NBA Best Bets Today

An NBA night can bring a long slate of games, and you don't need a pick on all of them. We track more than 100 paid handicapping services every day, and a pick only shows up here when enough of them land on the same side of the same NBA game. Then it becomes an NBA pick with a rating attached.

How the stars are handed out

Every pick gets one of five ratings. From the top:

• LOCK
• Platinum
• Diamond
• Gold
• Silver

The rating depends on two things: how many experts are on the side, and how lopsided it is. A pick with a lot of experts for it and hardly anyone against will rate higher than one where the room is split. You'll see both counts on each pick, so you can judge the margin yourself instead of trusting the stars blind.

The record of every star-rated pick sits above the list: overall, the last 7 days, yesterday, and per rating. We think a picks page that won't show its losses isn't worth reading, so ours shows everything.

Why NBA predictions change late

NBA lines can move a lot in the hours before tip-off, mostly around injury reports and rest decisions. One NBA player sitting out can change a matchup more than a week of form. A pick taken at -4 in the morning might be facing -6 by the evening. Before you bet one of our NBA best bets, look at the current NBA odds on the board and decide whether you'd still make that wager at the new number.

Picks only show for games that haven't started. Once a game tips, its pick leaves the list, and 10 minutes later the side is visible to everyone.

Free pick, or the whole card

Our top NBA pick of the day is labeled "Free pick of the day" and open to anyone. When that game starts, the next one opens, so on a busy night there's usually a free side for a later tip.

The rest of the card, meaning the other picks' sides and which experts are behind each one, comes with Full Access to every NBA pick. Members also get moneylines up to -1000 on the board (everyone else tops out at -300) and $2.00 of Paid balance for every $100.00 of Free balance instead of $1.00.

Bet tonight's picks with a free balance

Every new player gets a Free Bet Balance. Take a pick from this page over to the NBA odds board and you can bet the spread, moneyline or total, or go narrower with first-quarter, first-half and team total lines. Second-half lines open at halftime and close after a short countdown. Parlays work too, if you want to tie a couple of picks together and accept that both have to win.

Free bets aren't real money, and the balance refills once it runs out and your bets are graded. The cash is in the contests: the Streak Contest, where you pick one game at a time and try to build a winning streak, and the Monthly Contest leaderboard. Both pay real cash prizes by PayPal.

Check our NBA picks against the crowd

When an expert pick and the public disagree, we want to know who's on which side. The NBA consensus picks show the share of bets and money on each team. Our NBA computer picks add a model's view on every game's spread and total. The streak crowd shows which side our own streak players are on, and "Public vs streak players" flags the games where the betting public and our players disagree.

Questions and answers