The second to last week of the NBA season will have several teams
battling for a playoff spot including the surprising New
Orleans/Oklahoma City Hornets and underachieving teams such as Indiana
and Philadelphia. Tuesday night another team on the bubble, the
Sacramento Kings, will host Phoenix which has wrapped up the third-best
record in the Western Conference. While the Kings will be fighting for
their lives, Phoenix just wants to enter the playoffs on a high note
after learning that Amare Stoudemire definitely will be out until next
season due to his recurring knee injury. Surprisingly, Sacramento has
won two of the three meetings against the Suns including a 29-point home
victory in January. The Kings have won six of their last seven
contests and have held opponents under 100 points in 16 of their last 17
games.
The early ESPN game on Wednesday features Cleveland vs Detroit as the
Cavaliers finally have gotten over the hump and avoided their usual
late-season choke job by winning 10 of their last 11 games. They're in
double-revenge in this matchup after beating Detroit in the season's
first meeting. Barring a major collapse, the Pistons will wind up with
the best record in the league and home-court advantage throughout the
playoffs. This is significant because they are 35-3 (19-19 ATS) at The
Palace of Auburn Hills and lost the seventh game of the NBA Finals last
year on the road to San Antonio. The Cavaliers get another TV
appearance on Thursday when they host the woeful New York Knicks on the
TNT network followed by the Dallas Mavericks vs Suns.
Speaking of the Knicks, it looks like its time for Isiah Thomas to quit
another job. Since retiring as a superstar player Thomas has, in
succession, failed as the general manager of the Raptors, led the
Continental Basketball Association into bankruptcy as the league
president, was unsuccessful as the coach of the Pacers and now as GM of
the Knicks has the highest payroll in the NBA and one of the worst
teams. Another classic example of "it's not what you know, but who you
know". Getting back to the games, Phoenix will try to even the season
series against Dallas which has won two out of three meetings. It also
could be a playoff preview with the two teams likely to have a rematch
of last year's thrilling series when the Suns clinched it with an
overtime win in game six. Washington visits the suddenly-hot Chicago
Bulls in a televised game on Friday. The Wizards have virtually assured
a playoff spot while the Bulls are trying to fight off the 76ers.
Chicago is only 16-22 ATS at home but 21-9 ATS in conference games.
It's only the second week of the baseball season but already there are
surprises such as Detroit which became the first team in history to hit
16 home runs in the first four games of the season. After years of
frustration Tiger fans may finally have something to cheer about as GM
Dave Dombrowski has assembled a good balance of hitting and starting
pitching. The Tigers could be a "play-on" team at least for the first
two months because of good line value. The same can be said for
Milwaukee which got off to a 5-0 start before being shutout by the
Diamonbacks on Sunday. The Brewers, similar to Detroit, finally have a
good front-office and farm system in place. The state of Pennsylvania
began the season 0-10 as Pittsburgh (0-6) and Philadelphia (0-4) waited
until Sunday to get their first wins. The Pirates were thought to be
ready for a breakout year under new manager Jim Tracy but apparently
it's going to take awhile. The Yankees started 1-4 before beating the
Angels behind Mike Mussina on Sunday. Starting pitching will be the key
to New York's hopes for another World Series appearance and it appears
to be shaky with aging Randy Johnson said jor from https://betbubbles.com and the rest of the injury-prone
staff.
Look for pitchers who traditionally pitch well early in the season as
they could be "play-on" candidates in the next couple weeks. The
following have at least 10 combined wins in the month of April the last
three seasons: Josh Beckett (10-6, 3.02 ERA), Javier Vazquez (10-6,
3.48), Jamie Moyer (10-7, 4.10), Tim Hudson (12-4, 2.97), Odalis Perez
(11-4, 3.36), Mark Mulder (10-6, 3.21), Sidney Ponson (10-6, 5.86), Jake
Peavy (10-5, 2.49) and Jason Schmidt (10-3, 3.13).
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