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Picking a NBA Champion
The first thing we have got to find is a team that fits the profile of a Champion,
so we go through a list of important factors that a champion must posess...
1-A good experienced coach, key on their past performance in the playoffs, having a proven
winner as a coach is a big positive, guys like Pat Riley, Phil Jackson, Greg Popovich, those are the kind of guys you want
calling the shots.
2-The Center or a big man who can play defense and grab all those defensive rebounds is a major
ingredient in winning a NBA Championship, Shaquille O'Neal, Ben Wallace, Tim Duncan, the presence of players like that on
the court is very intimidating to the opposition, it also gives their own players more freedom on the court, if a team doesn't
have a good big man we're not going to put our money on them.
3-A winning record on the road during the regular season,
this eliminates almost everyone, as the home team wins at a 65% and up rate on average, which is extremely high, but after
you do this you are left with only about 5-6 teams usually, take a look at how many NBA Champions had losing records on the
road during the regular season, very few.
4-Team Rebounding, 2005 NBA Champion Miami ranked #2 overall in team rebounding percentage, losing finalists Dallas
ranked #3, 2004 NBA Champion San Antonio ranked #6 overall(#1 in Defensive Rebounding percentage), losing finalists Detroit
ranked #1 overall.
5-Blocked Shots, another defensive category to focus in on, past NBA Champions typically rank high in this category.
6-Of course we need a champion on the team, someone to keep the young players cool and who has been through the pressure,
this is invaluable, these guys always seem to come through in the clutch.
Key on those 6 factors, if you find a team that meets the above standards you can be pretty
sure they will do some serious damage in the playoffs.
When placing your futures bet, be patient as usual, wait for your team to hit a bad run somewhere during the season,
a few years back we hit San Antonio at 40-1 odds in the first half of the season, they were lumbering along in 9th place in
their conference, and out of a playoff spot, they then went a massive tear straight to the NBA Championship. Another example
is Detroit a few years ago when they won the Championship, they were 40-1 and only 2 wins away from the NBA Finals, against
New Jersey in the Eastern Conference Finals they were down 3-2 in the series.
Good Luck
We have live futures lines posted on the left, updated weekly
by Linesmaker, a decent place to bet on NBA Basketball, lots of prop bets, and pretty good futures odds, for the best futures lines i would
have to recommend Betfair, that's where i do most of my futures betting, their board is always moving and you can usually find something nice floating
around at juicy odds.
Down below we have our daily stats feed from VIP Sports that you can use to check out your team.
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The Forumla
This little formula has been good to us in the past, i assign a number value to each category then add them together
for an overall score, once i find a few teams i consider serious contenders i put them on my watch list and wait for them
to show up at a good price.
Coaching - Lifetime win % + playoff win % bonus + NBA Championship bonus
Center or Big Man- Win/Loss % + playoff record bonus + NBA Championship bonus
(you can see each players record at Database Basketball, click the player your are interested in then navigate around to the team,
year, and game logs to view playoff performance, it's quite a chore gathering all this info but at least it's available to
those interested.
Road Record - Make sure your team has an above .500 record on the road.
(you can get these stats at NBA.com from the official website)
Team Rebounding % - Overall team rebounding percentage
(you can find these stats at ESPN-Stats, go through each team and look at the total sacks number at the bottom of the defensive stats section)
Blocked Shots - Teams average Blocked Shots per game and overall ranking
*If the ESPN links don't work(the url's are changed or removed), go to ESPN Stats Index and select your category from the drop down menu. |
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