Bulls rout Hornets

Basketball Betting Lines

02/08/2012 - New Orleans, LA (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Carlos Boozer scored 18 points and the Chicago Bulls barely needed Derrick Rose in an easy 90-67 win over the New Orleans Hornets on Wednesday night.

The Hornets lost their seventh game in a row and needed a three-pointer from Marco Belinelli with 0.5 seconds left to avoid a franchise-low in points scored.

Indeed, the game started and ended as a laugher: Actor and comedian Will Ferrell, in town shooting a movie, handled the intros for both teams before the game.

Rose, who left Monday's win over New Jersey with lower back spasms, played only 22 minutes and sat the entire fourth quarter. He had six points, six assists and five rebounds.

"He says he feels pretty good," Bulls coach Tom Thibodeau said of the reigning MVP.

Chris Kaman had 17 points and nine rebounds off the bench to lead the Hornets and Belinelli scored 13. New Orleans fell to 4-22.

The Bulls moved to 22-6 on the season and 5-2 on a nine-game road trip that ends with visits to Charlotte and Boston. They won their fourth straight game and third in a row by 20-plus points.

The best team in the Eastern Conference had no trouble with the worst team in the Western Conference, leading by as many as 28 points in the wire-to-wire win.

"The way the ball's moving, it's not sticking anywhere," said Thibodeau. "We're getting good shots."

The Bulls shot 52.4 percent and led 23-14 after the first quarter. In the second, they went up 15 on Taj Gibson's fastbreak dunk and took a 42-27 lead on Kyle Korver's three-pointer from the left side in transition.

It was 44-31 at halftime and 70-46 going into the fourth quarter. The Bulls went ahead by a game-high 28 points on John Lucas' three-pointer in the final minutes.

Game Notes

The Bulls have won seven in a row over New Orleans and 10 of the last 12 meetings...Among Ferrell's introductions was this one: "At guard, No. 1, his favorite movie is 'The Notebook' ... Derrick Rose!"

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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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