NBA 1st Half Totals vs Game Totals
Kashmir
Senior Member
Having trouble finding historical 1H totals for the NBA. Aren't NBA 1H totals 50% of the game total? I guess i'll find out for sure this fall. Any help is appreciated. Thanks.
Comments
They used to be,
Guys like Haralobos Voulgaris exploited this for a couple of years, until the books caught on. This ended around 2006/2007. That's when the books started shading the 1st half totals towards the team's tendencies.
Instead of a game total being 200 and the 1H being half of that, nowadays books are not afraid to do a 200/98 split or 200/102.
but as obi said books are not shy now of shading totals one way or another. Teams like NO and BOS had huge 2h over action this year despite being already shaded that way (98/102/200). Teams like SAS,MEM,UTA,IND and MIN to a lesser extent.
Top 5
Philadelphia 0.515
Cleveland 0.514
Miami 0.513
Okla City 0.513
Sacramento 0.513
Bottom 5
Boston 0.485
Utah 0.490
San Antonio 0.492
New Orleans 0.495
Indiana 0.496
As mentioned, books do shade teams more than ever. Sometimes too much. I've found the NBA 1H numbers from the books are much sharper than CBB or WNBA. There are still plenty of opportunities to find value, it's just more work than it used to be.
I don't have what avg pct the book used for a 1H total season wide but I'm sure it could be found. I'm also pretty sure it's close to the actual scoring so you wouldn't make much playing straight overs/unders based on the numbers.
I look to identify a few teams that consistently show "value" or that I have a good read on and focus on them.