Legally Betting On The Knicks
Of the two NBA teams calling NYC home, the Knicks (short for the Knickerbockers – so named after writer Washington Irving’s fictional Old Dutch New Yorker pseudo-aristocracy of the same name) have the longer lineage. In fact, the Knicks have a history that goes all the way back to the start of the league. You can’t buy the kind of loyalty that New York fans have for their team, which is why legally betting on the Knicks has been and will remain a popular pastime for the franchise’s supporters for the foreseeable future.
The Knicks trace their start to 1946, when the Manhattan squad became a founding member of the Basketball Association of America (BAA), which later merged with its nascent competitor, the National Basketball League (NBL), to form the NBA. Alongside the Boston Celtics organization, which has appropriately remained the Knicks’ main rival ever since joining the league in 1949, New York is the only NBA franchise to have remained in its original city since its founding. With a history like that, it’s no wonder that placing wagers on the Knicks is in such demand year in and year out, and our comprehensive guide to betting on New York is here to help you get in on the action available on the Knicks.
The Knicks are a good target for fans interested in legal New York NBA betting for a few reasons, but the main one is the steady stream of conference and divisional titles sprinkled throughout their history. Accordingly, all the leading New York-friendly sportsbooks will definitely carry current betting odds on the Knicks, so check the NBA betting section of leading New York-friendly sportsbooks like BetOnline, SportsBetting and 5Dimes. These sites will regularly update their betting lines on the Knicks throughout the season and into the playoffs if New York can make it that far in a crowded field of talented teams.
Though they won an Eastern Conference championship most recently in 2013, it was during the era of Hall of Famer Patrick Ewing in the 1990s when New York was widely regarded as one of the NBA’s dominant forces, stoking rivalries with the Chicago Bulls during the tenure of Michael Jordan. Since the turn of the 21st century the Knicks have worked steadily to rebuild their former prestige, culminating in a 2017 report from Forbes magazine that New York is officially the NBA’s most valuable franchise with an appraised net worth of $3.3 billion.
In the next few sections we’ll go over the most common types of betting odds on the Knicks and explain how these lines will be listed on betting boards in the real world, whether at a brick-and-mortar sportsbook or online.
Betting On The Knicks Straight Up
Of the three main wager types, betting straight up is by far the easiest to grasp if you’re new the sports betting hobby. If you’re a veteran punter, you know that betting straight up, also called moneyline betting because odds are written in terms of $100 risked and won on the bet, is essentially just picking the winner in a given matchup, meaning there is no consideration placed on the margin of victory. The bookies working for the New York sportsbook will list one team (usually the Knicks, if we’re being honest) as the favorite and the other as the underdog, assigning each squad with odds indicating their relative chances of coming out on top in the game.
Betting On The Knicks Point Spread
Betting on the point spread is similar to betting on the moneyline, except that, unlike wagering straight up, placing a winning bet against the spread means you’ll have to take the margin of victory into account first. How that works in practice is the favorite in a given matchup will have to win by a score greater than the bookies’ designated handicap, while the underdog can either win outright or even lose so long as they don’t lose by more than the handicap. This is not just a popular wagering type for bettors, as New York sportsbooks love it too – involving a point spread in the proceedings even out the action on both sides of a betting line, which is particularly useful in the event of a lopsided matchup.
Betting On The Knicks Over/Under
This wagering type is significantly different from the previous two styles we’ve looked at, and if betting on something other than victory or defeat is more your speed, then betting the over/under is probably something you’d be interested in trying out. Also known as betting the total, the over/under is basically a wager on whether the final combined score of both teams is greater than or less than what the bookies expect it to be. In order to win a bet of this type you’ve got to choose “over” or “under,” though it is possible for all the money wagered to be returned to bettors in the event that the actual final score matches the predicted amount in what’s called a “push”
Aside from the main three wager types we’ve spent the last little while describing, there are other ways of betting on the Knicks including prop bets, so called because they are wagers based on propositions – that is they ask questions relating to occurrences not directly related to the final outcome of the game. Prop bets come in two varieties: player props – which look at the statistical performances or individual players – and team props – which consider the performance of the team as a whole.
Prop bets of both flavors are listed concurrently with the main game lines we’ve already looked at and are typically considered to be the ideal supplementary bet once a bettor has already locked in his moneyline, spread or totals wagers. Savvy bettors will make judicious use of prop bets to maximize their earnings when they go to cash out their ticket. In the next few sections we’ll give you some examples of typical prop bets featured on the leading legal New York-friendly sportsbooks.
Knicks Player Prop Examples
Center Total Points Vs. Boston Celtics
- Over 21 ½ Points (-105)
- Under 21 ½ Points (-125)
Shooting Guard Total Rebounds Vs. Boston Celtics
- Over 8 ½ Rebounds (-135)
- Under 8 ½ Rebounds (+105)
Knicks Team Prop Examples
Highest Scoring Quarter Vs. Boston Celtics
- 1st Quarter (+200)
- 2nd Quarter (+225)
- 3rd Quarter (+290)
- 4th Quarter (+335)
First Team To Reach 10 Points Vs. Boston Celtics
- New York Knicks (-170)
- Boston Celtics (+140)
We’ve looked at tons of ways to bet on the Knicks, but if that’s still not enough, rest assured that there are plenty of other methods and means of doing so at the leading sportsbooks sites serving New York basketball fans. Some of these methods, like mobile sports betting apps for Android or Apple iOS devices, are basically just bringing old methods of wagers into the 21st century through convenience. Others, like live betting (also known as in-game betting) change up the rules of how bets are listed by constantly updating the odds on a basketball game in real time based on the action taking place on the court.
