For the past half decade, wherever you find LeBron James you’ll find the NBA team that has dominated the Eastern Conference. Teams with LeBron on them made the NBA Finals for five straight years (2011-15) and it goes to show you what a world class superstar can do for a franchise in this league. The rest of the Eastern Conference has been playing catch up in that time and while there are some other organizations on the rise, until we see LeBron’s team fail to make the NBA Finals, he still owns this conference. [+]

LeBron’s only one guy on one team though and there are still plenty of other great online NBA Eastern Conference betting opportunities elsewhere during the season.

NBA Eastern Conference Betting Lines

Despite LeBron’s dominance, the Eastern Conference is known to be the lesser of the two in the league the past decade. That means that on any given night during the season you will find value on NBA Eastern Conference betting lines if you know where to look.

Results / FixturesNBA

NBA Eastern Conference Standings

Some of the up-and-coming teams in the East include the likes of Toronto, Boston, Atlanta, and Indiana. To see where those franchises sit compared to LeBron’s Cleveland Cavaliers, check out the NBA Eastern Conference standings below.

StandingsNBA

How To Bet On NBA Eastern Conference

LeBron and company are going to get their wins throughout the course of the season, but despite all those straight up victories, covering the spread is a different story. Cleveland finished first in the Eastern Conference during the 2015-16 regular season with a 57-25 straight up record, but they were in the bottom third of the league in ATS (against the spread) victories with a 37-42-3 ATS mark. That alone tells you that blindly backing the best teams ATS on a nightly basis is a losing proposition because it's just too hard for these great teams to consistently beat opponents by the number.

To take this notion even further, two of the top three ATS Eastern Conference teams from that year (Orlando, New York) didn't even make the playoffs. The Magic finished with a 45-36-1 ATS record and the Knicks – despite going 32-50 SU – finished the year with a 44-38 ATS record. It goes to show you that even the “ugly” teams that nobody wants to back can turn a profit for you in this league and handicapping methods need to go much deeper than who will simply win the game.

Those results for Orlando could be used as a good window into the future as this is a young team that is on the rise. Their young core of Aaron Gordon, Victor Oladipo, Elfrid Payton and Nikola Vicevic are all growing together and should continue to climb upwards in the near future.

The Magic might be a few years away from dethroning LeBron James, but NBA Eastern Conference betting is about turning a profit each night against the spread.