Walking into a sportsbook, or logging into your betting app, the most common question isn’t who to bet on, but how much. I’ve seen too many otherwise sharp bettors torpedo their bankrolls by getting the first part right and the second part disastrously wrong. It’s a feeling I recently had while playing through Silent Hill f. Although a playthrough of Silent Hill f takes around 10 hours to complete, you'd be remiss to call it a 10-hour-long game. Within the game there are five endings, one of which you are locked into the first time you play. It was only after unlocking two of them that I began to feel as though I somewhat understood what was happening; that I began to grasp that each playthrough should not be viewed as a separate experience, but as part of a whole. Placing a single NBA point spread bet is like seeing just one of those endings. You might get lucky and cash a ticket, but without a structured plan for your wager sizes across the entire season—your whole “playthrough”—you’re missing the bigger picture. You’re reacting to isolated events, not managing a portfolio. So, let’s talk about the unsexy but absolutely critical foundation of sports betting: how to determine the right NBA point spread bet amount for your bankroll.

First, you need a bankroll. That sounds obvious, but I mean a dedicated, separate pool of money you are 100% prepared to lose. This isn’t the rent money, your emergency fund, or next month’s car payment. For argument’s sake, let’s say you’ve set aside $1,000 for the upcoming NBA season. The old-school, conservative approach is the “flat betting” model. You decide on a fixed unit size, say 1% or 2% of your total bankroll. With a $1,000 roll, that’s $10 or $20 per bet. It’s simple, it prevents catastrophic losses on a bad day, and it forces discipline. The downside? It can feel slow, especially when you’re on a hot streak. Your confidence grows, but your bet size doesn’t. That’s where a more aggressive model, like the Kelly Criterion, comes into play. It’s a mathematical formula that calculates the optimal bet size based on your perceived edge. If you believe a team has a 55% chance to cover, not the implied 50% from the -110 odds, Kelly might tell you to bet 5% of your bankroll. The problem? Most bettors wildly overestimate their edge. Misjudge your edge by a few percentage points, and Kelly will have you risking 15% on a single game, which is a one-way ticket to ruin. I’ve been there, and it’s not fun.

My personal philosophy, forged from past mistakes, is a hybrid. I start with a base unit of 1% of my opening season bankroll. That’s my “flat bet” safety net. However, I allow myself to go up to 2.5% on plays where my research is deepest and my confidence is highest—maybe 3-4 games out of a full slate. I never, ever cross the 3% threshold on a single NBA spread. Why? Because variance in the NBA is a monster. A star sits out with “load management” ten minutes before tip-off. A team up by 22 in the third quarter decides to coast and blows the cover. It happens every single night. Betting too large a percentage turns these normal fluctuations into bankroll-killing events. Think of it like the narrative in Silent Hill f. If you only focus on the immediate scare in one playthrough (one big bet), you miss the overarching story of your season. A 2% loss on a bad beat is a minor plot point; a 10% loss is a game-over screen.

I also adjust my unit size quarterly, but only based on my bankroll’s actual performance, not my emotions. If my $1,000 grows to $1,200 by the All-Star break, my new 1% unit becomes $12. If it shrinks to $800, my unit drops to $8. This is the hardest discipline to maintain—reducing your bet size when you’re losing. The temptation is to “chase” and increase stakes to get back to even. That is the fastest known method to vaporize a bankroll. It’s the equivalent of forcing the same ending in that game over and over, ignoring all other clues and paths, expecting a different result. It never works.

Some experts, like bankroll management consultant David Miller, whom I spoke with last season, advocate for an even stricter approach for beginners. “For the first 100 bets, I recommend a fixed unit of just 0.5% to 1%, regardless of perceived edge,” he told me. “The goal isn’t to maximize profit initially; it’s to survive the learning curve and gather real data on your actual hit rate. Most people are shocked to find it’s lower than they think.” His point is well-taken. The sportsbooks have decades of data and sharp minds setting these lines. Your edge, if it exists, is slim.

In the end, determining the right amount isn’t about finding a magic number. It’s about choosing a system that lets you sleep at night and keeps you in the game for the long run. The thrill of betting on the NBA is in the night-to-night drama, the parlay dreams, the last-second backdoor covers. But the craft of betting, the part that separates the long-term winners from the weekend thrill-seekers, is in the cold, boring math of bankroll management. You have to see your season as a complete story, with winning streaks and losing slumps all as integral chapters. Just like I finally understood Silent Hill f only by piecing together multiple endings, you’ll only truly understand your strengths and weaknesses as a bettor by sticking to a plan through all 82 games. Start small, be brutally honest with yourself, and never let a single night’s result dictate the size of your next wager. That’s the only way the story has a chance of a happy ending.