Kevin Garnett is being held out of action until the playoffs. The official story is that there is no point in playing him in two totally meaningless games, but I’m not buying it. Wouldn’t you want to have a chance to test your knee and your fitness before the games got intense? Wouldn’t you want to ease back into action gradually? I sense that there is more to this story than we are hearing, and that makes me a bit uneasy.
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The Masters gets underway in just a few hours. I like watching the tournament, but it’s been a long time since I have been that interested in betting on a major straight up. There is no point at all in betting on Tiger at the ridiculous prices he faces, but I can’t get too excited about looking for other guys to back instead when Tiger is as good as he is. I’m going to work through the apathy today, though, and look for other guys who are interesting at their price, even though I think Tiger will make a statement. I know how dull it is to think Tiger will win, but I look at it this way – should I look for other guys to come out on top when I really don’t believe it will happen? If I really wanted to put you to sleep I could double up and add Mickelson, too.
It’s a shame that no one (full disclosure – myself included) cares about women’s basketball, because what UConn finished off last night was truly impressive. They thumped Louisville in the championship game to cut down the nets. More impressively, they weren’t beaten all year. I know that women’s basketball is more top heavy than men’s is, but it still seems incredible to me that a team can go all the way without faltering. Never mind that UConn is always about that good. This accomplishment is almost enough to make me want to start watching women’s basketball. Not quite, but almost.
As the 2009 MLB season opens, you can’t help but give the futures market one more look. This 162-game, 30-team, seven-month drama is just about impossible to predict. That would explain the fact that although the Yanks have been the favorites to win it all every year in this century, they have finished out of the running each time. Here’s how it looks as far as futures wagering goes.
A State Senator in New Jersey has sued the U.S. Justice Department seeking to legalize sports betting in the United States. Sports betting is only legal in four states, and just two states legally sanction it. This, to me, is a brilliant move, though one that is about 20 years too late.
Tiger is back. I was very curious to watch him play today. The public is obviously going to be heavily betting on him in his return in the Match Play, so I wanted to get a first hand sense of whether there would be any value in betting against him. In a word – no. It seems ridiculous to think that a guy could take eight months off, have major surgery on a pretty important golf joint, and have a new son a couple of weeks ago, and still be ready to perform at a high level. But then it seems even more ridiculous to think that a guy can be as Continue reading “The King Returns”
So much for my theory that Matt Kenseth’s Daytona 500 win was a fluke. After not winning a race all of last year, and mostly looking pretty useless, Kenseth has two wins in two races this year. Last week he won thanks to some bizarre circumstances, but this week he was just plain faster than anyone else. He’s driving with a new aggressiveness, and is benefiting significantly from a new crew that brings a much more positive attitude to his operation. Kenseth was particularly strong in the pits. It will be very interesting to watch how long he can maintain this momentum. Kyle Busch also had a very good weekend. A historic one, in fact. On Saturday he became the first driver ever to win two NASCAR events on the same day when he won both the truck and the Nationwide event on the same day.
So, I’ve been thinking with all of the garbage you hear about guys in professional sports who are baby-cries, idiots and cheaters, there definitely are some players that you can’t help but root for. No, I am not nominating these guys for sainthood, but I am saying that they have character, a strong work ethic and come to play everyday.
This year has certainly brought its share of surprises. I don’t know if they did the same to you, but here are ten things that caught me off-guard.
Chicago Blackhawks and Boston Bruins: Okay, am I dreaming or what? Neither of these teams could do anything right over the last decade or so and now the Blackhawks are in the playoff hunt and the Bruins are at the top of their division! Got to love long time AHL goalie Tim Thomas who made it to the bigs just a few seasons ago with the Bruins. He’s one guy who has gotten better with age.
I did something this weekend that recommend to every sports bettor from time to time – I completely unplugged from the sports world for a couple of days. I picked my wife up after she was done work on Friday and we headed to the mountains of Banff. We ate well, tried to stay warm in the incredible cold, caught a concert (Ian Tyson – a true Canadian legend), saw a movie (Benjamin Button – I loved it), and generally wandered around doing not very much. What I didn’t do was watch any sports, think about any sports, or do anything even remotely related to sports. No TV, no computers, no radio, nothing. It was brilliant.
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