By Eurohoops team / info@eurohoops.net
When Dennis Schröder stepped to the line with 8.3 seconds left in Riga, Germany led by three after his jumper on the previous possession. Two free throws later it was official: 88–83 over Türkiye, EuroBasket champions in 2025 after winning the World Cup in 2023.
The way Germany got there says a lot about how modern basketball thinks. Almost every decision on the floor is now judged by expected value, and that same idea runs every table in a casino.
What a shot is worth
Expected value is simple arithmetic: the chance of success multiplied by what success pays. On a basketball court, that means shooting percentage times points.
| Shot (illustrative percentages) | Make rate | Points | Expected points per attempt |
| Three-pointer | 35% | 3 | 1.05 |
| Shot at the rim | 55% | 2 | 1.10 |
| Long two | 40% | 2 | 0.80 |
A long two that goes in 40% of the time is worth less than a three that goes in only 35% of the time. That single comparison explains most of the change in how the game is played over the past fifteen years: fewer long twos, more threes and more attacks on the rim.
No single shot follows the average, of course. A three either drops or it doesn’t. Expected value only shows up over many attempts, which is exactly why coaches trust it.
Germany’s final, in expected points
The EuroBasket final in Riga on 14 September 2025 showed what happens when the percentages run hot. According to CBS Sports, Germany made 14 of 26 three-point attempts. That is 54%, or roughly 1.6 points every time a German player let a three go.
Isaac Bonga, player of the game, went 4-for-4 from deep on his way to 20 points, and Tristan da Silva hit 3 of 4. Türkiye had Cedi Osman shooting 6-for-9, but the rest of the team made just 3 of 16 threes.
In a game with 15 lead changes, that gap in shooting was the margin. And it was not luck in the sense of something unearned: Germany created the open looks. But no team expects to shoot 54% from three every night, which is where the second half of expected value comes in.
Eurohoops’ report from Riga has how Schröder closed it out, scoring the game’s final six points on the way to being named EuroBasket MVP.
The same maths on the casino floor
Casinos run on exactly this arithmetic, only the expected value is set before the first bet and it points the other way. In European roulette there are 37 pockets, but a winning single-number bet pays 35 to 1. Over time the player gets back 36 units for every 37 staked, a house edge of 1/37, or 2.7%.
Online slots express the same idea as a payout rate, or RTP (return to player). A slot with a 96% RTP returns 96 euros for every 100 wagered, averaged over a very large number of spins. Single sessions swing wildly, just like a team’s shooting night, but the long-run figure doesn’t move.
Those figures differ between casinos, because many slots come in several RTP versions and the operator chooses which one to run. German-language comparison site casinobernie checks the payout rates at online casinos game by game, and its tests put the average for the casinos at the top of its ranking between roughly 96 and 98%. Two percentage points sound small, until you remember that a 54% three-point night beats a 36% one by more than half a point per shot.
Where the comparison stops
The big difference is control. A basketball team can change its expected value: better spacing, better shot selection, a shooter like Bonga getting four clean looks. Good offenses are built to create those shots again and again.
A casino player can’t. The house edge in roulette is the same on the first spin and the thousandth, and no betting system changes a slot’s RTP. The only things a player decides are which game to play, at what payout rate, and how much to spend.
That is also why hot night is the dangerous one. A team that shoots 54% from three knows it won’t last and plans for 35%. A player on a winning streak is looking at the same kind of outlier, with the long-run number still pointing the other way.
The number behind the result
Germany will not shoot like that in every final, and its coaches know it. What made the title runs possible was a system that keeps producing good shots over 40 minutes and a whole tournament.
For anyone who plays casino games, the useful lesson runs the other way: know the expected value before you start, set a budget you are happy to lose, and treat a lucky night as exactly that.
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