Best NBA Betting Picks Are Hawks To Cover, Raptors Over

Kyle Lowry and the Raptors have the NBA's third-highest scoring average, making them a great over bet this season. (Photo credit: michalkajzerek / Foter / CC BY)

As the midpoint of the NBA betting season approaches, the Atlanta Hawks have been the best team to bet on while the Toronto Raptors are the biggest moneymaker for over bettors.

The Hawks have surprised both oddsmakers and bettors with their 29-8 start to the year. As a result, they’re 26-11 (70.3%) against the spread, meaning you’d be up $1,390 this year if you’d bet on the Hawks to cover the spread every game this season (assuming -110 odds).

The Raptors boast the NBA’s third-highest scoring average (107.8 points per game) but their defence is ranked 22nd (101.9). That’s led to Toronto going over the total in 62.2% of its games this season.

NBA betting picks against the spread

Despite a mediocre 20-19 record overall, the Milwaukee Bucks are one of the top NBA betting picks against the spread at 26-13. As long as the Bucks float around the .500 level, Milwaukee may continue to float under the radar and keep covering for NBA bettors.

Golden State and Portland are a combined 59-13 on the year, so it’s a surprise that they’re 45-28-1 against the spread. Usually, teams with the best records in the NBA have their point spreads inflated so high that they don’t cover them that often. It will be interesting to see how high the point spreads get on those teams.

Oddsmakers don’t seem to be able to make point spreads high enough for the 5-35 Knicks and 5-31 Timberwolves, who are a combined 26-48-2 against the spread.

The Cavaliers are also 13-25 against the spread, which makes sense to us. With all the hype around LeBron, Kevin Love and an improved Cleveland team, the point spreads on the Cavs have been much higher than they should be.

NBA betting picks Over Under

Phoenix has long been known as a high scoring team, so we are surprised to see the Suns going over the total 60% of the time.

Charlotte, however, is known as a defensive team. The Hornets have gone over the total 59% of the time because their over/unders are usually in the 180s and 190s, rarely above 200.

It’s interesting to see the Cavaliers and Thunder as the two biggest under teams in NBA betting this year. Most people assume teams with LeBron James and Kevin Durant are high scoring, which might inflate the totals on Cleveland and Oklahoma City games too high. With both teams underachieving, it’s likely they’ll pay even more attention to defence and this trend might continue.