Posts Tagged ‘Jason Kidd’
Another week of the NBA betting season has come and gone, and Bang the Book takes a look at Who’s Hot & Who’s Not, brought to you by Sportsbook.com! ATS Power Poll 1: Milwaukee Bucks (38-21 ATS): The Bucks are arguably the hottest team in the NBA right now. Even though their six-game winning streak SU was stopped by the Hawks in overtime in Atlanta on Sunday, their successful ATS run moved to seven games with ease. Not only is Milwaukee back in the playoff picture, but it also shot up to the top spot in the NBA betting power poll as well after being off the radar for the majority of the season. 2: Utah Jazz (36-20-3 ATS): Utah may have leveled off quite a bit in recent weeks, alternating ATS wins and losses in its L/5, but it did post one of the more impressive wins of the week by crushing Houston 133-110 at home on Saturday. It’s not often that you see a team shoot 68% from the floor for an entire game. There’s more from this team coming later… 3: Oklahoma City Thunder (35-23 ATS): A four-game ATS slide finally stopped on Friday with a big win over Minnesota. A 119-99 victory over the Raptors two nights later pushed the streak to two games. F Kevin Durant’s streak of 25+ point performances might’ve stopped against San Antonio, but his Thunder are still a force to be reckoned with in the Western Conference. ATS Power Outage 1: Boston Celtics (21-35-1 ATS): Congrats, Boston. You successfully unseated the Nets for the worst ATS record in the NBA. Four straight losses ATS dropped the team to just 6-20-1 ATS in 27 games played at Boston Garden this season. The only good bits of news for this team are that the rest of the Atlantic Division is still playing terrible basketball as well, and F Paul Pierce is set to return to the lineup. 2: New Jersey Nets (22-36-1 ATS): The Nets showed a bit of a pulse on Saturday night when they beat the Celtics at Boston Garden. However, Jersey is still just a dismal 6-53 and is still on a reasonable clip to beat or match the 1972 Philadelphia 76ers NBA record for nine wins in a season. 3: Dallas Mavericks (25-34-1 ATS): If the Mavs keep playing like this, they’ll be off of this list in one more week’s time. This is a squad that looks dominant right now, winning seven straight and going 4-2-1 ATS in those seven. Dallas’ new look is going to make it a real contender in the Western Conference this year. The Good The Bad The Ugly
G Jason Kidd, Dallas Mavericks: Not bad when you can log a triple-double and make one of the headiest plays of the entire season on the same night. Kidd did just that by recording 19 points, 17 assists, and 16 boards against the Hawks, but perhaps his most important play came when he intentionally bumped into Atlanta HC Mike Goodson when he was on the court directing his defense. That’s interfering with the course of play, which warrants a technical foul. The Mavs tied the game and forced overtime, which they went on to win by eight points.
The Defense of the Houston Rockets: How many more weeks will the Rockets show up on the wrong side of this list before HC Rick Adelman finds himself in some serious hot water? Houston allowed the Jazz to score 133 points and shoot 68% from the floor in that romp previously mentioned. What made matters worse? Utah would’ve scored a heck of a lot more points if it had shot better than 57.7% from the free throw line…
Boston Celtics: The Nets? Really, Boston? How on earth you can find a way to lose to arguably the worst team in NBA history in front of your hometown faithful is mind-boggling. G Ray Allen shot just 3/11 from the field, but even though the C’s shot 50% from the field and outrebounded the Nets by six, a whopping 18 turnovers proved to be their undoing.
Tags: basketball betting, Boston Celtics, Dallas Mavericks, Houston Rockets, Jason Kidd, Milwaukee Bucks, nba betting, New Jersey Nets, Oklahoma City Thunder, Utah Jazz
This week gave me plenty to rant about with all of the free agent moves in the NBA and the Dallas Cowboys looking like fools. Enter Mark Cuban and the Dallas Mavericks. Mark Cuban has been the most aggressive owner in the league. He made sure Jason Kidd did not leave for the big apple, and then added Shawn Marion to become a force in the west. There are other moves that he has made to solidify the depth of this club by grabbing Marcin Gortat from the Orlanod Magic. The Mavericks get my top grade so far in the NBA free agent market! It was reported yesterday by ex-linebacker for the Dallas Cowboys Greg Ellis that his former teammate DeMarcus Ware hid on the sidelines so he could play. While this is a noble gesture by Ware it may show something more about the Cowboys from a coaching standpoint. To have a player, even of the caliber of Ware miss a play is no big deal and that happens all the time. To even hear that coaches did not know where he was is not surprising because the sidelines get crowded and it can be easy to get lost or to “hide”. What does this say about the Cowboys coaching staff? The players must have zero respect for the coaching staff to do something like this. It shows that they don’t care what the coaches think and they don’t value their decision making so they take matters into their own hands. This kind of selfishness and disregard for the coaches is contagious and will spread. When this story gets around and gets some publicity it will be another black eye on Dallas and will make a rift if any between the coaching staff and the players bigger, which there obviously is one. The bottom line is that there needs to be a coaching change in Dallas and it needs to happen now.
This week there has been plenty of noise made in the free agent market. The race to get the best players on the market has turned into a knock down drag out between ownership. About a week ago I mentioned that so far to me the Pistons had made the best moves in the market, well know that has changed.
This is the first of what promises to be many rants about the Dallas Cowboys. They mess up so much and the team is in so much turmoil it is easy to pick on them and yesterday I just got another reason.
Tags: Dallas Cowboys, Dallas Mavericks, Greg Ellis DeMarcus Ware, Jason Kidd, Mark Cuban, Shawn Marion
