Roy leads Portland rally over Warriors

Basketball Betting Lines

03/12/2010 - Oakland, CA (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Brandon Roy scored 41 points and had eight rebounds, as Portland locked down Golden State in the fourth quarter and rallied for a 110-105 victory.

Andre Miller contributed 15 points and seven assists, LaMarcus Aldridge added 14 points and eight assists, while Jerryd Bayless and Rudy Fernandez donated 12 points apiece off the bench for Portland, which has won two straight games in the race for a playoff spot in the Western Conference. The Trail Blazers, who outscored the Warriors 27-9 in the last quarter, now sit a half-game behind idle San Antonio for the seventh playoff spot.

Portland snapped a nine-game losing streak on the road versus the Warriors, winning for the first time in Oakland since November 3, 2004.

Corey Maggette led Golden State with 24 points and six assists, Monta Ellis registered 17 points, Stephen Curry added 15 points and Anthony Tolliver notched a double-double with 14 points and 11 rebounds. Golden State, which had 96 points entering the fourth stanza, struggled by going 3-of-14 from the field over the final 12 minutes and dropped its sixth straight.

Trailing 96-83 entering the fourth period, an Aldridge layup trimmed the deficit to 98-93 with just under eight minutes to play. After two free throws by Reggie Williams pushed the margin out to 102-93, the Trail Blazers scored 15 straight points as the Warriors went approximately six minutes without a field goal at one point.

Fernandez's trey squared the contest at 102 with just under five minutes on the clock and an Aldridge three-point play capped the stretch for a 108-102 lead with 1:39 on the clock. Curry kept the Warriors in the contest with a three-pointer, then both teams had empty possessions before C.J. Watson curiously committed a foul with 9.2 ticks left, and only three seconds left on the shot clock.

Miller made both foul shots for a two-possession game, and Portland survived the final nine ticks to cap the comeback.

The game was tied at 28 after one stanza, and the Warriors jumped in front 46-40 on a Williams trey with just over 6 1/2 minutes to play in the first half. The edge reached double figures at 55-45 on a Curry technical free throw and got as high as 58-47 before the visitors finished the half on a 11-2 spurt. Roy was fouled and made three foul shots with 2.3 ticks left to cut the deficit to 60-58.

Again, the Warriors went on a run and grew their edge to 78-66 on an Ellis jumper. Golden State led by 16 before Fernandez capped the third-period scoring with a trey for a 96-83 game.

Game Notes

Williams had 14 points and Watson donated 12 for the Warriors...Portland made seven treys, while Golden State drained 10-of-26 from beyond the arc...Marcus Camby had a season-high nine offensive rebounds as part of a 17-rebound performance, but scored just four points on 1-of-7 shooting for Portland.

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MySportsbook.com will offer comprehensive Nascar betting lines on every race remaining on the Nextel Cup series including driver match-ups, props and odds to win each race. For a complete list of NASCAR odds, please visit www.MySportsbook.com.

To visit this online sportsbook got to MySportsbook.com for all your Sportsbook accepts US credit cards needs.

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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