The online New York-friendly sports betting shops we recommend also offer futures odds on the Knicks to win their divisional and conference titles as well as to make the NBA Playoffs or to win the NBA Championship if they can make it that far. If off-court action is particularly interesting or a particular matchup draws a lot of public interest, there may even be special betting lines available, but you’ll have to check the appropriate sections at BetOnline, SportsBetting or 5Dimes regularly if you want to get in on it.
Is Sports Betting Legal For New York Residents?
New York is an interesting case when it comes to the legality of sports betting. First, there are federal sports betting laws like the Wire Act, the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA) and the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) and their effective bans on sports wagering to consider.
Then, on one hand, book-making and line-selling are expressly forbidden to take place if operators are based in the Empire State itself, and most other forms of gambling (the state lotto, horseracing betting, tribal casinos, etc.) not explicitly allowed are banned and punishable by law. On the other hand, there is not a single mention of online gambling being banned to be found anywhere in New York state’s legal codes.
This legal gray area may or may not necessarily be a loophole, but whatever the case it seems to indicate that sports betting is allowable under state law so long as wagers are not placed with operators based inside the state lines. That’s good news for New York’s NBA fans, as they now have an option for legally betting on the Knicks and any other team of their choosing. That option is, of course, to use one (or all) of our top-rated legal offshore sportsbooks – BetOnline, SportsBetting and 5Dimes – which are licensed in their home countries according to their own national gaming regulatory bodies.
Is Betting On The Knicks Unethical?
One of the most frequently used canards that gets trotted out from time to time to argue against wagering on sports once the legality of doing so at online sportsbooks in New York has already been settled is the assertion that betting on the Knicks is unethical. This is one of two things: either a plea to emotions rather than reason (why is no objection raised as to whether it’s ethical to pay grown men to dribble a ball up and down a court millions of dollar a year?), or a question that individuals must answer for themselves.
Nobody is putting a gun to your head literally or figuratively and making you bet on NBA, so the whole the argument is kind of moot point. If you want to bet on the Knicks – go for it. If you think it’s a bad idea – that’s fine too. Whatever the case might be, just be aware that it’s perfectly legal for you to do so, provided you place your bets at legal offshore sports betting sites like the ones we recommend if you want to steer clear of trouble with the law.
Will New York Sportsbooks Keep My Financial Information Safe?
One of the very best reasons to use an industry-leading legal sportsbook site that accepts New York bettors is the degree to which safety and security are a concern for them. You can rest easy knowing that, should you decide to use BetOnline, SportsBetting or 5Dimes to bet on the Knicks, every step along the way from your first deposit until you cash out your ticket is carefully protected by safety protocols and encryption systems that are without peer in the online gambling marketplace. This insistence on bank-vault like security isn’t a happy accident either – it’s literally a requirement to secure a gaming license in the top-ranked sportsbooks’ home nations, which have some of the toughest (but fairest) gaming regs found anywhere in the world.
Can I Use My Smartphone To Bet On The Knicks?
Let’s put it this way: if you can use your smartphone to buy groceries nowadays, what makes you think that the biggest names in the online gambling market space haven’t figured out how to enable you to bet on the Knicks with a cell phone or tablet? The fact is, sites like SportsBetting, BetOnline and 5Dimes have devoted countless hours and untold resources developing what have become the industry’s leading mobile sports betting apps for phone running Apple’s iOS and the Android operating system. These apps are available for free through a direct download straight from the sites that created them, so there’s no need to go through the Apple iStore or the GooglePlay app store to get ahold of this highly convenient means of betting on your favorite hoops squad.
As for the actual apps themselves, they perfectly replicate the user interface and layout of their desktop versions except that the whole experience has been optimized for the smaller screen size of a smartphone. Other side benefits of using these legal mobile sports betting apps include faster and smoother viewing, more reliable deposits and withdrawal procedures thanks to high speed streaming data services and other perks. Of course the prevailing reason to download and use a mobile betting app is so that you can take your hobby with you anywhere, whether you’re stuck in traffic or having some drinks with the boys (or girls).
What Is The Best Deposit Method At New York Sportsbooks?
There is no doubt that the 2006 passage of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) made the lives of casual sports bettors infinitely more difficult. That law made it so that financial institutions based in the US could not legally process credit card transactions related to online gambling. That had the effect that, for a time, even legal New York-friendly sportsbooks based in other countries had a hard time running credit or debit cards through their systems which at some point might go through the US.
However, a solution to this problem emerged with the arrival of Bitcoin on the scene a few years back. Since its debut, Bitcoin has become the No. 1 cryptocurrency available at internet-based monetary exchanges the world over, and it’s little wonder why: Bitcoin is totally free from regulation or control by any government worldwide and thus enables owners to use their money exactly how they see fit. Leading sportsbooks serving New Yorkers looking for a way of legally betting on the Knicks took note of this and now strongly encourage their users to make deposits with Bitcoin. They will even offer bonuses of up to $5,000 in free wagers (contingent upon some qualifications) upon making a new deposit if you use this preferred method the next time you need to bankroll your wagering account.