One thing I think I've learned from all my years watching the lines is that sometimes a bad beat is actually just a bad beat. You can look for patterns and conspiracies until you're blue in the face but sometimes a star player just has a terrible night at the free throw line or a team that looks invincible could actually under perform under pressure.

The unpredictability of sports is more like a human element and it's what makes it so compelling and sometimes also very frustrating for a gambler. Sometimes we actually want to believe there's a reason for every shocking fail because it's actually  way easier to blame something sinister than to accept that sometimes things just go wrong.