THE BEST, THE WORST AND THE HOOKS OF THE WEEK

Every week, there is a whirlwind of emotions that committed sports bettors go through. Sometimes you’re cashing a big underdog in the 3^rd quarter. Other times, your 15-point NBA favorite is down double-digits as the game comes to an end. Such is life when opening the sportsbook apps. This article recaps some plays from the past week that made bettors think they were sharper than Billy Walters one day, hold their head in disbelief the next, and feel like downright fade Gods the day after that. Without further delay, here are the worst of the worst, the sharp as tack, and the hook of the week.

The clear winner this week for the “worst of the worst” category must be the Brooklyn Nets in their matchup against the New York Knicks. The Knicks covered an 11.5 point spread by 54 points (not a typo) with a final score of 66-120. Brooklyn only scored 28 points the entire 2^nd half of the game. Not the performance Nets bettors wanted with 48 percent of the bets on the spread counting on the team from the city’s most populous borough. Making matters worse, one would presume many of those people made up the 22 percent of Pikkit users that were also on their money line. 

To underscore the point, you know a loss is exceptionally bad when Reuters news service starts pulling out dates from four presidential administrations ago. Reuters noted this was the lowest offensive output by an NBA squad since 2015. It was also the fewest points scored by a Nets team since 2005, when they resided in New Jersey and lost to the Miami Heat 90-65.

Equally rough is when the team’s very generic “final score” post somehow goes viral with almost 5 million views.

No doubt, the worst of the worst bet from last week.

This game takes us to CBB and a clash between Buffalo and Bowling Green. Hard to argue that rolling with Buffalo, which entered the game as 8 points underdogs and won outright by 11 points, isn’t one of the sharpest spots of the week. 

From tip-off, the mighty Bulls kept pace with Bowling Green and even led at the half by seven. Moneyline bettors enjoyed a +315 price, which 23 percent of the bets had rolled the dice on. 

Conversely, one can only imagine the bevy of parlays that were smashed by the addition of a -340 favored BGSU team that relied solely on the efforts of Javontae Campbell. Is this an obscure play? Absolutely. But all the more reason to give credit to spread bettors, or more impressively, to those that had the ML straight up.  

We turn away from standard book plays to a player prop for this week’s hook. The prop comes from Prizepicks, which offers users the ability to take the offensive and/or defensive rebounds for a particular player. The square in question was Donovan Clingan Over 7.5 defensive rebounds. Normally, one might presume such a specific prop would be destined for failure. But what makes this one stand out is that Clingan, remarkably, had 20 boards versus the Wizards on this night. Twenty. How many defensive rebounds you may ask? Seven on the dot to hook the prop under. 

Just as impressive was the fact the Trail Blazers PR X account, when posting about the game, specifically noted the “offensive rebounds” consumed by Clingan, which happened to be his career high… and most in Blazers history. 

Not hard to imagine the second-guessing going on in bettor’s minds when opting for defensive boards instead of the more conventional prop. Tough luck in D.C. for those lineups.

And that concludes this tour of the best, the worst and the hooks for last week. 

-Richay