The Oscar-nominated film The Big Short is without question as captivating as it is enlightening, if for no other reason than to demonstrate the simple fact that there’s value to be had and money to be earned if one is willing to venture outside the box and look where no one else is looking.

Featuring incendiary performances from Christian Bale, Steve Carell and Ryan Gosling, the critically-acclaimed movie focuses on the Wall Street savants who foresaw - and profited from - the 2008 American housing market collapse that triggered a monumental and worldwide recession which cost millions of people their homes and/or jobs. 

Bale portrays hedge fund manager Michael Burry who, through both extensive research and creative thinking, realizes before anybody else that a significant number of subprime home loans are on the verge of defaulting. As a direct result of both his research and intuition, Burry turns a profit of over $700 million for his investors and over $100 million for himself.

The same type of progressive and original thinking so impressively displayed in The Big Short should also be applied to our sports betting on a regular basis. Everybody from the sharps to the most casual and recreational of bettors understands, to some extent, the point spread and the total.  

The bookmakers are well aware of this fact and, as a result, spend the majority of their time making sure those specific numbers are as rock solid as possible in order to avoid a financial disaster. 

As it pertains to the National Basketball Association, you will very rarely find an abundance of value in the pointspread or total on a Cavaliers-Spurs or Clippers-Rockets matchup. The books know a significant amount of money will be wagered on those respective games, so they spend a significant amount of time making sure the spreads and totals for those matchups are as durable as humanly possible.

This is precisely the reason why so many of the world’s top handicappers choose to focus their attention on the small conferences in college football and basketball, the WNBA and professional tennis and golf.  These outlining leagues garner less attention from the betting public in general, which means the bookmakers may spend less time in preparing the spreads and totals for these respective matchups.  As a result, these spreads and totals tend to offer better value.

In regards to the NBA, one area of potential bookmaker weakness resides in the daily prop bets that are offered on individual players. Think about it: how many recreational bettors, or bettors in general, are walking up to the counter on a nightly basis to bet the over on Tim Duncan’s total rebounds? The answer is very few, if any.  And what this tells us is that the Duncan rebounding line probably wasn’t established by a team of experts who spent 90 minutes pouring over the relevant data.

The bottom line here is that NBA prop bets tend to offer more value than NBA sides or totals. And just like how Michael Burry chose to examine subprime home loans when nobody else even thought to look, we too should be focusing on NBA prop bets when everybody else is studying spreads and totals.

As a result of living in the Bay Area, I spend the vast majority of my time watching, studying and analyzing Golden State Warriors basketball, which means I know more about this particular franchise than any other in the Association. And one prop bet that I’ve spent quite of bit of my time monitoring has to do with All-Star forward Draymond Green.

Virtually every night the Warriors play, a prop hits the board in regards to how many combined points, rebounds and assists Green will finish the evening with. While I don’t have the data for every single game this season, I can attest to the fact that the spread on this particular prop is almost always 30.0 - unless both Festus Ezeli and Andrew Bogut are out of action and Green is required to play the center position, in which case the number jumps a tick to 31.0 or 31.5.

Through Golden State’s blowout win over the Portland Trail Blazers Friday night, the Warriors had played a grand total of 64 contests this season, with Green participating in 63 of those matchups. And if the total for his combined points, rebounds and assists were established at 30 for every game this season, the Over would currently boast a record of 30-29-4.

With such balanced results, you may be wondering why exactly I would choose to spend my time focusing on a prop bet that appears to offer no perceived edge. Good question. The answer lies in the fact that, like Burry, I’ve spent so much time watching and studying Green that I know he’s an extremely streaky player, at least in regards to this prop opportunity.

Through the first 10 games of the season, the Under on this prop cashed eight times (80 percent). But Game 17 at Phoenix back on November 27 is where Green found another gear and kick-started a three-game run that featured three consecutive triple-doubles (coincidentally, Green is currently tied with Oklahoma City’s Russell Westbrook for the NBA lead in triple-doubles, with 11). From Game 16 against the Lakers through to Game 38 against the Heat, the Over on Draymond Green’s total combined points, rebounds and assists went an astounding 17-4-1 (80.9 percent).

And immediately following this run, the Under cashed five times over Green’s next seven games (71.4 percent).

In fact, Draymond Green is in the midst of another streak right now, despite his monster effort Friday night against Portland (17 points, 10 rebounds, 13 assists). Over Green’s last 14 games, the Golden State forward has gone Under 30.0 combined points, rebounds and assists nine times (9-4-1, 69.2 percent).

This information isn’t meant to entice you to immediately start betting Green prop totals. Rather, the purpose here is to illustrate what type of results can be had through the use of specialized research, which the website Basketball-Reference.com is excellent at providing.  

Instead of trying to cover every single particle of NBA wagering opportunities, centralize your focus on one or two specific teams and one or two specific players on those teams.  

Because if you’re willing to put in both the time and effort like Michael Burry, you just may be able to become a profitable expert on a specific topic that very few others have even bothered to notice.

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