Maddux Sports Blog

I’ve touched on it before, but I am endlessly fascinated by the home court advantage we are seeing in the NBA playoffs so far this year. San Antonio and Boston both won last night. That means that the home squad is a perfect 10-for-10 in the second round. It’s not quite as one-sided overall, but it is still impressive - home teams were 30-14 in the first round, meaning they are 40-14 overall. More significantly to sports bettors, Cleveland in their first game against Boston is the only road team in the first round to cover a spread.

Two of the series have already switched venues for their third game. Orlando won game three over Detroit by 25 points after losing the first two by a combined margin of 26 points. New Orleans beat San Antonio by 19 and 18 at home, and then fell short by 11 in San Antonio.So far in those series you only have to look at the logo on the court to figure out which team is going to be the better one.

You can take this trend beyond interesting and into the realm of highly profitable by tweaking it just a bit. It makes sense that the higher seeded team should have a fairly significant advantage at home in the first two rounds of the playoffs because, at least theoretically, there should be a fairly significant talent gap between the higher seeds and the lower ones when there are still four or eight teams left in a division. It’s no surprise that that is true this year, but the extent to which it is true is shocking. In the first round the higher seeded teams were 16-7 ATS, and they have improved to 7-1 ATS in the second round. That’s a combined 23-8 ATS so far. It’s not too hard make money when you are covering 74 percent of your games.

Before we get too excited about those numbers, though, we should take a look back to last year to see just how much a fluke this year is. That’s where it gets ugly. The higher seeded teams were just 8-12 ATS in the first round last year. In other words, the money was from the visitors last season. Whoever said sports betting was easy or logical? All you can really dois sit back and enjoy the craziness this year while it lasts, because it isn’t going to last forever. Unfortunately.

The Dallas Mavericks are out of the playoffs, and apparently it is all Avery Johnson’s fault. Mark Cuban is the kind of guy who needs someone to blame, and his head coach got to be the one. Johnson was fired this week just a day after the Mavs were bounced from the playoffs in the first round for the second straight year. Losing to Golden State last year was pretty bad, but there is no shame losing to New Orleans - they likely won’t be the last team to do that this year. Did Johnson deserve to get fired? Of course not. Just take a look at what he accomplished.

• He took over the team with 18 games left in the 2004-2005 season. He went 16-2.
• In his first full season he won 60 games and led his team to the Finals for the first time in franchise history. He was coach of the year.
• The next season he won 67 games.
• This year he won 51 games despite a number of injuries and an ill-conceived trade which backfired.
• He was the fastest coach ever to reach 100 wins and 150 wins.

Cuban got rid of Johnson, but there is one fact that becomes glaringly obvious when you look at it closely - he won’t be able to hire a better coach. At best he will make a lateral move. Sure, Johnson underperformed in the playoffs the last couple of years, but was that his fault, or was it due to the talent he had and the near-total lack of a killer instinct possessed by the key players? I would argue that Johnson deserves extra credit, and probably a medal, for getting as much as he did out of the team.

From a betting perspective there are two things I feel pretty confident about - there will be value on whatever team is smart enough to hire Johnson, and none in the Mavs next year unless the changes don’t stop here, or unless John Wooden, or at least Phil Jackson, takes over.

Larry Brown has a new coaching gig. Again. The Charlotte Hornets become the ninth team he has helmed, following Denver, New Jersey, San Antonio, Indiana, the Clippers, Philadelphia, Detroit and New York. The prevailing attitude seems to be that he will be a miracle worker in Charlotte. Jim Rome went as far today as to virtually guarantee that the team would make the playoffs next year under his leadership. That’s quite a claim for a team that only won 32 games last year. But what has history taught us about what we can expect from Brown when he joins a new team?

The first place where Brown really established his legend was in San Antonio. He led that team to what was then the single biggest turnaround in league history - 21 wins in 1989 to 56 in 1990. That was impressive, but it is an incomplete story. Brown was also the coach when the team won the 21 games. He took over a team that had won 31 the year before and made little obvious improvement. It was only when the team added Sean Elliott from the draft. David Robinson fresh off his military duty, and Terry Cummings by trade that they were able to turn things around. Brown was in charge, but it hardly took a heroic effort to show improvement with that new talent.Of more note, the team’s number of wins decreased in each of the next two seasons and the team was knocked out of the playoffs in the first round both years.

His previous job at New Jersey could make Charlotte fans more optimistic - he jumped from 24 wins to 44 in year one. He didn’t win a playoff series in two years their either, though. With the Clippers he took over a team that was 22-25 and went 23-12 the rest of the year. The next year the team was 41-41, and Brown left for Indiana. With the Pacers he improved by six wins in his first year and by five more in year two. The team matched the 52 win total in year three but then slumped all the way to 39 wins before Brown resigned.

