If you've been banned from books without winning, for BTCL, then, yes, as I said, BTCL has value from the books POV in profiling players. So, with that, you're agreeing with me.
You say we're being paid in EV. Again, you're agreeing with me.
You err when you say BTCL should be used as an indicator of whether your bet was EV. Unline poker, where we can sometimes figure out exactly what a wager's EV was without regard for the actual result, we can never do that in sportsbetting (scalping/middling aside, obv).
For any single given bet, we have no measure of EV, except the result, which is a pretty poor measure for a single wager, but there's no getting around it. Truly, in sportsbetting, we never get to know, shortterm. Some guys will break a game down and say they should have covered, or were lucky to cover, but that's illusory. Part of any wager should be acknowledgement that there will be a lot of luck involved, not just in the ball's bounce, but even in the player's performance. After the wager is made, it just doesn't matter how or why you won or lost (except in terms of prepping for the next wagers). There's no running out the deck a million times to see if the bet was +/- EV.
So, in the short run, there is no measure of EV. In the long run, actual returns are the measure of EV
sports arbitrage
In between, if you want, you can cling to BTCL. But if you're only betting for fun (and thus only care about this game's results) it doesn't matter, and if you're doing this seriously (and thus are in it for the long run), it's only actual returns that matter. So BTCL, at best, is a waystation, and even then the actual betting skills that lead to GENERALLY beating the CL should be measured.
If you want comfort, notice that you picked up a 1/2 point over the market average by line shopping. Notice that if you'd bet earlier, you would have lost a 1/2 point. Things like that. Even, if it provides consolation on a losing play, notice that your team fumbled 5x and surely would have covered otherwise. But BTCL? That's a pathetic consolation, imo, and yet that seems to be all it is: consolation for bad stretches, for non-handicappers. Because in the long run, it is only winning that counts. You might get banned for BTCL, but you won't get paid for it.
Then there's this quote of yours:
I think you misunderstand EV basically. In efficient markets on average the closing line will be far more efficient than the opening line, obviously there will be times this is wrong but this is just noise. If you had to pick 100+ NBA/NFL games and you got the opening line and I got the closing line I would be more than happy to book this.
You really, really think I misunderstand EV? And you really, really read so poorly that you concluded that somewhere in my post I'm saying the closing line isn't generally more efficient than the opener? I just double checked and can't find it. Point it out.
It might make more sense to assume that you had an emotionalistic reaction to the thread's title and stopped thinking before even beginning to read. That happens.
But of the sentence of yours in which you essentially wrote, "In efficient markets ... the market will be efficient," I can only say "Brilliant."