2016-17 NBA Betting: Most Profitable Referees

2016-17 NBA Betting: Most Profitable Referees

At approximately 9:00 AM eastern on game days, the NBA announces the daily referee assignments on their website. For every game, there are three referees. Like with NBA head coaches, bettors must pay attention to the refs because under certain conditions some refs are more profitable than others.

For example, since 2005, home teams have covered just 49% of games, which means that there’s quite a bit of value on road refs. Thus, it’s vital for bettors to know who is officiating, noting the referees on each three-man unit with a similar edge.

One important caveat is that these officiating trends do not carry over into the playoffs as the number of bets noticeably increases due to the influx of casual bettors, which causes oddsmakers to shade their lines accordingly. For the purpose of this post, we solely focused on the regular season.

The following tables display the five most profitable active referees for home teams, visiting teams, overs and unders since the start of the 2005 season.

Best Home Refs

RefereeRecord (ATS)Units Won (u)
Mark Lindsay280-240+25.65
James Capers261-235+12.82
Scott Twardoski144-130+7.57
Tom Washington293-271+6.72
Tyler Ford37-29+6.37

Best Road Refs

RefereeRecord (ATS)Units Won (u)
Scott Foster312-245+53.92
Tony Brothers299-238+49.34
Brent Barnaky189-149+31.83
Michael Smith285-241+31.39
Scott Wall260-224 +23.72

Best Over Refs

RefereeRecord (ATS)Units Won (u)
Ed Malloy305-255+33.74
Scott Foster303-264+24.23
Eric Lewis300-262+23.26
Ben Taylor100-78+17.61
Michael Smith283-253+15.59

Best Under Refs

RefereeRecord (ATS)Units Won (u)
Curtis Blair243-195+36.82
Haywoode Workman238-193+34.96
Ron Garretson296-249+33.06
Eric Dalen235-192+32.64
Marc Davis305-259+32.51

One ref that bettors should pay close attention to is Scott Foster, who is one of two refs who appears in the top-five in more than one category. Currently, he’s the most profitable road ref and the second-most profitable over ref. Despite being a profitable ref for bettors to follow, in an anonymous survey conducted by the Los Angeles Times in January, Foster was voted the worst referee in the NBA by several players and coaches.

Bettors can track the latest odds, public betting trends, injuries and even futures by visiting our free NBA odds page.

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Andrew Fine

Andrew is a Sports Betting Specialist for Sports Insights. He can be reached at andrew@sportsinsights.com.

2 Comments
  • Derek
    11/16/2016 at 4:17 pm

    Any recommended url for getting the day’s ref assignments when they come out?

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