The Affects Of A Strike-Shortened NBA Season

When the NBA settled its lockout in December last year the league was forced to condense a 66-game schedule into a four-month span.

With that we examined the affect of this season's NBA crammed schedule on the teams and their play on the court. The results in games played through Sunday, February 5 have been interesting. All results are ATS (against The Spread) unless noted otherwise…

Advantage: Linemaker

The linemaker's have done a solid job balancing the action with home teams holding a slight edge, going 186-170 ATS overall.

The one area they've failed to get a handle on, though, over compensated teams off back-to-back wins in their last two games as these squads are just 75-101 ATS this season, including 7-23 ATS when facing an angry foe that was upset as a favorite in its previous game.

Totally Unfair

The action on teams playing with no rest has been fairly balanced as those who played the previous day are 112-115 ATS overall.

Breaking it down, unrested teams versus rested opponents are 56-69 SU and 62-63 ATS, including 7-19 ATS when facing an opponent off back-to-back defeats.

However, when it comes to Over/Under totals involving teams in back-to-backers the UNDER players have cleaned up.

That's confirmed by the fact that 'Overs' are just 93-130-4 ATS, including 28-66-2 ATS in a battle of two unrested opponents and a mind-blowing 8-38-2 ATS if the total in the game is 190 or greater.

In Need Of Oxygen

Matchups involving a pair of unrested foes have seen road teams taking their lumps, going 17-31 ATS.

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These same tired travelers slip to 6-19 ATS when facing an unrest host off a win.

Ménage A Trois

Teams forced to play three games in three days have been moneymakers this campaign as evidenced by a 10-8 SU and 11-7 ATS record.

Breaking them down home teams have delivered a glossy 10-3 ATS log while visiting teams in the 3rd of 3 straight road games are just 1-4 ATS.

FYI: Teams off back-to-back losses in the backend of three-games in three-days are 5-0 ATS.

48 Hours

As you might expect, having the luxury of two or more days of rest has proven beneficial with these teams checking in at 37-28 ATS to date this season.

Bring them in off a loss and they improve to 21-8 ATS. Those off back-to-back losses zoom to 16-3 ATS.

And for what it's worth teams with two or more days of rest taking on an unrested foe are 13-7 ATS.

Chew On This

In closing here are a few other tidbits to chew on in this year's accommodation of billionaires and millionaires: