These are all great starting points when breaking down the daily NBA board and shouldn’t only be used to make a bet, but ignoring these things can be deadly to your bankroll.

1: Zig-Zag Theory

I talked about this briefly in my NHL Playoffs Strategy piece, but truth be told it work much better in the NBA. Basketball is a more fluid game than hockey in terms of points being scored and runs being made, so it’s easier to get on a team that lost previously and expect them to bounce back. Home court advantage also tends to work better in the NBA playoffs so if you’ve got a home team desperate for a win and fits this theory (ie after a loss) it’s a good time to get on them.

There were three specific spots in Round 1 where I thought the zig-zag + home court desperation applied and you would have went 2-1 SU and ATS. Those games were Chicago (Game 5), Houston (Game 5) and Golden State (Game 6).

2: Beware of the 20+ point blowout – Take Teams ATS after losing by 20+

Playoffs are unique in that you really get a handle on what works against an opponent because you play them every time out there. But sometimes in this game, there will be a time when one team just owns the other on a given night and blows them out of the water. Once the losing team starts to see this game has gotten out of hand it’s time to rest their guys and begin gearing up for the next game to try and get that win back. The amount of anger and motivation that losing team has in the next game is tremendous and are definitely worth a play against the spread. That team is almost always underdogs so getting a few points helps as well.

We saw this only twice in Round 1 in the Clippers/Warriors series. LA won Game 2 by 40 points and then went out to Golden State and escaped with a two-point win in Game 3 – but failed to cover the spread – while Golden State responded with a 21-point victory in Game 4 and then went back to L.A for Game 5 and lost by 10 as +7 point dogs.

3: The deeper a series goes in these later rounds, only look ‘Under’ the total

As the playoffs go on you are only left with the best of the best in basketball this year and no matter how talented a team is offensively, they don’t go deep in the playoffs without some tremendous play on defense. Unders are a great bet from here on out with all of these quality teams left, but it’s even moreso when the series is in it’s final stages (Games 5,6,7).

That’s because players are desperate for a win to stay alive/move on and are going to give it all on defense every trip down the floor. Referees do not want to be known as the ones to decide the game so the whistles stay in their pocket a little longer even with every shot being strongly contested. The average fan/bettor gets so wrapped up in a series by this point that they want to see an old fashioned shootout to determine a winner and it just doesn’t work like that.

All NBA Finals games are great for under’s too.

4: Don’t put too much weight into season series records for side plays

A lot of people, myself included, will start to handicap a series by looking at how the two teams fared against one another during the season. You can get an idea of what to expect from those old box scores or your memory, but they don’t always tell the whole story. Sometimes a blowout loss for a team was at the tail end of a long road trip, or back-to-back with a quality opponent on deck and they were caught napping. Looking ahead is something that never happens in the playoffs so you can throw those ideas out the window.

What those past box scores are good for are totals as you can get an idea on the pace you expect to see in the playoffs and how many shots are put up, how well they are guarded, how many turnovers and rebounds a team might get and which secondary scorer could go off. It’s rare for teams that typically play fast-paced, high-scoring games during the season to completely slow it down and struggle to reach 100. Playoff teams make it this far because they play to their strengths and if their strength is scoring that’s what they’ll do. Conversely, teams that have played grinding, low-scoring games all year won’t speed it up to a blistering pace because neither is comfortable doing so and don’t feel like they have an advantage doing so.

So don’t completely disregard past games, but don’t elevate them to the be all, end all either. Besides after Game 1 and 2 are played most of those things can go out the window as you base your thoughts, handicapping and quality information on what you’ve seen in the series so far in how the two teams have adapted to one another.