Brown’s first year in Philly had its struggles. Iverson was only in his second year. The team improved from 22 to 31 wins, but they still weren’t exactly good. A rapid improvement started after that, though, and they were in the NBA finals three years later.

Brown next went to Detroit, but we don’t learn much from that. He won the championship in his first season, but he was handed a complete team that had won 50 games in each of the two previous seasons. We also can’t really learn much from his year in New York because it was such a circus.

So what’s the conclusion? Brown is a very good coach, but he needs two things to succeed - talent and time. Not a lot of time - certainly less than a lot of coaches would need in the same situation - but some at least. There is some decent talent in Charlotte with Jason Richardson and Gerald Wallace, and guys with untapped potential like Raymond Felton and Emeka Okafor. Adam Morrison will be back from a knee injury next year, and they will likely have a new lottery pick in the fold by next season. Brown will have something to work with, but he can’t work miracles, and it will take time for him to get his systems in place and to tweak the talent so that it fits his needs. In other words, I’m sure he will turn the team around (if he sticks around more than a year), but it won’t likely be next year. That could provide an opportunity for bettors - the public is likely to overcompensate for the Bobcats now that Brown is at the helm. This is especially likely early in the year. It doesn’t help his case that he has Michael Jordan behind him - he’s hardly been proven to be the most astute manager of talent.

The NBA playoffs get going this weekend. The first round series range from the totally uninteresting - Boston and Atlanta - to the wildly unpredictable - New Orleans and Dallas or Phoenix and San Antonio. When it comes to early playoff action my interest in always in finding the potential upsets. I generally assume that the first round will go to seed form unless I can come up with a good reason for an upset. Here’s how I see the matchups breaking down in terms of the likelihood of an upset.

Virtually no chance of an upset

Boston and Detroit won’t be upset, and I won’t bother spending much time talking about it.

Chances are low but they exist

The Lakers are rolling, and the Nuggets did a nice job of jumping into playoff contention but weren’t exactly dominant. On top of it all, they have the distraction of Melo’s arrest to deal with. L.A. should be fine.

Yao Ming is out, and Rafer Alston will miss the first two games of the series. Houston put together a nice run, but the reality of losing Ming has come home to roost. Utah is deeper and healthier, and they should be able to milk their strong home court advantage for a win.

An upset wouldn’t be much of a surprise

Orlando is better than Toronto, but the Raptors shoot free throws well and they don’t turn over the ball, so it is not out of the realm of possibility that Canada will be represented in the second round.

Phoenix and San Antonio should not be a first round matchup. These teams are both so good that they deserve better. Unfortunately, the same cane be said for most of the West (and almost none of the East). San Antonio probably has more talent, but not by much, and they were lousy down the stretch. This one is as close to a coin flip as there is.

New Orleans has been a great story this year, but they are inexperienced in the playoffs, and they have some matchup problems with the Mavs. The teams split the season series, and neither team looks to have a big edge in the series. Dallas should be looking to erase the memories of their playoff embarrassment last year.

An upset seems likely

Cleveland hasn’t been very strong since making the trade that changed the face of their team, and LeBron James doesn’t seem to be at the top of his health. Washington is playing well, and Gilbert Arenas is back from injury and is probably the best sixth man in the league. If there was just one upset in the first round I would expect this to be it.

I want to take a minute away from the tournament for a second because it is on hiatus and focus instead on the pros. One thing I am fascinated by more than almost anything in the NBA is the impact of serious injuries on a team from a betting perspective. Given that, what is going on with Dallas right now is as good as it gets. Dirk Nowitzki went down to the ground with a crash against San Antonio, and it was immediately obvious that he was in trouble. It appears that he has sprains to his knee and ankle. Initial reports were that he was out for two weeks, but the team has shied away from setting a timeline and it could reasonably be much longer. It never seems like a big guy comes back from a leg injury faster than expected.

The Mavs have lost their best player while they are in the heart of a playoff race. It seems ridiculous to think that a team that is on pace to win 50 games would be in danger of missing the playoffs, but the West is truly ridiculous and that is indeed the case. They are currently in seventh place, but Golden State is right on their tales and can score a ton and ninth place Denver is right behind and has found their stride recently. Dallas, on the other hand, is neither playing particularly well nor consistently lately - they have won just five of their last 11, ad the losses have come in two three game streaks. The addition of Jason Kidd hasn’t been a disaster, but it hasn’t lifted the team particularly, either, and now they have to make due without the big man.

