Each installment of Isaiah’s Methods & Opinions (IMO) is brought to you by No House Advantage, a cutting-edge daily fantasy site that allows users to risk little and win big in over 30 states. Bet VS. THE HOUSE to win up to 21x your money or play in PICK’EM CONTESTS against other users! New players can secure up to a $100 deposit match by registering with No House Advantage today! This week’s column will focus on analyzing and projecting NBA injury reports to help you find winning bets — and the Sacramento Kings.
NBA trade deadline drama is upon us. The Kyrie Irving deal was just the tip of the iceberg, and plenty more shoes will drop over the upcoming few days. I’ll be here every Monday and Friday for another installment of Isaiah’s Methods & Opinions (IMO)! Twice each week, you can trust me to break down the betting trends and sports news that will give you an edge on the sportsbooks.
No sports bettor can hit every bet, but the key to profitable sports gambling is to develop a successful process — or method — for identifying sharp wagers. It’s the application of sharp opinions to that method that separates the wheat from the chaff in the sports gambling world. If your priors are wrong, you’ll end up sweating more bets than you must.
This column will help bettors develop sharp methods and come to well-informed opinions.
Isaiah’s Methods: Analyzing & Projecting NBA Injury Reports | Sponsored by No House Advantage
The invention of load management, often attributed to Kawhi Leonard, has made the NBA that much more difficult to handicap. Sportsbooks often delay or limit lines for teams playing on the wrong end of back-to-backs in anticipation of certain players sitting. Good luck trying to place a player prop wager early, too.
Savvy bettors can use the NBA’s love affair with injury designations to their benefit. Correctly anticipating a player’s absence can score you some closing line value (CLV), and our expert analysts will often share the lines likeliest to move on a given day via OddsShopper Premium Insider Access. Further, understanding the nitty gritty of a player’s offensive and defensive contributions can help you handicap the player prop markets.
Exploiting NBA injury reports requires nothing more than attention to detail and pattern recognition. Reading the report at least once a day before tip — and seeing which teams and players get downgraded from questionable — can help you approximate how likely that player is to play through such a tag in the future. Guys like LeBron James almost always have an injury tag but play anyway, while others, especially those on injury management programs like Jamal Murray, are less likely to do so.
The NBA schedule is an implicit part of the injury report. Certain veteran players always sit on the second leg of a back-to-back, like Al Horford. Both books and sharp bettors know this. That means you should handicap the next day’s game as if those veterans will sit. Although a star-studded, veteran team may pop off the page when listed as an underdog, knowing whether they’re on a back-to-back can help you avoid jumping in at a bad price point for the players they’ll have available.
Once you start to notice trends, like how many games a player who missed multiple games needs to return after first getting listed as questionable, it’s easier to get ahead of lines and score CLV on spreads and totals before tip. But for prop bettors at places like No House Advantage, other steps are necessary to secure the most value.
Player prop markets are a different beast. The books will usually gas up most prop totals for the teammates of a player who is sitting. Sometimes they may not sufficiently adjust for how much a player’s usage rate is likely to spike. For example, swapping out a point guard with a usage rate of around 25% for a backup with usage rate of just 15% means the original starters should see plenty of extra scoring opportunities — but that 10% difference will likely get distributed according to their current usage rates. Said another way, that point guard’s high-usage teammates will benefit more from his absence than lower-usage ones.
However, a player’s absence can affect more than the usage rate of his teammates. For example, if a team that struggles to defend the perimeter is unlikely to have its star rim protector, it can be smart to buy the under on the 3-point props for their opponent. With the interior less protected, those shooters may opt to pass or drive in for easy layups. That team’s perimeter defense may even improve with a different center in the lineup.
Isaiah’s Opinions: Are the Sacramento Kings For Real?
The Seattle Mariners passed the baton for the longest playoff drought among major American sports teams to the Sacramento Kings last year. Sacramento last made the NBA playoffs in the 2005-06 season — back when Mike Bibby and Metta World Peace led the team in scoring and Brad Miller was their top rebounder. The Nets still played in New Jersey. The Thunder were still called the SuperSonics.
However, things are looking up for the Sacramento Kings at the moment. They rank an impressive third in the Western Conference, ahead of teams like the Los Angeles Clippers and Phoenix Suns, and boast a respectable 29-23 record. Last year, 11 of the 12 teams with at least 29 wins by Feb. 6 made the playoffs. Only the Cleveland Cavaliers failed to qualify, but they still made it to the play-in tournament.
The NBA trade deadline will likely concentrate talent in an even smaller pool of teams. Yet even when that comes to pass, the Kings remain in a good spot to finish as a top-six team in the West. They are unlikely to gain ground on the Denver Nuggets or Memphis Grizzlies, and they will probably lose some to the Clippers and Suns, but behind them, few teams look that threatening — at least right now.
Sacramento’s competition for a playoff spot will likely come from one of the teams ranked sixth through ninth. However, the Dallas Mavericks may struggle to adapt to life with Kyrie Irving. The Minnesota Timberwolves have seriously underperformed with Rudy Gobert. The Golden State Warriors and New Orleans Pelicans will both remain without their respective superstars, Stephen Curry and Zion Williamson, for some time. The 11th-ranked Portland Trail Blazers could enter the conversation with an aggressive move to build around Damian Lillard, but their front office may stay pat instead. It feels wrong to ignore LeBron James and the 13th-ranked Los Angeles Lakers, but they have a long ways to go to re-enter the fight.
So what’s worked for the Kings this year? For starters, the Domantas Sabonis trade has aged better than expected. Although losing out on Tyrese Haliburton may limit Sacramento’s ceiling, if the front office wanted to get the albatross off its back and secure a playoff spot within the next two seasons, Sabonis can help them get there — unlike Richaun Holmes, the man he replaced. Sabonis currently leads the NBA in rebounds per game (12.4), ranks 13th in assists (7) and 50th in points (18.6). Those numbers would make him a fringe MVP candidate in a larger market.
The Kings have an electric set of scorers to pair with Sabonis. De’Aaron Fox, one of the association’s fastest point guards, can drive to the rim with ease. He ranks ninth in drives per game (15.4) and ranks second among that 10-player sample in points percentage off drives (74.2%). A diverse array of viable wing weapons fill out the spots at the two through four, including veteran sharpshooter Kevin Huerter and rookie Keegan Murray, who are both shooting at above 40% from above the break. Their efforts have helped the Kings rank second in offensive efficiency this year (116.7), a massive jump from their 24th-place ranking last year (109.6).
However, the Kings aren’t perfect. Their roster currently lacks the defense necessary to compete for a championship. Only two of the team’s starters, Sabonis and Harrison Barnes, grade out as positive defenders in FiveThirtyEight’s RAPTOR ratings. Both still rank worse than 70th in the metric among the 234 players with 750-plus minutes. Fox and Malik Monk both rank 200th or worse out of that sample. Backing the overs for Sacramento’s opponents has often proven profitable at No House Advantage.
These Sacramento Kings can secure a playoff spot if everything falls their way. However, they’ll probably need to hold on to at least the sixth seed. A play-in tournament that could feature Zion Williamson, Stephen Curry, Damian Lillard or LeBron James might just do them in. While the Kings currently have a squad that can outscore the best of them, time will tell if that’ll be enough to end the longest playoff drought in American sports.
