Jennings, Bucks visit lowly Pistons
Basketball Betting Lines
02/03/2012 - (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Fear the deer.
Opposing teams are beginning to build some trepidation for Milwaukee Bucks point guard Brandon Jennings too. Jennings and the resurgent Bucks will hit the road tonight to take on the lowly Detroit Pistons and look to win four straight games for the first time since the 2009-10 campaign.
Milwaukee has disposed of some of the NBA's hottest teams lately and became the only club to beat star-studded Miami twice this season with a 105-97 victory on Wednesday behind 31 points and eight assists from Jennings, who buried 7-of-14 three-pointers and helped the Bucks erase an 18-point deficit in the first half. The Bucks also survived a 40-point performance from Heat star LeBron James, but it was Jennings who stole the show.
"Brandon was great," Bucks head coach Scott Skiles said of his point guard. "When we needed big shots he was able to knock them down."
Drew Gooden scored 12 of his 17 points in the fourth quarter and Ersan Ilyasova added nine points and 14 rebounds. Carlos Delfino and Mike Dunleavy scored 11 and 10 points, respectively, in Milwaukee's season-high third straight win and sixth in the past eight tries. The Bucks, who will play three of five games as the guest, will try to work on their 3-9 record away from home this evening at The Palace of Auburn Hills.
Jennings has tallied 20-plus points in eight of the last nine games, averaging 24.3 ppg over that span. Ilyasova is averaging 9.3 points and 10.1 rebounds over his last six contests. The Bucks have scored 100 or more points in each of the last five games, the longest streak since the 2007-08 season.
Detroit is mired in a season-high seven-game slide and hasn't lost eight in a row since an 11-game slump from March 13-April 3, 2010. It is coming off an 0-4 road trip which ended with Wednesday's 99-96 loss at New Jersey.
Greg Monroe and Tayshaun Prince both scored 21 points, while Brandon Knight ended with 15 and missed a three-pointer with 1.8 seconds to go.
"It felt good, but it didn't go in," Knight said. "I would have liked to have been a little more open."
Prince is averaging 16.0 points in his last 10 games and Monroe is posting 18.0 points and 10.2 rebounds in his previous six. Monroe has recorded a double-double in five of his last six games. Knight is averaging 13.1 points, 4.1 rebounds and 3.4 assists in 18 games as a starter.
The Pistons are just 4-20 under first-year head coach Lawrence Frank, who piloted the Nets from 2004 until early on in the 2009-10 season. Frank's bunch will play 12 of its next 17 games on its home floor and is 3-8 at The Palace.
Detroit has lost the first two meetings of the season with Milwaukee and three of the last four overall matchups in this series. The Bucks have lost two straight, three of four and 13 of their past 16 trips to Auburn Hills. Jennings is averaging 24.0 ppg in the two meetings with Detroit this season, while Monroe has averaged 24 points and 13 rebounds.
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Sportsbook Betting Lines
Who Makes the Sportsbook Betting Lines?
Las Vegas Sports Consultants (LVSC) is the world’s premier oddsmaking company and the most respected authority on making the lines. Mike Seba is a Senior Oddsmaker at LVSC and has been making lines for the last six years. In our extended interview, Seba explained that there are 4-5 oddsmakers assigned to make lines for each of the major sports (pro & college football and basketball; MLB, NHL, boxing, golf). Each of these oddsmakers bring unique opinions, strengths and weaknesses to the process. Oddsmakers at LVSC are professional sports junkies who love what they do and would probably do it for nothing if you asked them, but they do get paid for it. By necessity their approach is very research-oriented and concise, since with millions of dollars at risk there is little margin for error.
“You either have a passion for it or you don’t,” Seba said.
“The #1 thing for us is to make a line for each game that creates good two-way action. We do this by drawing from past experiences and applying them to current situations. People think it’s much more complicated, but it’s not. “What are the Football Betting Lines Trying to Accomplish?
There is a common misconception that point spreads represent the oddsmakers’ prediction of how many points the favorite will win by. That is not the case at all – their intent is NOT to evenly split the ATS result between the teams; rather, their goal is to attract equal betting action on both sides. Stated another way, they want to create a line that half the people find appealing to bet one way while the other half find it appealing to bet the other way (known as ‘dividing the action’).Divided action means the sportsbook is guaranteed a profit on the game because of the fee charged to the bettor (called juice or vig – typically $11 bet to win $10).
How the Opening Line Is Made
The opening line is the first line created by the oddsmakers, which is then sent out to sportsbooks. Of course there is an entire method to the madness on how the opening line is created. Seba explained that it all starts with each oddsmaker creating a line on each game based upon their own personal approach. This usually includes having up-to-date power ratings on each team.Power ratings are the oddsmaker’s value of each team and are used as a guide to calculate a "preliminary" pointspread on an upcoming game. The power ratings are adjusted after each game a team plays. Examples of non-game factors that would require an adjustment to a team's power rating are key player injuries and player trades.
Once a game’s power rating based pointspread is determined, the oddsmaker will make adjustments to that line after considering each team's most recent games played and previous games played against that opponent. Also, adjustments are made after reading each team’s local newspapers to get a sense of what the coaches & players are thinking going into the game.Since the oddsmaker’s ultimate goal is equally dividing the sports betting action, public perception and sportsbook betting patterns must be taken into account. For example, the public might have heavy betting interest week after week on a popular college football betting team such as USC. If an oddsmaker comes up with a preliminary line of USC -7, then an adjustment up to -7.5 or -8 would be made in response to the public’s expected USC bias.
The last step in the line-making process for each oddsmaker is taking one final look to determine whether or not the line "feels right." This is where common sense and past experience with how games are bet enters into the picture.A round-table discussion among the 4-5 oddsmakers involved in making the line for each sport is then conducted and a consensus line is decided upon by the Odds Director before it is released to the sportsbooks. Of the 4-5 oddsmakers, generally the 2 most respected opinions are weighed more heavily by the Odds Director before he decides on the final line.
Why Sports Betting Lines Change
Once the opening line is released by LVSC, the individual sportsbooks decide if they want to make any adjustments before offering it to the public. Reasons for such adjustments include:Experts working for the individual books having a strong opinion on the game
Individual books having players who consistently bet with certain tendencies (such as an extreme bias toward favorites or toward a certain popular team like USC)The purpose of these adjustments, like all line adjustments, is to more equally divide the betting action.
Once betting begins, sportsbooks can adjust the line at any time. In doing so they attempt to make more attractive the team that is getting less action. By moving the line, sportsbooks can influence how the public bets on a particular game.For example, if the pointspread on a game is 7 and most of the money is coming in on the underdog (taking the +7), sportsbooks will then move the number down to 6 ½ to try and attract money on the favorite.
Moving the line is the oddsmaker's effort to balance betting action, and often times such moves can have a major impact on a bettor’s decision. Oddsmakers can also change the line depending on various event-related factors such as player injuries or weather. Obviously, if the line comes out a week ahead of the event (which is the case in football), there is much that could happen during the week leading up to the event that could affect the line. Oddsmakers have to determine if any changes are necessary and send out an "adjusted line."“The main objective is that our clients get equal action on both sides,” Seba said. “We’re not trying to pick the team that covers the spread, we’re trying to make it a coin flip, a tough decision (for the bettor). If we’ve done that, we’ve done our job.”
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