The statistical numbers are bleak for Dallas. Nowitzki leads the teams in scoring, rebounds and assists, he is tied with Josh Howard for most minutes per game, and he’s a strong second in blocks and right up their in shooting percentages. To state the obvious, he is the heart and soul of the team. They already aren’t a high scoring team - at 100 points per game they lag behind six of the eight teams they are racing for the playoffs with. More significantly, it seems more reasonable that Josh Howard will take a step back instead of a step forward without Nowitzki, and it is hard to see who is going to step up and fill the scoring void. Points could be hard to come by. Unfortunately we can’t look back to see how the team typically performs without the German giant because he has never missed a significant block of games.

It’s not just the offensive side of the ball that will struggle without Nowitzki. Dallas makes up for the lack of explosive offense by playing disciplined defense - seventh in the NBA. Unfortunately, Nowitzki is at the heart of that, too. The team will sorely miss his blocks and rebounds, and he is one of the relatively few big men who is committed to defensive play. Scoring fewer points and allowing more points does not seem like a formula for sucsess.

All in all, the outlook is pretty bleak. Teams can often rise up in the face of adversity - just look at Houston without Yao Ming. Unlike Houston, though, this isn’t a team that has been playing with an overwhelming amount of heart or passion, and they don’t have a lot of thrilling talent to step up and take the lead. Houston had Tracy McGrady, and while Josh Howard is a very nice player he doesn’t have the leadership or the credibility to step up and lead. That leaves the burden on a bunch of guys who were much better once than they are now. The schedule doesn’t do them any favors, either - seven of their remaining 12 games are against West playoff contenders including three against the two teams that are chasing them. They also are only at home for five games, and they have struggled on the road all year.

In the end I don’t think that things are going to go well for the Mavericks. What I am very curious about, and what I will be watching closely is what that means to bettors. On one hand the team will likely struggle, but the public is also likely to run away from them in droves because of the injury. If the team performs reasonably well then that could create some real value, but then they are just 30-36-4 ATS on the season, so they haven’t exactly been value stars to begin with. It will be very interesting to see how it all plays out. Until I have a better sense I’ll probably stay away from them, but the Nuggets and the Warriors, both playing the Mavs at home, will be pretty tempting this week.

Sure they play two centers—Tim Duncan and Kurt Thomas. At least they did the other night. The starting rotation of two centers, two small forwards and a point guard says something about the Spurs. They’ve geared up for the playoffs and are ready to play tough and rough inside-the-paint basketball. That fact could be a major plus for the club as they head towards the second season.

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The Houston Rockets should be in the dumper. At least according to many who saw the season-ending injury to Yao Ming as being the death knell to the club’s playoff hopes. Well the NBA playoffs aren’t here yet, but the Rockets still look like a team destined to be not only in the post-season but competitive to boot. At least up to this point.

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It may be easy with the upsurge of the Celtics, the surprising play of the Hornets and the general strength of the NBA’s Western Conference to forget the Detroit Pistons. But do not forget these guys. At 42- 16, the Pistons have the second-best record in the entire NBA. They are second only to the Boston Celtics. So, what makes this team so good?

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Prior to the All-Star break, the New Orleans Hornets sat atop the NBA’s Southwest Division. Since that time they’ve dropped down to second and the refurbished Spurs and Mavericks are both on rolls.

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Here’s the skinny. There are two rookies in the NBA who look to be making a difference-Kevin Durant and Al Horford. Durant, the Seattle Sonics’ small forward, and Horford, the Atlanta center, have both made their marks and been difference makers in the NBA.

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Okay, so this trade has been in the offing forever—Jason Kidd to a Western Conference team for the second half of some season.

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The Hornets have certainly turned it around. Last season, the team won 39 and lost 43 finishing 28 games out of first-place and missing the playoffs. Now at the All Star Break, the Hornets are 36 and 15, sitting on top of the Southwest Conference and vying for top spot in the West.

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I guess you might say with Shaquille O’Neal going from Miami to the Phoenix, “If you can’t stand the Heat, then stay out of Miami.� Or, maybe you might ask, “Will Shaq’s career rise again with the Suns?�

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In the NBA, things can turn around quickly. Not only during a game but in terms of who’s on top, which team is surging and which a slacking off. Here’s what’s going on with some of the top teams in the NBA.

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Okay, one team just got stronger. The Celtics of Boston may be the most improved team in the NBA as yesterday they added veteran superstar Kevin Garnett to the club after signing Ray Allen earlier. Paul Pierce, a Celtic vet who has suffered through some tough seasons must be smiling.

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