I see a lot of people who are huge believers of trends/stats and others who think it's all complete bullsh*t
Personally, I'm somewhere in between. I think that recent trends for a team generally show the kind of momentum, energy and confidence that they're playing with. A team on a hot streak will often times have the confidence to overcome obstacles that will kill a struggling team. I'm not a big fan of past season trends anymore though. I feel like it's just too hard to derive any value out of those because you simply don't know all the circumstances around that previous game. It's possible that a guy could have struggled last season against a certain team and that he's been untouchable since that certain point....if he faced that team again, he will likely dominate because he's playing with a lot better execution and mechanics since the last time they faced off
I think the best stats to evaluate a team is the last month or so of play. The biggest benefit of trends is that they help you figure out when a team will hit a hot streak and when a team will hit a cold streak. If you see a team lose 3 out of 4 in demoralizing fashion and then they're facing a good team that matches up very well with them, you know that you are likely to see a bit of a losing streak
At the end of the day, gambling is the same thing as stock market. You gotta anticipate which teams will go up and which teams will go down in value based on performance and stats/trends can help you do that if you look at the most relevant ones