Olympic Bet of the Day – If you put a bunch of monkeys in a room of typewriters you’ll get a book eventually, and if you let an idiot pick parlays long enough he’ll eventually hit a winner. With Yu-Na Kim’s dominating win of the figure skating I clinched my first parlay win of the games. That’s a profit of $562 on the day, and that decreases the loss on the games to just $80 with three days left to get positive. In an attempt to eradicate that deficit I’ll try to get lucky with a parlay again. I’ll go with: Canada (-385) over Slovakia in hockey, Norway (+160) to win the men’s biathlon relay, Canada (-191) to win the women’s curling gold medal, and U.S. (-105) to beat Finland in hockey. That will pay $874.
The Other Stuff
Karma, as it turns out, is a bitch. On the very day that Zydrunas Ilgauskas was bought out by the Wizards – presumably to return to Cleveland in 30 days – Shaq suffered what is being called a significant thumb injury. If the injury does indeed turn out to be significant then for the next 30 days the Cavs would be stuck playing someone – likely Anderson Varejao – out of position. That’s not a good situation for a team that already doesn’t seem to be firing on all cylinders lately. Combine that with the fact that Antawn Jamison had another dud of a game last night against the Celtics and you likely have some serious blood pressure elevation in the Cleveland front office. I understand why Cleveland did what they did to get Jamison – it was essentially a way to get him for free – but it was a big risk just because it meant you had to rely on a rapidly aging Shaq almost exclusively. What they did sticks to the letter of the law – for now, anyway – but it sure doesn’t past the smell test, and it could hurt them now.
Memphis is on the verge of having made an all-time draft bust. When they picked second overall last year they could have had Tyreke Evans – a guy who went to school in Memphis and who is already blooming into a major star. Instead, they chose Hasheem Thabeet. Thabeet was a mess in college – he is huge with massively long arms, and he could block shots and make plays against mismatched players, but he had no polished skills. All he had was that curse of death – potential. This becomes relevant today because Thabeet has been unable to crack the role of backup center in Memphis, and as of today he has the distinction of being the highest drafted player ever to be sent to the D-League. This doesn’t mean that he’s a bust or anything, of course, but it certainly isn’t a good sign. There aren’t a lot of blue chip guys down there just biding their time until they get their chances. Given that the Grizzlies already have Marc Gasol. though, the gamble on Thabeet is going to get harder and harder to justify.
