As a long-time sports analyst and someone who has spent more hours than I care to admit studying betting markets, I’m often asked a seemingly simple question: how much should you bet on the NBA point spread? It’s a question that goes straight to the heart of sustainable sports wagering, and the answer is rarely as straightforward as a simple percentage of your bankroll. To find a meaningful answer, we need to think beyond the single game, the single night, or even the single season. This requires a strategic shift in perspective, one that I was recently reminded of in an unexpected place—while reading about a video game. A review of the upcoming Silent Hill f noted that although a playthrough takes around 10 hours, calling it a 10-hour game misses the point entirely. The game features five distinct endings, with the reviewer explaining it was only after unlocking two of them that they began to understand the narrative. The key insight was that each individual playthrough shouldn’t be viewed as a separate, isolated experience, but as an integral part of a larger, more complex whole. This philosophy is, perhaps surprisingly, the perfect lens through which to view betting on the NBA spread.

Think about your betting journey not as a series of isolated, high-stakes events, but as a continuous campaign. A single bet is merely one “playthrough” in a much longer game. The rookie mistake, and I’ve made it myself, is to treat every game with equal emotional and financial weight, chasing losses on a Tuesday night in February with the same fervor as betting a prime-time Saturday showdown. That’s a surefire path to depletion. Instead, your unit size—the foundational amount you risk per bet—must be calibrated to survive the inevitable losing streaks that are part of any statistical process. For most recreational bettors aiming for long-term engagement rather than reckless profit, I strongly advocate for a unit size between 1% and 3% of your total, dedicated bankroll. Let’s say you’ve set aside a $1,000 bankroll for the NBA season; a 2% unit would be $20. This means even a brutal cold streak of, say, seven or eight losses in a row—which will happen—only puts a 16% dent in your capital, leaving you with $840 to fight another day. It’s not glamorous, but discipline rarely is. The goal is to stay in the game long enough for your edge, however small you believe it to be, to manifest over hundreds of bets, not dozens.

This is where the Silent Hill f analogy truly clicks. If you view each $20 bet as merely a $20 bet, you’re stuck in that first, incomplete playthrough. You’re reacting to the immediate outcome—elation or frustration—without seeing the broader pattern. But when you see your betting activity as a “whole,” composed of many individual plays, your focus changes. You start tracking not just wins and losses, but your closing line value. Did you get Cavaliers -4.5 before the line moved to -6.5? That’s a win in the larger narrative, even if the Cavs win by only 5 points and your bet loses. You begin to analyze your performance against the closing line, which is the market’s most efficient consensus. Over 100 bets, if you’re consistently beating the closing line, you’re likely building a positive expected value model, even if your actual win-loss record is a mundane 52-48. That 52% win rate at standard -110 odds is the holy grail for a reason; it yields a 4.3% return on investment. But you’ll never reach 100 bets, let alone 1,000, if your unit size is so large that variance knocks you out in the first act.

Now, let’s talk about scaling, because a static unit size isn’t always optimal. As your bankroll grows from that initial $1,000, you should periodically recalculate your unit. If you grind it up to $1,500, a 2% unit becomes $30. This is positive progression. Conversely, and this is psychologically brutal but strategically sound, if your bankroll dips to $700, your unit must drop to $14. This protects you from the dreaded “risk of ruin.” I also employ a modest confidence scaling system, but it’s tightly constrained. My baseline unit is 1.5% of my bankroll. For a play I’ve handicapped heavily and have high conviction in—maybe 2-3 times a month—I might go up to 2.5%. I almost never exceed 3% on a single NBA spread bet, no matter how “locked in” I feel. The public often overestimates their edge; the market is brutally efficient. Remember, sportsbooks like FanDuel and DraftKings build in a 4-5% vig into the spread itself. You’re fighting an uphill battle from the start, so reckless sizing is a gift to the house.

In the end, the “correct” amount to bet is less about a magic number and more about a mindset. It’s the understanding that the outcome of the Warriors vs. Grizzlies game tonight is just one data point in a season-long, or even career-long, dataset. Just as the true story of Silent Hill f isn’t revealed in one ending, your proficiency as a bettor isn’t revealed in one night. It’s aggregated over time. So, set that bankroll aside—money you can truly afford to lose—establish a disciplined unit size between 1% and 3%, and commit to the process. Track your bets religiously, review your decisions coldly, and adjust your units mechanically with your bankroll fluctuations. The thrill will come from the strategic mastery and long-term growth, not from the fleeting high of a single, oversized win. That’s the strategic guide in a nutshell: bet an amount that lets you play the long game, because in the NBA betting world, the long game is the only one that matters.