In general, I think the public largely overvalues how much a single NBA player is worth to the spread or over/under.
"LeBron's out? Oh, the Lakers are gonna lose by 20."
In reality, sportsbooks peg even the best NBA players as worth about 4-5 points to the spread. We got two on the record before the season, and they both had just a couple players in that elite tier worth five points to the spread.
But are there situations in which the betting market is incorrect? Remember, books aren't incentivized to correctly peg the value of the player — they're incentivized to create equal action on both sides of the line and make money off the vig.
That means the market could deem someone like Steph Curry as worth five points the spread, but perhaps that's underrating him. I'd argue that's actually the case.
What the numbers say about the Warriors without Steph
Let's look at the Warriors' numbers with and without Steph on the floor from the 2016-17 season until today.
- Steph on: 123.4 Offensive Rating, 59.4% eFG%, 101.8 pace
- Steph off: 106.9 Offensive Rating, 52.9% eFG%, 95.2 pace
Uh, yeah those are incredibly drastic splits. Here's the Warriors' point differential with Steph on vs. off over the past couple of years (per Cleaning the Glass):
- 2016-17: +17.6 points per 100 possessions (99th percentile)
- 2017-18: +13.0 points per 100 possessions (96th percentile)
But what about the betting market?
He's obviously incredibly valuable. But that doesn't inform whether he's underrated or overrated vs. the spread or total.
To check that, I looked up our Bet Labs data for all of the 35 games he's missed since Durant came into town and whether the Warriors covered and if the under hit.
- Warriors ATS without Steph: 13-22 (37.1%)
- Under in games without Steph: 21-14 (60.0%)
I know what you'll say next: "But the over/under for today's game against the Clippers has already drastically dropped."
That's true: It opened at 232 and has since fallen to 225.5 after news dropped of Curry's absence. But the numbers I gave above are against the closing lines — even with drops, the market has undervalued Steph's value to the Warriors.
Tonight, the Warriors are 3.5-point favorites on the road against the feisty Los Angeles Clippers. Can they cover without their star?
