Betting the Milwaukee Bucks: ATS and O/U at the quarter way mark
By Logan Beatty
We’re a quarter-way through the Milwaukee Bucks’ season. Let’s take a look at their gambling numbers to this point.
Welcome back my fellow degenerates to another installment of Betting the Milwaukee Bucks! Here’s hoping feast-week was as kind to your wallet as it was to your waistband.
The Bucks have roared out of the gate to a league leading 21 wins to just three defeats, and as easy as they have made it look recently, they haven’t always made it easy on Milwaukee Bucks’ gamblers. It’s going to be a tough conversation explaining to my wife why we can’t afford Christmas presents this year (just kidding!).
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The Numbers
The Bucks have been a very tough team to read night to night with the O/U (over/under) totals and ATS (against the spread). Per The Action Network, to this point the Bucks are 12-12 ATS and 11-12-1 on the O/U. That’s not making anybody money. Not you. Not Vegas. Nobody. As a Milwaukee Bucks bettor, I’ll admit, it’s been maddening at times.
They’ll sometimes play with their food, like they did as a 14.5 point favorite against Atlanta a few weeks back to only win by nine after being up huge early. Then, on nights when you would expect a so-so performance like say on the end of a back to back against Charlotte as 14 point favorites, they completely blow them out of the water and win by 41 points. Twenty-four games is generally a large enough sample size to make a determination, and I’m worried this Jekyll and Hyde persona they’ve adapted may just be how things go with the Bucks’ ATS this season.
One of the major contributing factors: the Milwaukee Bucks have been an underdog only once this season; a game they won outright during the season opener in Houston. The only other team to match that mark is the Los Angeles Lakers. Through 24 games, the Bucks enter games on average as nearly 10-point favorites. Ten points is a huge margin in an NBA game!
On most nights against Eastern Conference foes, that number can balloon up to 14-17 points. Bucks opponents are also hammering them at the 3-point line. After Monday night’s contest against the Magic, opponents had been stroking it for 36.5 percent from behind the stripe. In recent games, it’s killed the Bucks’ chances of covering.
Cleveland, who recently lost to Milwaukee by only nine points as an +11.5 point dog, made 17 threes! Utah was an +8.5 point dog and made 21! That is insane three-point luck. It’s never been a secret that the Bucks defensive scheme under Budenholzer gives up tons of 3s, but teams simply (hopefully) cannot keep hitting them at that clip.
Now you may be thinking, well Middleton missed a large swath of games, wouldn’t that mess with the numbers a little? Surprisingly enough, in games that Middleton missed or didn’t start the Bucks were 4-6 ATS and 5-5 against on the O/U totals. It’s pretty much in line with their numbers on the season to this point.
Betting the Bucks Through the All-Star Break
Milwaukee’s schedule, which was supposed to be tough to start the season (the Bucks had some incredible luck facing opponents without their best players), is set to include a few marquee match-ups this month.
With clashes against Dallas and the Los Angeles Lakers, we may finally see lines that are within 8 points. We may even see the Bucks as an underdog against the Philadelphia 76ers on Christmas day. After that, however, it should be a cakewalk, as the Bucks face only three winning teams the entire month of January in Boston, Brooklyn, and Denver.
Now that the Bucks are one of the better teams in the league, opposing teams and fan bases are giving the Bucks everything they can handle. Even against the soft East, the lines are completely out of control. Yes, we all knew that the Bucks would destroy the Knicks last week or the Magic on Monday night, but did you feel comfortable laying 17 and 13 points respectively in an NBA game!?
Next. The ever-streaky Ersan Ilyasova is back in form. dark
There is still plenty of season left, but I find it hard to believe the Bucks will match their insane number of 48-31-4 as a favorite from last season.