As we’ve stressed on many occasions, if you want to make money over the long term in sports betting you’ve got to be a contrarian.  When in doubt, go against the general public.  Noted NBA betting handicapper Oscar Wilde once noted that ‘everything popular is wrong’.  OK, he wasn’t *really* a sports handicapper (for those of you who are high school dropouts he was an Irish poet, author and playwright) but the concept is very valuable in sports betting.  If everyone is lined up on one side of a proposition, that’s usually a good sign that you should be looking at the other side.  Case in point–Monday night’s Fiesta Bowl between Boise State and TCU.  Everyone thought that the Horned Frogs were going to blow out Boise State.  ESPN had one of their interminable polls up on their website, which indicated that 72% of their readers thought that TCU would win.  We’ve slammed ESPN in the past, but they are a good reflection of ‘public’ sentiment.

A corollary to this concept is that sometimes you have to find spots to play ‘ugly’ teams.  Most pro sports are cyclical in that teams go on winning or losing streaks both straight up and against the pointspread.  For our purposes, an ATS losing streak (or winning streak) is most significant.  If a team repeatedly fails to cover the pointspread, linesmakers compensate in the other direction.  When a team goes on an ATS winning streak the opposite is true.  Today’s NBA play gives us an opportunity to play on an ‘ugly’ team getting a decent amount of points.

DETROIT PISTONS VS. DALLAS MAVERICKS

At the moment there might not be an ‘uglier’ team in the NBA than the Detroit Pistons.  They’ve lost 9 straight games both outright and against the spread.  In the NBA, losing 9 straight ATS is almost unheard of.  The Pistons will try to turn things around on Tuesday night as they head to Dallas for a game against the Mavericks.  It just might be a spot for a solid performance by Detroit.  For one thing, they’ll be well rested and well prepared having last played on Thursday.  The Mavs are just home from a four game west coast swing and have another road game against in-state rival San Antonio on deck.

Dallas is a very weak home favorite, with a 5-11 ATS mark at American Airlines Arena.  Off of a long road trip, they’re facing an opponent that won’t motivate them much and will be easy to overlook.  That’s a dangerous scenario in any sport, and particularly in the NBA where the number of games means that teams can have an ‘off night’ every now and then without it hurting them in the standings.  The Pistons have lost their last two against the Mavs, but have been competitive in both losing at home by 5 earlier this season and losing by 2 in their last game at Dallas.  Don’t be surprised if a well rested Detroit team pulls the outright upset, or at very least competes throughout giving us a pointspread cover.

PLAY DETROIT +8′ OVER DALLAS