Though there haven’t been any service breaks heading into Saturday night’s Game 3 of the “virtual” Western Conference championship series featuring the Golden State Warriors and Houston Rockets (ABC, 8:30 p.m.), Stephen Curry and crew are still prohibitive favorites to advance.
We say “virtual” Western championship because it’s presumed that whoever takes this series would be a clear favorite over the Portland-Denver survivor in the next round. The powerful Warriors, in particular, would be very expensive chalk then. And, they’re already exorbitant now against the Rockets.
Typical global prices for Golden State to outlast Houston are in the area of -700 (risk $700 to win just $100, or anything in that ratio). Houston returns around +500 to rally back and advance (risk $100 to win $500, or anything in that ratio).
Why does the market see the Warriors as a virtual lock even though all they did was hold serve for two games — by relatively tame victory margins of four and six points?
The answer is in projected win percentages moving forward. You can use money lines to estimate those. A team laying -150 on the money line would be 60 percent to win. A team laying -200 would be 67 percent to win. Obviously a pure pick ’em would be 50/50.
VSiN has taken reasonable estimates based on early pricing to map out the series (tweaking to take out the house edge). Let’s assume early numbers hold. The win percentages of the rest of the best-of-seven will look something like this:
| Game | GSW Win% | HOU Win% |
|---|---|---|
| 3 | 40 | 60 |
| 4 | 40 | 60 |
| 5 | 66 | 34 |
| 6 | 40 | 60 |
| 7 | 66 | 34 |
You can just stick a decimal point in front of those and add them up to get projected wins. Golden State adds up to 2.52, Houston 2.48.
Looking forward, that’s a nail biter for a theoretical “best of five” where Houston has home court in two of three games. In real life, Golden State already has two wins — so we’re looking at Golden State 4.52, Houston 2.48 in the seven-game race to four victories.
That’s why Golden State is -700! Houston has to win four of the next five games to score the series shocker. The most reasonable expectation for the Rockets is about 2 ¹/₂.
You sometimes will hear pundits (particularly those new to sports betting) talk about “waiting for a loss” to get even higher returns on an underdog choice. The problem with that strategy is that a team is in much worse shape to win a series after it loses a game. The odds change for a reason, because the percentages change. And, sportsbooks create a house edge that makes it an even higher hurdle to clear.
Falling behind 2-0 isn’t insurmountable. But when the “inferior” team needs to get hot against a dynasty, that’s a steep mountain to climb.
