Bucks, Rockets meet in Brew City

Basketball Betting Lines

02/17/2010 - (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - A pair of teams scratching for playoff positioning get together tonight in Milwaukee, where the struggling Houston Rockets take on the Bucks at the Bradley Center.

Houston has lost three in a row and is three games off the pace in the Western Conference standings. It is coming off last night's 104-95 loss to Utah, as Aaron Brooks and David Andersen finished with 18 points apiece for the Rockets, who have dropped seven of their last 10 games and sit 4 1/2 games behind Dallas for Southwest supremacy.

"That's a very good team we played," Rockets coach Rick Adelman said of the Jazz. "In the West, they are probably the second or third best team right now. We just came down to the end of the game there where their experience showed."

Trevor Ariza tallied 15 points, six assists and five rebounds, while Luis Scola added 14 points and six rebounds in defeat. The Rockets hope to build on their 12-14 road record Wednesday night and are 17-7 in games following a loss this season. The team is also considering trading superstar Tracy McGrady prior to the NBA trade deadline.

Milwaukee has won six of its last eight games and is 1 1/2 games out of the final postseason spot in the East. It kept its winning ways intact before the All-Star break with a 97-77 drubbing of the New Jersey Nets last Wednesday at the Meadowlands thanks to Andrew Bogut's 22 points and nine rebounds.

Ersan Ilyasova chipped in 18 points off the bench for the Bucks, who got 17 points and eight assists from Luke Ridnour.

The Bucks are 16-8 as the host this season. Since the 2000 All-Star Weekend, they are 9-1 in their first game against a Western Conference opponent following the break.

Houston will try to stop the Bucks' strong mark and already beat them this season by a 101-98 score in overtime on January 18 at the Toyota Center. The Rockets have won nine of the previous 10 meetings with Milwaukee.

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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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