The Best And Worst Third Quarter ATS Teams

Throughout the entire 2021-22 NBA season, the Golden State Warriors were one of the best third-quarter teams in the league. Whether it was covering the spread or winning straight up, backing the Warriors to start the second half seemed like a no-brainer. This season, that hasn't been the case with Golden State just 18-20 ATS in the third. So who's the new top dog coming out of intermission? Let's find out.

Thunder & Jazz

Over the entirety of the season, the Oklahoma City Thunder and Utah Jazz have the best third-quarter ATS win rate.

The Thunder are 24-13 for a 23% ROI while the Jazz are 26-14 ATS with a 24.6% ROI. OKC is one of the worst first-half ATS teams in the league, so this trend actually makes a lot of sense. The Thunder are typically losing after the first two frames, so they come out hard in the second half and try and cut into their opponent's lead. For the Jazz, they were extremely undervalued early in the season. No one expected them to win 10 of their first 13 games, so it took the market quite a while to adjust. However, over the last 10 games, both teams sit around league average in this category.

Fade The Bulls

If we single out the last ten games, the Chicago Bulls are by far the worst ATS team in the third quarter. They are 2-8 ATS overall, which would put you down -6.86 units if took them to cover coming out of the half. That number gets even worse over their last five games where they are 0-5 overall.

They are also 0-5 in their last five home games and have only outscored their opponents once in that span. Chicago is also losing the third quarter by an average of 4.4 points per game. If this data tells us anything, it's that the Bulls haven't been coming out of the half ready to play and you probably shouldn't look to back them in those spots anytime soon.

Play on the Spurs

The San Antonio Spurs are the complete opposite. At 8-2 they are the best ATS team in the third quarter and betting on their last 10 games would put you up 5.7 units.

What's even more interesting is that they also have the exact same home and away ATS record over their last five games at 4-1. The Spurs have been either down at the half or tied in each of those recent road games, which would then make sense that they need to put up a good third-quarter performance in order to get back in the game. However, in their last five home games, they've led at the half in three of them. This is no slight to Bulls head coach Bill Donovan, but regardless of how his team is playing, it makes sense that as a future Hall of Fame coach, Gregg Popovich has been able to make the necessary halftime adjustments for the Spurs to have success in the third quarter.