The answer to this question, as with a lot of questions asked about making NBA picks, is that it depends. In some arenas and some situations, home court is very important. In other situations, it isn’t so important. This underlies the idea that when making NBA picks, your goal has to be taking every single game into account on its own merit. You don’t want to draw overarching conclusions using a trend that might not apply. 

Home court is important when a team’s travel has been tough on them. It is important when the road trip has been going on for many days. It is very important when the home team has a tough crowd. When all of these things line up, home court can make a huge difference in the outcome of the game. 

The NBA is not like baseball, where stats play such a huge role. In the NBA, the games are more fluid and it becomes harder to assign value to each individual event. But you still need to try and use stats as you make your NBA picks. You just have to know which stats are most important and which stats don’t truly matter. When you figure this out, you will be ahead of the curve and ahead of the marketplace, which is the most important thing. In the NBA, you need to be looking for stats that most closely correlate to winning. 

One thing that you might want to look at is effective field goal percentage. This should take into account field goal percentage, as well as fouls drawn. This gives a fuller picture of offensive efficiency. The best way to use stats is to use them all and come up with your own formula for what works best. Turnovers and free throws have value. Three point percentage has value. Assist ratio has value. Using all of these things in conjunction with one another will give you the best look at how NBA games are eventually going to play out. 

As you make your NBA picks this year, one thing that you will want to do is keep your eye on the skill trends. What is happening with the league? What changes are taking place? This will help you know which teams are about to emerge and how games are going to play out. One of the trends that you have to note right now is that teams are becoming more athletic. Players are better able to run. They are better able to play an up and down kind of style. This trend has coincided with worse shooting in the NBA, too. As you make your NBA picks, factor this information into the equation. 

Three-point shooting skill has gone down, as the NBA has moved the line out and the players have focused on other things. There are still some outstanding shooters in the league, but the league runs on other things, now. One place where this has an impact is on the total of each game. With fewer threes being made, scoring has gone down a little bit over the last decade. One thing to note is that this is just a current trend. Things can always change and you should keep your eye open for these changes going forward. Being ahead of the curve is the only way to win in the NBA. 

There was a situation in this NBA season. The public was all over the team that was playing against the Miami Heat. Imagine that! The public went against the team that is most publicly backed. When this happens, you need to take notice. In these kinds of situations, your NBA picks are better off going against the public. When the public is jumping on a side that is not a top team, you can find great value. 

In that game, the people who made their NBA picks on the Miami Heat really hit it big. The Heat covered the spread with ease, leading by more than the number at halftime and never having the game in question. This is just an example of a situation that you have to keep your eye on. There are so many of these games that come about during the course of the season, so if you keep your eye on them, you can have many money making opportunities that you might not have even excepted before. 

Ok, so the All-Star game is about to come on. You want to have some NBA picks on it because you crave the action. But what in the world do you do? The line is weird. The total is outrageous. You never know how they are going to show up. Can you make money betting on the NBA All-Star game? Can you? Well that really depends upon the situation. In some years, there might be value. But it is a hard proposition. You have to really rely upon chance in order to make picks on the All-Star game. There is so much uncertainty that you are putting out a blind wager more times than not. 

Big games are fun and all. Big games demand big bets, right? That is not really the case. If you have the patience and the self-control to hold off on these games, you might be better off. Just because there is a game on TV does not mean that you need to have cash down on it. Better opportunities might come tomorrow or the next day, so don’t waste your time by making NBA picks when you have no edge. 

If you have been betting on college basketball, then you can sometimes get in trouble betting the NBA. One reason is because you will think that college basketball principles apply. You will think that at the end of the game, teams are going to keep fouling in the NBA to push up the score. This doesn’t happen, though. In the NBA, it is not at all weird for a team to be up by 4 with a couple of seconds to go and have the other team not foul. This would never happen in college. Understanding late game fouling is an essential. 

Different teams respond differently to these situations. Good teams are more likely to try and get back into the game late. Big games will likely see more late game fouling, too. But in some meaningless games during the middle of the season, you can run into trouble if you have these expectations. Remember this and you will have more success with your NBA picks. They are brutally important late in the game, as this is where you will make all of your money if you are going to do that at all. 

One of the things that you will see in the NBA season is that some teams do not provide premium effort every time out. Though you would think that “professionals” would be able to do a better job, many teams just mail it in at various points in the season. This hurts them against all opponents. But it hurts them more against teams that can really shoot the three pointer. Why is this the case? It is because of an NBA trend that NBA bettors need to take seriously. Today, teams are running toward the three point line more often than not.

If you are going to do well in NBA betting, you have to take a hard look at the teams that have struggled with effort. When you have one of those teams and they run up against a team that runs to the three point line, you have the potential for a blowout. Three point shots really add up in a hurry. This is something that will continue to grow in the NBA and you will get left behind if you are not able to loo further into games. Know this before you make your NBA bets this season.

So you want to make NBA bets? Well that’s good, and now there are some things you need to know. One thing is how to value home court. In college basketball, people have a pretty good understanding of what home court is all about. They know that you can usually count on a four point boost from home court. Some courts provide more than this. It is a little bit more difficult in the NBA. This is because older teams handle the road better and some home courts are much better than others. So how much is it worth in the NBA?

You can’t think about home court in the NBA in this manner. You are not going to be able to put a point value on home court. Each game is different in the NBA and every game presents a unique situation. A smart handicapper will recognize this and will take on each game as its own challenge. If you can do this consistently, then you give yourself the best chance of doing well in NBA handicapping. Know that teams will rest their players differently over the course of a season, so you have to keep up with the news, too, if you want to do well. 

When you make NBA picks, one thing that you might want to think about is how conference strength plays into the equation. If you are going to compare teams, then you have to have a reasonable basis for doing so. This is a lot easier when you assess conference strength properly. So is the west still the best? Has anything changed in the NBA in regard to conference strength? The answer for right now is that the west is probably deeper, but you have to be careful when trying to slap any permanent answer onto this question. 

Things in the NBA are always subject to change. You have to be willing to re-assess your biases. Though you might think the west is better, what happens if the east emerges? Really, it is all about the players in the NBA. Wherever the majority of good players are, that conference will be stronger. Right now, the west reigns supreme, so teams coming out of the west should be given some advantage in your mind over those teams coming out of the east.

As you go through the NBA season, one thing you might start to look at is situational handicapping. When it comes to making NBA picks, many people look for opportunities where one team is going to be playing its best, while the other team is not. So one spot that you need to look for in NBA betting is the end of a long road trip. Most people understand how fatigue works. They know that a team is going to play poorly on the back end of a bunch of games in a row. But this is already priced into the line. So you need to look beyond this if you are going to have any sort of success with NBA handicapping.  

When teams go on the road, you have to think logically about what they are going through. For instance, think about the fact that the team is staying in a hotel. The team is away from family. The team is having to get up and fly all over the place. This can take a toll on a team both physically and mentally. Even if a team has had a couple of days off on a road trip, the back end of a trip can be very draining. If you are going to make NBA bets, you need to realize this and think about playing against teams when they are coming in at the end of a trip.