The NBA Playoffs are a completely different beast than the regular season and this is often something that can really be taken advantage of. You will need to take a bit of time to research and attack the differences, but it will be worth it very quickly.
Study Coaching Strategy
I love the NBA Playoffs because it is typically when a lot of coaches turn up the heat and really start to gameplan specifically for every single night. This isn’t to say that coaches do not study up a regular-season opponent, but the playoffs often introduce more drastic measures than the regular season.
One thing that is always the case in the playoffs is that coaches typically want to give less time to their worst defenders unless they are a starting-caliber player. Coaches lose their mind when a missed assignment or a bad decision lead to an easy basket and this only intensifies in the playoffs.
Someone like Enes Kanter is a good example of this. Kanter is one of the best offensive rebounders in the world and he would put up great stats on a nightly basis if he was given 32 minutes like a starter. However, his defense is so bad that he has played 15-22 minutes most of his career.
In the playoffs, this only becomes more significant and we have seen him CD-DNP many times before in key playoff games when he would be the first man off of the bench in a regular-season game. Identifying that this could happen to someone before it happens can often help you adjust your expectations for the game.
Coaching Tendencies Matter Too
Along the same lines of the strategy, every coach has tendencies and some coaches are going to be more drastic than others. Teams like the Warriors and Rockets have been some of the most interesting teams to watch over the last 5 seasons and this stems from some of their coaching decisions and tendencies.
Mike D’Antoni is known for his love of the three-ball, but he is also now known for playing half of a season with a 6’6 center playing 35 minutes a game if possible. This is because D’Antoni well makes drastic strategical moves if necessary.
We can attack this by doing our own research and determining if we think that there are things that he can do to improve his team. If you looked into the number of the Rockets with and without Capela, you could have seen that they had more success with Tucker at the 5.
With most coaches, that would never even be an option, but D’Antoni is willing to be bold. If you can identify a strategical change before a coach implements it, you can have a huge edge on the field.
Bet the Inverse
This strategy is pretty straight forward, but I think that it is very easy to identify in the playoffs because they play each other multiple times. Sometimes, players have a great series because their matchup is just way better than their teammates. You can often identify this early and often in the series.
However, there are other times where a team will drastically change their scheme after one game to stop the player who beat them in game one. Let’s say there is a team with 2 elite scorers facing a team with one elite defender who could guard either scorer. If in game 1, the player that is not guarded by the elite defender drops 50 and wins the game by 20, its common to see a team immediately focus their attention on NOT letting that happen again. This is when I may bite on the deflated numbers of the other scorer after a tough game one or bet the opposite side of the inflated game 2 spread and total.
Be Fluid
There is always a tendency to think that you know everything heading into a series, but that will not always pan out well. Watch each game and reevaluate your take after each game. Is the series going how you expected or not? Why is that the case?
Asking these questions constantly will allow you to continuously change your mind with the data and not get focused on an opinion you made before you had additional data.
All these and more should help you do well when betting on the NBA. When you are betting NBA Playoffs; head to our favorite pay per head bookie!