Maddux Sports Blog

Olympic Bet of the Day – Lindsey Vonn ruined it all for me today. Things were looking good on both bets, but then her ski went on the wrong side of a slalom gate, she hit the ground hard, and my dreams of profits died. The worst part about it was that she was clearly on her way to winning the gold when she went down. Sport can be cruel. So instead of being profitable I’m now down $325 on the games. Things need to turn around. Today is a lousy day – there is very little of interest. The best  can find is taking Finland (-2.5  -120) over Germany. Not great, but it will have to do.

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Olympic Bet of the Day – We got back to the winning ways thanks to the dominance of Lindsey Vonn. She paid off at even money (less by post time), so she netted me $100. That means I’m down just $125 and climbing. Happy days are ahead. To try to keep up the winning spirit I’m going to go right back to the well. Lindsey Vonn skis again today – this time in the Super Combined. That event involves one run of the downhill and one run of slalom. Vonn is far from the best slalom skier out there, but she is competent, and I think that her downhill competence and current form gives her a good chance of opening up as much of a lead as she’ll need. She pays +240 to win, so she’s worth a shot.

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Olympic Bet of the Day – Because everything is a competition, I’m going to put a mythical $100 per day on these Olympic bets and keep score. Feel free to make your own bets in the comments along the way. Things started out well on this front when Simon Ammann took down the ski jumping in dominating fashion. Splitting the $100 evenly between my two picks I wound up making a profit of $75. For today’s pick we’re going to go with biathlon. Ole Einar Bjoerndalen is like the Tiger Woods of biathlon. He has a record 91 World Cup victories, and he won four golds at the last World Championships, including the 10 km sprint that is being contested today. He can be had at +210, and that seems like a solid price given all he has accomplished. I’ll put my money on him.

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Olympic Bet of the Day – The first medal presented is scheduled to be in ski jumping, so it’s only fitting that it’s also our first pick. Pinnacle is the only place I have seen odds for the event so far. They list two jumpers – Austrian Gregor Schlierenzauer at +243 and Simon Ammann of Switzerland at +250. You can take either of them, or take the field at -111. Amman has two firsts and two seconds in five starts this year, while Schlierenzauer has six wins in 2010 alone. My pick for today is to take both Ammann and Schlierenzauer. They’ll pay well over even money if one guy wins, and that sounds better than the field.

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Programming note – Each day of the Olympics I’ll be posting an Olympic bet of the day. There will be some hockey, of course, but we’ll also throw in everything from biathlon to bobsled. It should be good fun, and hopefully it’s not too terribly unprofitable. The first medals will be awarded tomorrow, so keep your eyes open.

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I thought it was the Pro Bowl that was cursed with a ridiculous number of injuries, but now it seems as if it is just all-star games in general this year. The Pro Bowl had more than 30 players who were chosen but didn’t show up, and most were due to real or fake injuries. Now the NBA All-Star game seems to have almost as many. Today, both Allen Iverson and Kobe Bryant informed the league that they would be unable to play (incidentally, the loss of Bryant caused the line to move half a point – the West is now favored by 1.5). They join an impressive list of players on the sidelines, including two other Western guards besides Bryant – Brandon Roy and Chris Paul. Monta Ellis was originally going to replace Bryant, but he’s out with a leg injury as well. On the Eastern side Derrick Rose is questionable.  It’s a curse, I tell you.

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I’m fairly confident that there is going to be a Big Ten team in the Final Four. There isn’t a lot of depth there this year, but they have three very good teams at the top. I’m not sure which one of the teams is going to be the finalists, but we got a pretty good hint of what could happen today when Purdue headed to Michigan State and emerged with a very convincing win. They won the game by 12 thanks to a monster performance from E’Twaun Moore. Kalin Lucas didn’t start for the Spartans, but he did play 29 minutes, so they can’t use that as an excuse. Purdue unquestionably staked a claim atop the conference with the win. They’ve faltered down the stretch the last couple of years as they have had key bodies wear down. They seem reasonably healthy this year, so they will be fun to watch. They have the advantage of playing the Final Four very close to home in Indianapolis if they make it, so that stands as an added incentive. It will also be a huge incentive that the team knows that if they don’t get there this year then they won’t for a while because next year will certainly be a rebuilding year.

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The Hornets can’t be happy with the loss of Chris Paul for at least a month thanks to a knee injury – it’s hard to be happy when you are losing perhaps the best point guard in the league. Still, the way that Darren Collison has played the last two games no one is really going to miss Paul at all. In his first game against New Orleans on Saturday the former UCLA guard erupted for 17 points and a gaudy 18 assists. Tonight he was almost as good against Phoenix, with 16 points and 14 rebounds – this time in just 36 minutes. These outbursts are the two career highs in assists for the rookie, and only his second and third time in double digits.

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News of note as we head into an uncharacteristically slow weekend of sporting action:

Minnesota Vikings’ fans are not going to be happy. The NFL has admitted today that the play in which Favre hurt his ankle in the third quarter was called incorrectly. Favre threw an interception on the play, though New Orleans didn’t score on the subsequent play. The league has now said that the play should have resulted in a penalty because Favre was hit from behind, and that the Vikings should have had a first down on the New Orleans 19. At the very least, then, they would have wound up with a field goal, and that would have made all the difference. Though I don’t disagree with what the league said, I really have to wonder why they bother saying anything now – unless they have interest in driving Minnesota fans insane.

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