Tampa Raptors

I mentioned yesterday that paying attention to Time Zones in the NBA can make a difference to your bottom line. By way of example, backing Small Road 'Dogs ATS travelling across two or three time zones since 2015 have an ROI of -4.39%, compared with an ROI of 6.27% when playing within one time zone of home. 

The NBA is a little complicated, given that some Western Conference teams are located two time zones apart, while some Eastern Conference teams are in the same time zone as Western Conference teams. Also this season, the Toronto Raptors are not playing their home games in Toronto, but at least for the start of the season, will be playing in Tampa due to complications crossing the US-Canada border during the pandemic.

Obviously this is an issue which will impact the NHL more seriously, with seven of the NHL's 31 teams based north of the border. The schedule for the 2020-21 season, although as there are no games scheduled in 2020, it's really just a 2021 season. Opening games begin on January 13th and the league will reorganise to reduce travel and to avoid the need for crossing the border, all seven Canadian teams will play in a new North Division, with the 24 US teams divided into three Divisions of eight - East, Central and West. Next season there will be 25 with the new Seattle Kraken franchise. All regular season games will be Divisional, with the top four in each Division making the playoffs. The first two rounds of the playoffs will also be Divisional, all of which means that this season will be unlike any previous one. Whether trends will continue remains to be seen, but Road Favourites have been good since the league re-aligned in 2013:

In Divisional games this ROI decreases slightly to 5.2%, but by taking into account the previous result for both teams, the ROI can be more than doubled to 11.6%, with the only losing season being the last one.

Merry Xmas.