Bulls continue lengthy road trip vs. Nets

Basketball Betting Lines

02/06/2012 - (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - The Chicago Bulls are in the midst of a nine-game road trip and will continue the lengthy trek tonight against the New Jersey Nets.

Chicago improved to 3-2 thus far on the road swing following Saturday's 113-90 victory at Milwaukee behind Derrick Rose's 26 points and 13 assists. Rose scored 16 of his team's first 18 points and is averaging 29.8 points over his last six contests. He has also scored 30 or more points four times in that span for the Central Division-leading Bulls, who improved to 11-5 as the guest and won for the 13th time in its last 17 tries. Chicago leads the NBA in road wins with 11 and sports the East's best overall record at 20-6.

"I was just taking what they were giving me," Rose said of the quick start. "They were giving me my shot, I was taking it and thank god tonight they were going in."

Luol Deng returned from a seven-game absence due to a wrist injury to post 21 points and nine rebounds. Kyle Korver and Joakim Noah finished with 18 and 14 points, respectively, in the win. The Bulls shot 53.3 percent for the game and are 10-0 this season when reaching the century mark in scoring. Fourteen of Chicago's 20 wins this season have been by 10-plus points.

The Bulls' nine-game road trip is the longest since the 1992-93 season, when they went 6-3 on a nine-game trek. In 1974-75, Chicago played a team-record 11 straight games away from home (7-4). It will also make stops in New Orleans, Charlotte and Boston.

Chicago's 20-6 start to the season is the fourth-best in franchise history after 26 games. Chicago opened 23-2 in 1995-96, 22-3 in 1996-97 and 21-4 in 1991-92.

New Jersey lost at New York on Saturday, dropping a 99-92 decision even though Deron Williams did all he could with 21 points and 11 assists. Kris Humphries added 20 points and 12 rebounds and Jordan Farmar scored 19 off the bench for the Nets, losers in two straight and four of five games. New Jersey had a 12- point lead late in the first quarter before collapsing.

Nets coach Avery Johnson put a boxing spin on the outcome afterwards.

"They swung last," he said of the Knicks, "and kind of knocked us out."

Johnson has used 12 different starting lineups in the first 25 games this season. The Nets are tied with Toronto for last in the Atlantic Division and will play two in a row and four of the next five games at home. They own a 3-7 record in Newark, NJ this season and are just 6-12 versus the East.

Williams is averaging 26.5 points, 5.1 rebounds and 10.3 assists in New Jersey's eight wins this season, while Humphries posted his 10th double-double of the season. He is averaging a double-double with 13.5 points and 10.5 rebounds per game.

New Jersey lost the first meeting with Chicago by a 110-95 score on Jan. 23 at the United Center. Rose had missed the previous four games with a toe sprain and recorded 22 points and eight assists. Rose, who is probable for Monday with a sore back, is averaging 18.7 points and 6.3 assists in 12 career games against the Nets.

The Bulls have won three in a row over the Nets, but are just 2-16 in their past 18 trips to the Garden State.

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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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