NBA Playoff Game 3s

At Golden State, the Warriors beat the Cavaliers in games 1 and 2 to open the 2016-17 NBA Finals. This now presents a situation in Game 3 that’s consistently been a premium betting spot for backing the trailing team. In addition to some impressive recent pointspread records, the down 0-2 but heading home situation itself makes a lot of sense. Anytime you can come up with an explanation as to why a trend should continue you’re in pretty good shape, and this one offers that. The problem for the bettor comes when the oddsmaker also acknowledges the validity of the situation and adjusts the line accordingly. We’ll get to that in a moment, but first the rationale for the Game 3 advantage for the home team that’s down two games to none.

When a team trails 0-2 as the Cavs do, and then moves to its home court for Game 3, it’s up against a team that is justifiably feeling pretty good about itself. Being comfortably ahead 2-0 the now-visiting team is not really able to whip up any genuine sense of urgency. Not being on its home court anymore is part of it. If the game were at home again, the crowd and the atmosphere would significantly favor them, but it’s just the opposite now. The team down 0-2 now goes home in a virtual win-or-die predicament and the fans and home environment play a significant role. Human nature also comes heavily into play anytime one side is able to establish a commanding lead, and being up 2-0 in a best-of-seven series qualifies. Whether it’s football, basketball, or something more trivial like beer pong, when one side feels like it’s on death’s door, it has that intangible advantage of desperation — of trying to avoid that final nail in the coffin. Quantifying how significant this desperation factor is will always be the problem, but there’s no question as to whether or not it exists. It does, and the associated betting strategy has really been on a run the last few years in the NBA playoffs.

A disparate sense of urgency is something you also see a lot during blowout games. When a team gets way ahead of an opponent to the point that the game is not quite, but almost, out of reach, things tend to favor the trailing team. The leading team exhales a bit and the desperate team goes all-in on a last ditch attempt to climb back into the game. Live-betting action often reflects this as you see a lot of value betting on the trailing team.

This is very similar to what happens when a team trails 0-2 in a best of seven series. Being down 0-3 in a series is the knockout punch. No NBA team has ever recovered from an 0-3 deficit to win a series and many have tried. To be exact, 118 have tried and all have failed, so we’re talking about a run of futility similar to what the #16 seed teams have going during March Madness. Not sure which is more likely to happen first, a win by a #16 seed or an 0-3 team winning an NBA series, but both have a similar shot of prevailing — slim to none.

Being down 2-1 rather than 3-0 obviously makes a gigantic difference. Many teams have recovered and won a series after trailing 2-1. It’s that 3rd loss that’s the killer, but even being down 3-1 isn’t certain death. Eleven teams have overcome a 3-1 deficit, the last two being the Warriors in 2016 vs OKC and the Cavs a few weeks later vs. those same Warriors in the NBA Finals. That was the one and only time an NBA team has come back from being down 3-1 to win a championship. That’s also part of the storyline for this series which adds a bit of deja vu to the Cavs getting buried twice at Golden State and then heading home in an 0-2 hole. Bottom line is, game 3s in these spots are about as must-win as it gets. Lose and the Cavs are facing an 0-118 situation.

Not all 0-2 and heading home teams are built the same. In the early rounds of the playoffs there will often be total mismatches as #1 seeds play #8 seeds, etc. In these rounds, sometimes Game 3 is the only game you can count on the lessor team being competitive. However, that home-court-energy advantage that the 0-2 team has to start the game can really dissipate as the game progresses. The more talented team just starts to overwhelm the energized, but less talented, opponent. That early intensity slowly subsides, and what you have after that is what you had all along on paper, a mismatch of talent that starts to kick in. That’s why the degree of the mismatch should be considered and sometimes your bet should be tailored to take advantage of that early energy. First-quarter or first-half bets can be used to get action when the home team will be fully engaged and the visitors takes a few punches before getting their feet under them. Betting this way has worked exceedingly well in all 0-2 cases in recent years. In the last 23 games where a team trailed 0-2 and plays game 3 at home, the 1H bet on the 0-2 team has gone 21-1-1 ATS. Only this year’s Spurs failed to cover the 1H line in that spot and they were down their best player when Kawhi Leonard was a surprise game-time decision to not play. His absence was not something the team was fully prepared for and obviously was a huge piece of deflating news for a Spurs team already missing veteran Tony Parker. Prior to that game, it had been four years since an 0-2 home team failed to cover the 1H number. Learning that they would be without Kawhi just hours before tip-off would be like the Cavs learning that LeBron would not play right before hitting the court. A crushing mental blow without question and one that stung the 1H Spurs energy bettors pretty good. Had Kawhi played there’s a real good chance we’d be looking at 23 straight trials without a loss on the 1H bet.

Now to the topic of the bookmakers understanding all of this and adjusting — they do. They usually adjust for the situation by 1-1.5 points in the game line. That’s probably not enough, but it’s what they need to do to balance the action, as not everyone is looking to bet a team down 0-2. The public doesn’t embrace teams who they’ve just seen lose twice in a row to the same opponent. The adjustment is just enough to tax those looking to bet the 0-2 team without at the same time giving the average better any more extra points than they absolutely have to. The books’ profits come from the public and the public bets in a predictable manner most of the time. Over-adjusting for the situation is akin to the house dealing fewer cards per shoe to thwart card counters. They could do it, but in the big picture they’re just costing themselves money due to fewer bets taken from the non-counters.

The 1H bet is much less of a public bet (than the game bet) and the 1Q bet even less so. On these bets you’ll see a very obvious shade that taxes the home team. Normally, a game lined with the visitor -3, as we see for the Warriors in Game 3, would carry a 1H line of GST -1.5. With the situation as strong as it is for the home Cavaliers, the books instead make the 1H line PK. Same goes for the 1Q. The line is PKm which is a clear indication that the books acknowledge this energy factor for the home team. At the world’s largest sports book, CRIS, Cleveland is a favorite in the 1H at PK -120. So the Warriors are a 3-point favorite in the game, but a slight underdog in the 1H. That pretty much says it all regarding the early energy that the situation provides. Deviating from the normal Game/1H/1Q split to that degree tells you that they need to slide those lines to defend against the Game 3 energy bettors. If those bettors were lined up on one side with no good reason, the lines would drift toward the standard split, but they don’t. There are enough bettors out there that understand this concept to counter the bets from the public players who think they’re getting a great deal on the visiting team that’s won the last two games. Under normal circumstances they’d be right, but with a team down 0-2 and facing near elimination, they have to adjust for what is often a one-sided intensity advantage for the team in a must-win situation. Must-win situations are one of those things that get overplayed a lot in sports betting, but in these NBA playoff cases you really do get teams that must win or their season is effectively over.

How you decide to bet these situations can be debated. When you’re catching points at home, you have a number of good options to choose from. The pointspread or money line, along with the smaller increment bets of the 1Q and 1H, all show a profit. Once you have to lay points, you might want to consider the money line as more of the primary bet. You definitely want your objective to align with the team’s objective. In the case of a team that is favored, looking for the best money line is often the way I like to go. Right now with the 1H on a 21-1-1 run, it would seem that’s a good place to start for this game. You will pay the energy shade tax but it appears to be worth giving up that extra point or so. The public fears the Warriors like no other team in recent memory, so it’s possible they nudge the line a bit before tip-off. Whether I get an extra point or not, I’ll be on the home team trailing 0-2 one way or another, and will continue to bet those spots for now and hopefully next season and beyond.