opportunities to score and it also breaks the momentum of a team.
Pace Factor
Pace is the average number of possessions that teams use per game. When a team has more possessions, it has more opportunities to score. A team with a high pace factor is usually one that is on top of the leaderboard when it comes to scoring points.
This statistic won’t matter much when it comes to spread betting. However, this is a very important factor when you are betting on the totals. By using the pace factor, you can estimate the number of points that teams can score in a particular ball game.
Free Throw Rate
Some people compute this stat as Free throw attempts divided by field goal attempts. But if we use this computation, we are only determining the average number of free-throw attempts that a team gets per shot taken. The number of foul shots taken doesn’t matter at all unless a team makes them.
Basketball-Reference uses a better formula for this and it is free throws made divided by field goal attempts. Now, this is a much better gauge of how effective a team is at the foul line. This counts how many points a team makes at the line per shot attempt. A team with a high free throw rate is one that makes the most out of the free throws it is given. Again, this comes to play in total betting.
Rebound Rate
The rebound rate estimates how effective a team is in getting possession of the ball after a missed shot or missed free throw. This is further divided into offensive rebound rate and defensive rebound rate to get a clearer picture of the estimated number of times a team gets an offensive rebound or defensive rebound after a missed shot.
A team that gets more rebounds, whether offensive or defensive, gets more possessions and more possessions mean more opportunities to score. Rebound rate is one of the four factors of basketball statistics. You need to use this along with shooting, turnovers, rebounding, and free throws.
Offensive Rating
Offensive rating is the average points scored of a team per 100 possessions. This metric is used to evaluate how good a team is offensively or in scoring points. Traditionally, bettors use the team’s scoring average to determine which teams are the better scoring teams. However, each team plays a game at different paces so you can’t compare teams apple to apple using this.
When it comes to offensive rating, you can compare teams using the same number of possessions which is 100. So a team that has a higher offensive rating is a team that can score more than the others given the same number of possessions. Teams with high offensive ratings tend to produce very high scoring totals.
Defensive Rating
The opposite of offensive rating is defensive rating. Like offensive rating, this is measured per 100 possessions so when you use this, you are comparing teams on equal footing. Naturally, the teams with the lower figures here are those who play better defense because they allow fewer points per 100 possessions.
Again, this metric is useful when you are betting on the totals. A team with a higher figure in defensive rating allows its opponents to score too many points. A team with a lower figure here engages in low scoring games.
Net Rating
Net rating is the difference between offensive rating and defensive rating. It is a better metric than point differential because like the offensive and defensive rating, this one is computed using 100 possessions, hence you can compare teams more accurately here.
A team with a higher nat rating is one that wins games by a wider margin. You can use this metric when you are betting on the spreads. Here, you can estimate the winning margins using the team’s net rating.
Player Impact Estimate
This is one of the newest advanced metric being used in the NBA. Simply, it is an excellent indicator of performance at the team or player level. The formula for this was the one used for EFF ( efficiency) only that they factored in personal fouls. It considers basic stats such as points, rebounds, assists, turnovers, and others.
Still hard to understand? Let’s do it again: In its simplest terms, PIE shows what percentage of the game that a team achieves. A high PIE is highly correlated to winning and a team with a PIE higher than 50% is most likely a winning team.
On/Off Splits
The on/off splits tell you how a team does when a player is on the floor and when he is sitting on the bench. This statistic records a team’s offensive and defensive efficiency when a player is either on or off the basketball court.
This is crucial because injuries are a common thing in a physical league like the NBA. And when teams have injuries, you have to determine whether those injuries will have a big impact on the team’s performance. When you can weigh the possible damage that an injured player has on his team, you can decide on whether to bet on that team or not.
