How the NBA Lab Files a Pick

The NBA files the simplest book in the sports section: one market, one number, a fresh slate every day. This guide states the league's position directly — nothing in the NFL guide's extra machinery applies here. There is no NBA wind rule, no revenge spot, no primetime filing and no week window.

The rating

The rating behind every spread pick in this section starts as a season scoring differential per game: points scored minus points allowed, divided by games played, computed from completed games only — ESPN final scores, season to date, read at filing time. Only regular-season and postseason games count toward it; preseason and exhibition games never enter the window — on the day that window was adopted (November 8, 2026) it removed 67 exhibition finals from this league's record. Since Rule v1.3 for the other sports, adopted the same day, the pick no longer decides on that raw average: each game's margin is adjusted by the opponent's own average margin over two passes, and the pick decides on the adjusted figure. It is still not blended with any published rating. The team with the better adjusted differential is the pick, taken at the filed spread; when the two adjusted differentials sit within 1.0 point of each other, the pick is the home team. The power-ratings table on the league page ranks teams on the same adjusted figure and says so.

Lines come from The Odds API's US board as captured at filing. The anchor book is DraftKings where it carries the game, otherwise the first US book carrying all three markets. A game files only when the anchor book carries all three markets and both teams have completed games this season; otherwise it is excluded and the reason is recorded. Every pick settles from ESPN finals, in exactly the markets its record carries, under the rule version that filed it — earlier filings stand as filed and are never restated. Every pick is UNPROVEN; the section is a paper record and claims no edge.

What files under Rule v1.3

The spread, and only the spread. Every game on the slate files the differential pick at the filed spread, under the other-sports rule (selection_rule "RULE v1.3" in each record). The league's position on the other markets is explicit:

• Moneyline: not filed. The old moneyline pick was the de-vigged market favorite — a restatement of the market, not a selection — and it was NOT SUPPORTED in every corrected backtest cell.
• Totals: not filed. The totals machines are off in every league; every totals cell in the corrected record graded negative.
• Consensus overlay: off. The spread is the adjusted differential alone.

The daily slate

NBA picks apply to the next America/New_York calendar day's slate only, filed in the morning cycle ahead of the day's games. A game whose tip has passed never files late, and yesterday's slate is never restated — it settles as filed.

The consensus that used to run here

From November 6, 2026 the NBA spread pick came from a five-factor points consensus built for this league: the market; an efficiency factor — each team's season scoring margin blended 50/50 with its last-10-games margin, each opponent-adjusted in one pass, plus 2.0 home points, with a 1.5-point dead-band; an Elo factor (K=20 with a margin-of-victory multiplier, +100 Elo for home court, projected margin = Elo difference divided by 28); a rest factor that scores back-to-backs and third-games-in-four- nights; and an availability factor that sat INACTIVE the whole era — the NBA publishes its injury report as a PDF with no machine-readable free route, and the lab estimates nothing. Rule v1.1 added public opinion as a sixth factor. The grading correction that ended the NFL's consensus ended this one too: on the corrected record no spread cell reached the 52.38% break-even, and Rule v1.2 (effective the November 7, 2026 cycle) switched the machines off and put the spread back on the plain differential — the least-negative against-the-spread machine the lab has tested, recorded as exactly that. Public opinion no longer votes in this league either; the morning snapshot still runs and publishes its tallies.

Data and surfaces

Form and settlement read ESPN finals; the league's backtest history rests on the lab's NBA corpus of finals (ESPN finals and the DillonKoch corpus). Lines read The Odds API. The league page carries the filed picks, the suggested parlays the combos layer builds from them, a line-movement block — first captured line against the latest, from a ledger whose history begins November 5–6, 2026, display only — and the full captured board with each price's own last-update time. The NBA has no per-league report; its settled record publishes on the sports results page alongside the other leagues'.