Sixers stop slide, topple Nets

Basketball Betting Lines

03/17/2010 - Philadelphia, PA (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Andre Iguodala netted 20 points and dished out eight assists as the Sixers took down the reeling Nets, 108-97, at the Wachovia Center.

Jrue Holiday netted 19 and Elton Brand added 12 points and eight boards as the Sixers swept the four-game season-series with the Nets.

Willie Green, Lou Williams and Rodney Carney each tallied 11 points for the Sixers, who snapped a five-game slide.

Chris Douglas-Roberts led New Jersey with 23 points off the bench as the Nets dropped their sixth in a row. They were without guard Devin Harris for the second straight game due to an upper respiratory illness.

Kenyon Dooling chipped in with 15 points, while Terrence Williams scored 13. Jarvis Hayes and Brook Lopez each racked up 12 points in defeat.

The Nets trimmed the Sixers edge to 83-70 on a Kris Humphries make almost two minutes into the final quarter, but the Sixers combated New Jersey's rally, pushing the advantage to as much as 18 before closing the game.

The Nets led by as many as four in the opening quarter at 11-7 on a Josh Boone reverse layup, but the Sixers tied the game at 13 and took the lead on a Green pull-up jumper with about seven minutes left in the frame. After tying the game at 18 on an Iguodola free throw, the Sixers mounted a 14-4 run to end the quarter up 32-22.

A Jason Kapono jumper at 1:30 into the second quarter pushed the Sixers edge to 11, but the Nets crawled back to within four with just over 7 1/2 minutes left in the half on a Humphries slam. The Sixers led by as many as 14 in the quarter and finished the first half up 60-49.

Philly widened its margin to 18 in the third on a Brand jumper with 8:48 to go and led by as many as 22 on a Kapono triple with 4:25 remaining.

Douglas-Roberts scored the last nine points for the Nets in the third and drained a long triple from the top of the key to trim the deficit to 81-68.

Game Notes

The Sixers shot 56 percent for the game...The Nets made 23-of-24 foul shots......The Nets have lost five straight on the road...Philly improves to 11-22 at home, while New Jersey dropped to 3-30 on the road.

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SPORTS BETTING - Tennis is an underrated and under-utilized bettors' sport.

Ten years ago, at just about this time, I called Alan Boston in Vegas and left him a voicemail that went something like this (abridged version): "Hey Alan, Chad Millman from ESPN The Magazine calling. I want to do a book about wise guys, you in?"

A couple weeks later I got a message back (abridged version): "I don't know, maybe," Boston said. "Call me and we'll talk about it. But not later today. I got $1,000 on Andre Agassi to win the French Open at 40-1, and he's in the finals."

Here's what happened next (abridged version): Agassi won his tourney. Boston won his $40,000. I wrote sportsbook.

In the ten years since, how much has been wagered on the big-time tennis events? Put it this way: The Nevada Gaming Commission doesn't even track the number year by year because it's so small.

"Tennis makes up about one-tenth of one percent of our take," says Lucky's bookmaking boss Jimmy Vaccaro. "The last big golf major we probably had $100,000 worth of bets. In tennis, we might have written two big tickets."

Tennis' lack of popularity amongst the American bettoratti is no surprise, really. For starters, the biggest sports betting holidays -- the Super Bowl, the NCAA tourney -- are must see TV. People, at least the degenerates I know, plan vacations around watching those events in Vegas sports books.

But Wimbledon? Doesn't exactly reel in the whales. "Seriously, it's the nuts as an event," says Boston. "But who even knows when it's on?"

Here's another reason that helps explain why golf gets traction, something I call "The Bubbe Theory." My Bubbe is pushing 95 and has cataracts so bad that, to her, even the most crystalline Chicago day is mostly cloudy. But she still listens to the Cubs games, and she still calls me in a fit if she disagrees with something Rick Telander writes in the Chicago Sun Times. She's a sports fan. If she doesn't know you, you're just filling a niche. And niche players, even historically good ones like Roger and Raf, don't drive betting volume. Only the highest profile names attract square money, which inflates wagering totals like a shot of saline to the lips. Bubbe, and the public, loved Agassi, tennis' last cross-the-rubicon, mainstream draw. She also has a crush on Tiger. She's given me standing orders to put a sawbuck on the big cat whenever I walk through a sports book (or mistakenly tap into one via my Internet machine.) That explains why the Masters is getting $100K in action at some books while the four tennis majors might not get that combined this year.

This isn't a case of tennis being a difficult sport to bet. In fact, in Europe, it's probably the second most popular sport for gambling after soccer. Granted, as the WSJ football betting last week and The Mag's Shaun Assael examined in even greater depth last year, that might be because gamblers across the pond see it as an easy game to fix. But it could also be because, over there it holds the kind of sway the big two do over here.

Street corners in Spain are peppered with public courts and kids doing their best Raffy impressions. In some war torn parts of Eastern Europe poverty-stricken kids view tennis as an escape route, like football or basketball here. A couple years ago The Mag's Lindsay Berra wrote a great piece about Belgrade's Jelena Jankovic, Ana Ivanovic and Novak Djokovic. They learned the game as kids while bombs were raining down on their homeland. They practiced in drained swimming pools. Not exactly Nick Bolletierri conditions.

In the United States, casual fans think tennis is played four times a year. But on the tightly packed European continent, national interest in homegrown talent runs deep every weekend. Of the ATP's current top 20 players, only two, tennis betting and James Blake, are American. Fourteen are from Europe, representing six different countries.

No wonder fans from Lisbon to Bhudapest get jacked up for the net game, whether it's Wimbledon or a low-level tourney like the Estoril Open in Portugal (congrats to Spain's Albert Montanes for winning that one, btw). Chances are good that someone representing their flag will not only be playing, but have a shot at winning.

And that's all any bettor can ask for.

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