Backing the home dogs for the cover: Kings +4.5
Tonight's NBA action at Golden 1 Center in Sacramento represents the midpoint of a seven-game home stand for the Kings. After narrowly beating Chicago to kick off the stint, Sac suffered BIG losses to the likes of Portland and Toronto. But history says this setup fits with the idea of the home cover tonight.
Teams on long, losing home stands have proven good bets versus playoff-caliber competition from the other conference. Backing teams from this position has yielded a 20% return on investment since 2005.
Consistent with the signal from this history-based system, the FiveThirtyEight NBA model likewise forecasts a Sacramento cover, giving the Pacers only the slimmest of possible edges this evening, and simulating the Indiana straight up win in a razor-thin 49-52% of instances. [FiveThirtyEight runs two NBA forecasting models. One powered by Elo ratings, which measure team strength based solely on head-to-head results, margin of victory and quality of opponent. The other relies on their proprietary NBA Player Projections, which estimate each player’s future performance based on the trajectory of similar NBA players. FiveThirtyEight simulates the remainder of the NBA season 100,000 each day per each framework].
Bottom line: We have observed sufficient evidence to compel us to get behind the Kings home cover this evening.
Happy betting!!
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