We’ve had a lot of questions about our college basketball as we ease our way into hoops.  As background, I completely changed my college hoops methodology in 2006 and the results have been noteworthy. The past two years we’ve won both years in both the regular season and March Madness.  The overall winning percentage for my Strategic Sports Publishing college hoops selections is in excess of 58% against the spread over more than 375 plays in college baskets over those two years.  That’s our record as documented by the Sports Monitor of Oklahoma City. After juice that’s nearly 50 units of profit (all plays are a single unit, no “5 star”, “10 star” variable unit BS).  If you’re interested in subscribing to my basketball service call my office at 1-770-649-1078.

The college success somewhat obscures the fact that we’ve also won 5 of the 6 years that I personally have been doing the NBA (I had an “NBA guy” doing it for a couple of years before that), and I wanted to share an NBA strategy that has worked out for us in the past, and over the past couple of nights as well.

The style of play of NBA teams can change pretty rapidly as their personnel changes.  Let’s look at a couple of examples.

KG Suspended: On Tuesday night the Celtics were playing without Kevin Garnett, who is their heart and soul defensively.  We expected the defense to suffer and the Celts offense to be a little smaller and play a little quicker.  And since Boston was playing the Knicks, the fastest paced team in the league, it looked like the scoring would be higher than would be the case with Garnett in the lineup.  The line had moved to accomodate Garnett’s one-game suspension, but the total did not, and over 204 cashed in the 111-101 Celtics victory.

Billups In, Parker/Ginobili Out:   With Chauncey Billups arriving recently in a trade for Allen Iverson, Denver is being led in a more disciplined and deliberative manner, leading to slower play.   Meanwhile, the Spurs had slowed things down considerably due to the absence of Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili, and are playing at a high level of defensive intensity in an effort to make up for the resulting decline in guard play. With the new-look Nuggets taking on a Spurs team playing at a snail’s pace (among the three slowest teams in the league), the total was substantially lower than the 200 and change that these teams were lined at last year.  But we didn’t think the adjustment was enough (some scheduling factors favored offensive inefficiency).  Under 180.5 came through for us in a 91-81 Denver win.

Information Interpretation: Personnel changes can influence these NBA teams pretty quickly, and it can be hard for the linemaker to keep up.  Paying attention to the playing style and injury/suspension situations in the NBA can pay off if you have the time to keep up with it and apply it to matchups and other handicapping factors.

Doesn’t Always Work:  It so happens that these games won, but even if they had lost they would have been pretty good examples of melding injuries and personnel situations with style of play analysis.  Fortunately, we did happen to win both of them.  Obviously we’ll lose plenty of games this season, but our record over the years in basketball is pretty good.  If you’d like to benefit from our hard work call me at 1-770-649-1078 for more information on how a subscription to our daily basketball selection program works.