NBA Totals Betting System: First Games After the All-Star Break

After the All-Star Break, how motivated will NBA players be in their first games back?

Defense is about effort and motivation.  Where there is a lack of motivation, there are typically higher scores.

Nowhere is this more apparent than the All-Star game itself, but there are regular season situations where defensive energy is low as well.  One of these situations is after the break, where players are on five or more days of rest.

Will their motivations have any effect on the total, and if so what?  Knowing answers to questions like this will help you to profit when betting the NBA.

Handicapping NBA Totals First Game After the All-Star Break

Since 1995, 52.6% of a team’s first game after the All-Star break end up over.  This is not enough to be profitable on its own, but it gives us a good starting point.

Team Performance

One key factor to consider in this situation is how good the teams in the matchup are.  Keeping in line with our expectations on motivation and scoring, a game between two teams that are unlikely to make the playoffs should go over the total more often than a game between two franchises with playoff aspirations.

The results strongly support our theory.  Matchups between teams with winning records in this situation go over just 42.6% of the time, while matchups between two squads with losing records hit the over at 67.9%.

Divisional vs Non-Divisional

Another variable that could impact motivation is whether or not the game is a divisional one.  In all regular season contests, divisional contests hit the over 48.6% of the time, where non-divisional matchups get past the number 50.2% of the time.  This may not seem like a major advantage, but in a sample of thousands of games it does show a clear tendency for more overs in non-divisional showdowns.

Again, the results for this situation come out exactly how we would expect based on our assumptions.  Non-divisional games exceed the number, while divisional matchups tend to go under.

This gives us our key segment for this situation, a non-divisional matchup between two teams with losing records.

The results below show that matchups hitting this precise situation go over the total an impressive 70.2% of the time and by almost seven points per game.  A sample size of 47 games is by no means ideal, however, with the strong logic behind our theory this should continue to be a profitable system.