When I left Highlands Elementary School and moved up to Indian Hills Junior High, I felt pretty good about myself. I believed I had conquered grade school and was more than ready for the next step. In fact, I had done so well at Highlands (the school crossing guard of the year award was my proudest achievement) that I had a touch of arrogance (even though I didn’t know what that word meant at such a tender age).I enrolled in Edna Hulquist’s seventh grade Spanish class. Miss Hulquist had to be in her late 70’s, maybe even in her 80’s (twelve-year old kids aren’t a good judge of age). She was about 4’10” tall, maybe 4’11” in heels. She had the oddest habit when she cleaned the chalkboard. She put the eraser in her right hand and rapidly moved it back and forth across the board. There is nothing unusual in that, but what was unique was she also lifted her left hand up while she was erasing and moved it rapidly back and forth just like her right hand even though there was no eraser in her left hand. This is one of those things you have to see in person or view a video of it, but this was before YouTube.
I was doing very well in class. I felt like I was from south of the border when I would trill my double r’s and use the phrase “con mucho gusto”. I became cocky and was confident I was good enough speaking Spanish where I didn’t’ need to read the assigned chapters. My bubble burst as I failed the final exam not knowing the differences between the verbs estar and ser. Yo no estaba contento.
NBA teams can be just like I was. Things are going too well and you lose your edge and bad things happen, such as not covering the point spread. Let’s look at some real-life examples to illustrate this point.
A team can become overconfident when it is performing above its norm such as when a squad is burning the nets shooting 50%+ for three straight games. This has happened 152 times over the past three seasons. Overall, there is nothing worth betting on but if you make the team a home favorite we uncover a 59.6% ticket-cashing angle to play against our hot-shooting boys in their next game. Being home, the team gets to sleep in their own beds and has all of the “advantages” of playing in their own arena. Since they have been shooting lights out, they have to believe they are going to win. Of course, we do have them laying points so they have to win by margin to cover the point spread.
Let’s add in one more factor to see if we can improve that almost 60% angle to play against this team. Let’s make their opponent a losing team, one whose record is below .500. That should help the new opponent be overlooked by our excessively confident team. It improves to the tune of a 75% angle to play against them, 24-8 ATS, the past three seasons.
It doesn’t have to be an opponents’ winning percentage to help make a situation an overly profitable occurrence. Taking our hot team from the field hitting 50%+ three games in a row and put them against a team that has a poor defense, one that is allowing its foes to shoot at 46% or better from the floor, and you have a team that is only covering 33% of the next game following their three contests of blazing nets.
Now, if you want to drill down further by making their next opponent a team with a below .500 mark, they cover only 27.8% of the time. One final additional qualifier of making this a home game and you have a team only beating the point spread 19% of the time.
Our next example involves a team shooting well and playing good defense. A team in its previous game hits 50% or higher from the field. They also play tough defense holding their opponent to less than 40% shooting. The team’s current opponent did the exact opposite in their previous game. They shot poorly, below 40%, and played poor defense allowing 50% or higher shooting from the field. Most people’s first thought would be we have a team that is in good current form playing a team that is not in good current form. Therefore, you would think you have to bet on the team which shot well and defended well in their last game against the team that didn’t play very well.
However, as in many handicapping situations in virtually every sport, you have to think deeper than just considering what appears to be the obvious. Our good shooting/good defending squad played a well-rounded game, good on offense and good on defense. After such a fine performance in the NBA, it is difficult for a team to recreate the effort needed to sustain such a fine showing.
Our bad shooting and poor defensive team played a terrible game on both ends of the court. They are going to be focused in their next game to hopefully make sure it doesn’t happen again. There will be a stronger effort put out by players who are paid to do so. The result when two teams with this type of immediate past performance is the previous “bad team” covers the point spread 68.3% of the time over the past three years. This is the opposite result of what many people would expect.
The quality of competition you are facing can breed a false-sense of superiority. Teams that play a number of lower quality teams in a row and beat up on them are susceptible to a losing game against the point spread. Over the past three seasons, if a team has beaten three teams in a row with each team not having a winning percentage of 45% or higher and now they are playing a worse losing team, one with a below 40% success ratio of winning games, they are covering the number only 28.9% of the time. If our bully team is playing at home, their winning percentage in that fourth game drops even lower to 23.5%.
It is so very interesting how the level of competition you face after your three wins against sub-par teams makes a difference in your spread coverage rate. We mentioned how poorly a team does against a bad team. Just the opposite is true if they are facing a team winning 55% or better of their games after their three-game winning streak. Then our team is cashing tickets in 38 of the 58 instances this situation happened over the past three seasons, a 65.5% success ratio. Playing a better team keeps our team from laying down their guard and has them winning at a better ATS rate than if they were playing a weaker team.
A below average team that is tasting short term success usually reverts back to its normal form. As an example, a team with a season winning percentage below 45% that has won three of its past four games and is playing at home, and their previous game was also at home, only covers the points spread at a 35.7% frequency. If this team is favored by more than three points, their ATS pace falls to 21.7%.
Make sure you take notice when a team could incur a too-relaxed approach to a game due to their recent success. If you do, maybe you won’t have to stay after class and clean the erasers for Miss Hulquist.
Jim Kruger of Vegas Sports Authority is a frequent visitor.
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