A Detroit Pistons gambling analysis

The Detroit Pistons may not have the worst record in the NBA (14-27) at the halfway point, but against the spread (ATS), the Pistons are dead last in the NBA at covering their line (14-26-1). Hopefully, the Pistons faithful haven’t lost too much money on them this season.

With sports gambling recently being passed through legislation in Michigan, now seems like as good as time as any to look at how betting the Detroit Pistons has looked and could look moving forward with this season.

The Pistons opened the season with a win total set at 37.5, +2500 to win the Central Division, +10000 to win the Eastern Conference, and +20000 to win the NBA Finals (odds courtesy of The Action Network). The odds for the Central, Eastern Conference, and even NBA Finals all make sense seeing as the Pistons never declared themselves as contenders and also share a division and conference with the Milwaukee Bucks among other quality teams. The Pistons are currently on pace to win only 28 games, with the back end of the schedule looking tougher than the front. This would clearly cause a big miss on their win total of 37.5, which many thought early on was low for a team who won 41 games the past year and strengthened their bench.

What wasn’t expected and what may have caused a lot of the misery in betting the Pistons this year has been the injuries. The roster has been quite depleted as many know and that has clearly affected the gambling aspect of the Pistons season. Obviously, these things go hand in hand. When the team doesn’t perform, they don’t cover, and Detroit hasn’t covered their line often.

Again, they are the league’s worst ATS. The Pistons are 8-13 ATS when at Little Caesars Arena which coincides directly with their record at home. This leaves them at 6-13-1 ATS when visiting opponents. No team has covered less on the road. If you bet trends, you may be catching on a bit. Betting against the Pistons away would have netted a +200 unit profit this first half of the season.

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The Pistons opened the season at Indiana, winning a positive moneyline of +260 and covering a +7.5 line. Since, much like the season has gone, the Pistons went downhill from a betting perspective. Maybe most notably against the spread, the Pistons saw their biggest line as +14.5 underdogs when they visited the Lakers at the Staples Center. Detroit covered by losing the game by 7 points in a hard fought battle away from home while 60% of the public had bet the Lakers.

Moving on to point totals (Over/Unders), the Pistons also have a clear trend in this department. They are tied for the most overs hit throughout the season with Miami at 24. They are 24-17 in total for Over/Unders. Just as betting against Detroit away from LCA would have been lucrative, betting their over at home has been quite productive, hitting 14 out of 21 games. They’re an even 10-10 away. Holding a poor defensive rating of 111.7 is likely to blame for most of the games going over the point total, but the Pistons themselves have also not elapsed 100 points in just 9 of their 41 games.

To have such a discrepancy in ATS totals and Over/Unders only tells you that Vegas and the line creators are just as confused with this team as we are. The team has drastically under performed, and evidently, the lines are still favoring the Pistons perhaps more than they should, especially with the direction the team is moving towards. With a roundabout lineup that is constantly shifting, injuries still plaguing Detroit, and the young guns getting more and more minutes, it’s truly almost impossible to know what to expect, let alone what to bet on this team moving forward.

Though there are trends, the lurking uncertainty of the team’s future will also have a huge hand in what to bet on this team throughout the rest of the season. My best advice; don’t bet on the Pistons this season.