This weekend’s two NBA conference finals games – Saturday and Sunday - were just the 32nd and 33rd time a team have been listed as a house underdog in a conference championship series because the 1991-92 season. 

The Toronto Raptors, down 0-2 to the Cleveland Cavaliers within the Eastern Conference finals, previous to Saturday's big win and cover, were 6-point home pups hosting LeBron James and the Cavs while the Oklahoma City Thunder closed at +2 against the visiting Golden State Warriors in Game 3 of the West finals, with that series knotted at one game apiece.

Both teams, of course, won and covered big in Game 3 as home dogs. The Raptors handled the Cavaliers, 99-84, and the Thunder thrashed the Warriors, 133-105.

Toronto and Oklahoma City will both be home dogs, once again, for Game 4 with the Raptors getting six points and OKC currently listed as 1.5-point dogs on home court.

Looking back over the 33 instances since 1991-92 (heading into Monday) wherein the house side was the betting underdog in that 24-year span, those host clubs have now posted a 20-12-1 ATS record (19-14 SU), covering the spread 62.5 percent of the time. 

Crunching those conference finals spreads all the way down to fit Monday's line, and residential underdogs of +2.5 and better are 11-5-0 ATS, a bankroll building 68.8 percent winner against the NBA pointspreads since 1991-92. Those particular home pups finished 10-6 SU in those contests.

Those 16 NBA conference final home dogs of +2.5 or more scored a standard of 94.1 points against a standard of 91.8 from the street favorite, facing a normal spread of +4.59 points.

The biggest home dog during that reach were the 1997-98 L. a. Lakers +8 versus the Utah Jazz, who won 109-98 in Game 3 of the Western Conference finals. Utah would go directly to sweep L.A. in four straight games. 

Toronto hadn't been a house underdog within the playoffs before Game 3 and went a high-quality 5-1 ATS getting the points within the Air Canada Centre in the course of the regular season. Cleveland, at the other hand, has now been a betting favorite in all 11 of its postseason games this year, with a 2-3 ATS record as road chalk. The Cavaliers were just 14-21-2 ATS as road favorites through the regular season.

Overall, irrespective of round (accounting for both underdogs winning and covering this weekend), home underdogs are 176-163-8 ATS (51.9%) within the NBA Playoffs since 1991-92, with Eastern home dogs going 86-94-5 (47.8%) and West home pups putting up an 90-69-3 ATS count (56.6%). Those games have a 154-190-3 Over/Under record (55.2% Under).

Read More... [Source: Covers.com: NBA News and Stories]