The Basics

Like most of your major sports, there are three main types of bets you can place on an NBA game: a Moneyline wager, a wager on the Points Spread or a bet on the Points Total. Here's a look at each.

Moneyline bets are the easiest wagers to understand. The Denver Nuggets are playing the Miami Heat (as they did in the 2023 NBA Finals). You pick the Nuggets to win. If they do, you win your bet. Simple.

But keep in mind: Moneyline bets, because they're simple, don't pay as well as other types of bets.

Better payoffs

This is why many - if not most - bettors prefer to bet the Point Spread.

When you bet the Point Spread, you're not just picking who is going to win the game, you're also picking the winner's margin of victory. These kind of wagers attempt to balance the relative strength of opponents. That's why they cash more than a Moneyline bet.

But they're also harder to wrap your mind around.

With Point Spreads, the team the sportsbook believes to be stronger (also known as the favorite) must win by a certain number of points for you to win your bet.

In the case of the 2023 NBA Finals, in Game 3, the Nuggets were expected to beat the Heat by 3.5 points. So, in order for your Point Spread bet on the favorites to cash out, the Nuggets had to win by at least 4 points. A Point Spread wager on the underdog Heat could still have put money in your pocket even if the Heat lost by 3 points.

The Nuggets dominated in a 109-94 win, on their way to winning the title in Game 5.

Point Totals

Betting Point Totals might be a little easier to understand than betting Point Spreads. With that kind of bet you're just betting whether the total number of points scored in a given game will be over or under a set number of points.

Game 3 of the 2023 NBA Finals had an over/under of 213 points. So you could have bet that the combined scoring of the Nuggets and the Heat would be more than 213 points or less.

The winning bet in this instance was the under - a bit surprising, given the NBA's reputation for being soft on defense. Then again, the Heat were known for their exceptionally gritty play during they're unexpected playoff run that season.

But that's exactly why betting the NBA is so intriguing. Who could have guessed the sportsbooks would be off by 10 points?

Alternate NBA bets

So those are the basics. But there are also more exotic wagers you can place on NBA games.

The alternative bet receiving perhaps the most attention in the NBA these days is the Prop bet, where you can bet specifically on an individual player's performance, including his combined points, rebounds and assists, or on more niche stats of a team's performance, like the total number of three pointers made or the first team to hit 15 points.

These Prop bets are gaining in popularity because of the herky-jerky nature of NBA play, especially given the grueling schedule the teams play. A team at the end of back-to-back or a long road trip might be ripe for a wager that they'll come out shooting cold (and thus not be the first team to reach 15 points).

Or with the NBA's obsession with three pointers and certain teams - like the Golden State Warriors - ability to make them in tremendous bunches, bets on threes can be fun, too, especially when one of those sharp-shooting squads comes up against one of the association's notoriously weak defensive teams.

Truly obsessed NBA fans even go so far as to bet on the number of points individual players will score in a particular quarter of a game. This may seem odd, but true NBA superstars have the ability to turn off and on their scoring ability like a light switch. Transcendent players - like the late Kobe Bryant - were known to effectively take quarters off to reserve their energy for crunch time heroics.

NBA superfans watch for when those moments might come and bet accordingly. But to do this and succeed, you really have to know players, their tendencies, their coaches' tendencies, their teams' schedules and their opponents. NBA superstars are known to pick their spots for when they're going to try to pile up the scoring. But you really have to know their thinking on that in order to effectively bet on it.

So, you know, tread carefully.

Futures bets

These are long-running bets made before the season or early on in the season, who will win the NBA Championship or who will nab the regular season Most Valuable Player award, or what a given team's win total will be for the regular season.

Futures odds open before the season and bets are taken on them through the regular season, with the odds frequently adjusted due to results or injuries.

Beware of futures bets on the regular season MVP. There are numerous examples throughout NBA history of players with superior stats not winning the MVP simply because they've recently won the award in previous years. Michael Jordan could have easily won the MVP every year during his historic run in the '90s, but didn't.

In a more recent example, many observers thought Nuggets star Nikola Jokić deserved the regular season MVP during the 2022-23 season. But the award was given to Philadelphia 76ers center Joel Embiid, after he openly campaigned for the award and Jokić won it in each of the two previous years.

So, the NBA regular season MVP award is subject to a lot of politics. Just keep that in mind before placing your bets.

In fact, there's a lot to keep in mind with NBA betting, just given the number of factors inherent to their games, factors that you often don't have to consider when betting on a more deliberately scheduled sport, like the NFL.

But, then again, that uncertainty, that little touch of chaos, is what makes NBA betting so much fun.