Will the bubble burst for NBA over bettors?

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When the NBA resumed its regular season on July 30, offenses were supposed to be sluggish after a four-month layoff. Instead, they've been better than ever.

Through two weeks in the Orlando bubble, the average offensive rating is 111.9 - almost five points higher than it was before the league halted play. Teams are taking - and making - more shots than ever, and scoring has skyrocketed as a result.

Take a look at the combined stats per game before and after the NBA resumed play:

The average final score within the bubble is almost nine points higher than it was outside it, but the average total is only up 4.9 points. That's a big deal for bettors - after hitting 51.5% of the time pre-bubble, the over is hitting 56.2% of the time in Orlando. For over bettors, that's the difference between a marginal success rate and a blind-bet profit.

So why is scoring up in the bubble? And with the playoffs starting Monday, can bettors count on that trend to continue?

Scoring on the rise

As we broke down in detail toward the end of 2019, scoring has been increasing for years, and it's causing headaches for sportsbooks. The under is the better bet almost every season, yet totals keep rising, thanks in part to the NBA's increasing emphasis on "pace and space."

We're seeing it again this year. The average NBA team is scoring 111.8 points per game in 2019-20, the most in any season since the NBA-ABA merger. Teams are actually attempting fewer shots per contest than they did in the 70s and 80s - and making a lower percentage of them - but they're trading 2-pointers for 3-pointers, and the result is a record high in average offensive rating (110.6).

Those trends have only intensified in the bubble, especially among the league's top teams. Only one team - the Mavericks - had an offensive rating of 115 or better before the NBA's hiatus; eight teams surpassed that mark during the seeding phase in Orlando. Six of those clubs shot more free throws than they did before the pause, and seven launched more threes.

The difference in the bubble - and the reason scoring has reached an all-time high - is that teams in Orlando are making more of their shots. The shooting percentages for twos, threes, and free throws have all remained relatively static in the last few years. In the bubble, all three are higher than they've been at any point this decade.

Bubble theories

The increase in attempts can easily be explained by the progression of pace and space. But why, then, are teams shooting better, too?

The easy answer is team quality. The six worst offenses in the league were all excluded from the bubble, which should have naturally bumped average team scoring inside it. But that doesn't account for the gains made by top-ranked teams, nor does it explain why teams' defenses are getting worse, too.

More likely, it's the environment in which they're playing. The courts inside the bubble are far quieter than regular NBA arenas, more akin to practice courts with real stakes. Shooters are always better in practice when distractions are at a minimum, and it's partly why they're better at home, too. Additionally, there's no travel to and from games, which theoretically helps preserve the legs of the league's top shooters.

There have also been more than four additional foul calls per game inside the bubble, an increase that has boosted overall scoring. It's unlikely that players have actually been fouling more than usual in this short span; instead, officials are better equipped to call them. The sound of player contact is more easily heard, and officials don't have to face the derision of angry home fans when a call goes against their team.

Motivation matters, too. Defense is highly correlated with effort, and there's even data to back that up: After the All-Star break - when top seeds coast and tanking teams fold - the average total has risen in each of the last five seasons. Even within the bubble, totals were at their highest in the final two days, when most of the seeding was already set.

Will it continue?

It's a small sample size, but the bubble scoring bump is real. Unfortunately for bettors, so too are the effects of playoff basketball. Totals have dropped by an average of 2.2 points from the regular season to the postseason over the last four years, and the playoff under has hit 52.5% of the time in that span.

But oddsmakers are still undervaluing the impact of the bubble by roughly four points per game, and the early totals this week suggest they haven't learned their lesson. If that continues, even the postseason grind won't be enough to thwart over bets in Orlando.

C Jackson Cowart is a betting writer for theScore. He's an award-winning journalist with stops at The Charlotte Observer, The San Diego Union-Tribune, The Times Herald-Record, and BetChicago. He's also a proud graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill, and his love of sweet tea is rivaled only by that of a juicy prop bet. Find him on Twitter @CJacksonCowart.