Even though the Detroit Pistons only won 23 games last season, they were secretly one of the best bets in the NBA.
There is often value to be found for bettors that follow the bad teams closely, especially when those bad teams are involved in close games. The Pistons had a streak of covering the spread in 21 straight games last season, as the sports books were slow to catch on that the Pistons weren’t getting blown out much, even though they continued to lose.
The same could not be said of the Pistons at the beginning of this season, as they had the worst scoring margin in the NBA, were getting blown out regularly and looking more like the “Process” era 76ers than a competitive team.
But the Pistons have ramped things up over the last eight games, ironically without Cade Cunningham, and are again looking like a great bet for NBA fans looking for value.
The Detroit Pistons against the spread
The Pistons are just 5-16, good for the second-worst record in the NBA, but they are 10th in the league in covering the spread, with a record of 11-8-2 overall and this is after their terrible start.
Every team in front of them in the standings against the spread is currently a playoff team, so the Detroit Pistons are in good company. They have winning records against the spread at home and on the road and have been red-hot of late.
After starting poorly in this category, the Pistons are 7-0-1 against the spread in their last eight games, winning two of them in that span.
So the bad news is that Detroit is still losing most of their games, but the good news is that they are competing, which was the stated goal this season. It’s been even more impressive when you consider that the Pistons have been shorthanded for this entire stretch, missing their best player for all of it and Isaiah Stewart and Saddiq Bey for most of it.
Jaden Ivey joined them last night and the Pistons were still able to go down to the wire against the best team in the Western Conference, which is a great sign for if/when they finally get back to full strength.
Most fans didn’t think the Detroit Pistons would actually compete for a playoff spot this season, but we wanted to see hard, energetic play and competitive games, which we have been getting of late.
Now if they could just get healthy.