NBA Betting Trends: New York Knicks vs. Miami Heat

NBA Betting Trends: New York Knicks vs. Miami Heat

The Miami Heat’s star-studded Big Three has received a majority of the media’s attention over the past year and a half, but they have taken a back seat to Linsanity and the New York Knicks over the past few weeks. Tonight, these two fan favorites meet up — each in the midst of their own respective winning streaks.

Although the Knicks (17-17) are currently the seventh seed in the Eastern Conference, the team has won 8 of 10 games since Jeremy Lin was inserted into the starting lineup. On the other side, the Heat (26-7) have the NBA’s best record and have won their past seven games.

Neither team comes into the game with any major injury concerns, although Iman Shumpert (knee) and Bill Walker (elbow) are both expected to miss tonight’s game. Our Premium and All-Pro members have access to breaking injury alerts, but all members can check in with our NBA injury page to check a player’s status prior to tip-off.

Miami opened as a 10-point favorite at CRIS and, according to Sports Insights’ NBA Betting Trends, are currently receiving 50% of all spread bets and 56% moneyline bets. Despite this even betting percentage, there has been tons of line movement. After the line opened, it immediately moved to 10.5 and stayed there for nearly nine hours. From there the line started trending down, eventually hitting 8.5 at 9:34 AM eastern time. The line jumped back to 9.5 in just over two minutes and has since been bouncing between 9 and 9.5.

The line history graph below, which is available to all Premium and All-Pro Combo members, shows how the Spread Betting Trends and betting system plays have affected line movement for this game at Pinnacle.

With contradicting system plays on both sides and such an even betting percentage, this is a game we will likely lay off. This is also the type of game that sportsbooks love as they have equal action on each side meaning they can just sit back and collect the vig.

While a majority of the marketplace is offering this game at -9.5, there are books offering lines on both sides of this number. While Carib is currently shopping a line of -10, Las Palmas is showing their line at -9. This once again exemplifies the importance of shopping for the best line.

The following table shows the breakdown of spread betting percentages from our six contributing sportsbooks: