Hornets aim to stop skid vs. Warriors

Basketball Betting Lines

03/08/2010 - (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - The New Orleans Hornets are in danger of recording their longest losing streak in three years. Fortunately for the struggling club, it'll be facing one of the NBA's poorest road teams when the Golden State Warriors enter the Big Easy tonight for a Western Conference matchup.

New Orleans has dropped its last four games and five of the past six contests to fall to 11th place in the West, five games back of Portland for the conference's eighth and final playoff seed. Since All-Star point guard Chris Paul suffered a knee injury in late January, the Hornets have gone a subpar 6-11.

The Hornets' latest mishap occurred Friday in San Antonio, where seven Spurs players scored in double figures in a 102-91 victory over their Southwest Division rivals.

New Orleans was within striking distance after three quarters of play, trailing by a 74-69 score, but Manu Ginobili's three-pointer two minutes into the fourth ignited a 13-5 run that enabled the Spurs to pull away.

"We competed and played extremely hard," said Hornets head coach Jeff Bower. "I thought we played well for a lot of the game. I don't think we had enough plays to come out on the plus side on the road."

Darren Collison poured in 32 points for the Hornets in a losing cause, with David West compiling 22 points, nine rebounds and seven assists on the night. Marcus Thornton scored 18 points before leaving the game in the fourth quarter with an upper back strain, although the rookie is expected to play tonight.

New Orleans, which hasn't lost five in a row since a six-game slide from March 2-13, 2007, will play six of its next seven on the road following tonight's tilt.

Golden State has also been without its best player for some time, with high- scoring guard Monta Ellis slated to sit out a sixth straight game this evening due to a sore back. Even with Ellis available, the Warriors haven't had much success in enemy buildings this season, having lost 27 of their 31 outings as the visitor for the campaign.

The Warriors have been dealt defeats in each of the first four tests of a road trip that concludes tonight, including Saturday's 101-90 setback at Charlotte. Golden State trailed just 86-85 midway through the fourth quarter, before the Bobcats put together a 15-2 spurt to kill any comeback hopes.

"We hung around for a long time. They finally figured out a way to hurt us with the zone (defense)," Warriors head coach Don Nelson said. "We kept waiting -- and we got away with it for a long, long time -- and they finally got it in the middle of our zone and that was pretty much the end of it."

Stephen Curry led Golden State, which shot just 38.2 percent from the field, with 25 points, with Corey Maggette finishing with 19 points in the loss.

The Warriors also played Saturday's game without starting center Andris Biedrins (groin), while replacement Ronny Turiaf left in the first quarter after straining his left knee. Neither player is expected to be in uniform tonight.

New Orleans has won both previous meetings between the teams in 2009-10, including a 108-102 decision at home on December 23.

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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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