Bet on Basketball

It seems the odds makers are convinced that either Chelsea, United, Liverpool or Arsenal will win the Carling Cup this season after a price of just 1/5 emerged for that eventuality after the draw for the next round.

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In fact the bookmakers are so sure that the successful club will come from that illustrious quartet that you can only get 10/11 that two of them contest the final at Wembley in March

If the trophy doesn’t find it’s way into the cabinet of one of those teams the bookies are also short on the chances of any other top flight club winning the league cup. It’s 10/3 for any other premiership side to win it while it’s 20/1 that one of the eight remaining Football League clubs surprise us all – which will be reduced to seven after Brighton and Derby play their third-round tie.

Chelsea, meantime, have been trimmed to 5/2 favourites to lift the cup after they were given a tie at home to Burnley in the next round and manager Luiz Felipe Scolari showed his intentions with the strength of his team against Portsmouth in the last round.

Manchester United are available at fours but any bet on them comes with the warning they don’t always take this competition seriously and often field an under strength side against ‘lesser’ opposition.

Arsenal are in the market at around 9/2 after their super kids thrashed Sheffield United while holders Spurs are out at 8/1 after being drawn against Liverpool.

Sergio Garcia can be backed at as little as 5/4 to gain another victory in the final four golf tournaments of the season despite continuing his run of near misses in the tour championship.

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The Spaniard lost a play-off to Colombia’s Camilo Villegas and has now finished second in three of the last five individual events he has contested. That of course included the Spaniard just missing out on his maiden Major victory in the USPGA championship.

Garcia has revealed his he will return home before the end of 2008 to take part in both the Castello and Volvo Masters. He’ll then make the long trip to China to contest the HSBC Championship and then he’ll jet into South Africa for the Nedbank Challenge.

‘El Nino’ is 5/1 to win a Major in 2009 while Villegas, whose Tour Championship triumph gave him two victories in as many outings, is 12/1 to win one of the four Grand Slam events next year. The impressive Ryder Cup debutante Anthony Kim is 9/1 to quickly fulfil his potential and take one of the big ones in the new year.

Garcia, Kim and Villegas are now ranked No 5, 6 and 7 in the world rankings respectively and are the top three players on the list not to have won a Major. The Spaniard is 10/11 to break his duck before his two rivals, with Kim at 2/1 and Villegas 14/5.

With the new NBA season fast approaching the Boston Celtics and LA Lakers are co-favourites to lift the famous trophy this term.

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The two best teams in the last campaign are both 7/2 to go all the way after the Celtics came out on top last season winning the best of seven final four games to two.

New England’s finest have added free agent Darius Miles to their roster for the coming season in order to help their title defence. The forward was originally drafted with the third overall pick in the 2000 NBA draft by the Los Angeles Clippers and was recently with for the Portland Trail Blazers during the 2005-06 season when he averaged a career high 14.0 points and 4.6 rebounds in 40 games. Miles missed all of the 2006-07 and 2007-08 seasons due to injury but Boston are confident he is fully recovered.

The LA Lakers, despite all their high profiles stars, were disappointing in that final series and the Californians will be hoping to go one better this season. To do this they’ve added both CJ Giles who was unattached and Chinese international Sun Yue, who signs a multi-year contract to their roster.

The latter joined the Lakers as a second round draft pick in 2007 after posting impressive stats in the ABA. He spent last season in Singapore but has returned to bolster the LA roster.

You can say what you want about the American’s (and most people do) but one thing they do really well is producing top-notch websites for their national sports.

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One of the best examples is NBA.com the official website for the National Basketball association.

The site covers everything in the sport from the NBA championship, the minor leagues, the Women’s league to global news.

The first impression when you log on is one of a lot of content meets a professional lay-out. Despite the shear amount of information available at the click of a mouse the landing page somehow manages to organise it in a way which doesn’t seem daunting or messy to the user.

There is also a great use of images central on the page, which rotates through the latest news drawing the eye to what’s going on in the various leagues. All the images are interesting to look at and well used.

Once you explore further you find the multimedia options. Here are a great variety of features on video including game previews and reports plus profiles of players. In addition NBA TV shows a range of live NBA and WNBA fixtures during the season for fans to get really close to the action.

s usual with these sports sites they never miss a trick to sell you something and there is a very visible link taking you to an on-line store with all the official merchandise for your favourite team.

Although not all betting sites give you the chance to bet on Basketball purely because it is not a major sport in the UK with only a handful of fans up and down the country visiting games at various leisure centres some sites do give you some great offers especially on the NBA which is massive over the Atlantic in the States, although Paddy Power do generally give odds on a few of the European Leagues that play the game.

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The kind of bets that are offered for a game of Basketball include, general match betting, the total number of points scored including overtime (which must be a very hard bet to call), whether the total points scored will finish odd or even, half time points, and half time-full time betting so as you can quite clearly see the opportunities on offer are generally just like what is offered on a football match and the in play options remind me of a football game also with many different kinds of bets always on offer so if you understand the game of Basketball and follow a team in Europe I would say that Paddy power is the place to bet with.

All NBA followers should look no further than Unibet.com who tend to know very much about the game and have a good looking guide in their Basketball section that seems very easy to follow and have loads of bets on offer as well.

BetUS.com are an on-line gaming company offering Sportsbook, with a north American bias, poker and casino and are around the sixth largest firm on the web.

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When you first log on to the site you are given the impression of slick and professional organisation. The landing page is nicely set out with quick links to the sports book and other areas of the site. There is also, very usefully, a section dedicated to horse racing.

Once you’re further into betus.com the professional look continues with well-spaced text and an easy to understand layout. The images used are excellent and really grab your attention – they sum up what they represent and the creatively changed pictures are some of the best on the industry. There is even a rather intriguing section called ‘girls’ but we’ll come to that in a moment. The calls to action are very clear and concise also so you know exactly where you are. In the past the firm have also used podcast’s to preview events, which there are plenty to bet on.

Right onto the ‘girls’ section. If you do explore here make sure you’re not at work as this link will lead you to several galleries of scantily clad young women who make up the Miss BetUS representatives, all available on DVD and a calendar!

Very importantly it is very easy to place you’re bet with this site a vital tool for those who like a wager on US sports.

There is a famous phrase, which says “there are no certainties in sport”. That’s true on the whole but it’s near as certain as can be that the US men’s Basketball team will win Olympic Gold at this year’s Beijing games.

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Up until the Barcelona games of 1992 Olympic Basketball sides had to be made up of amateurs but with professionals being allowed into the Catalan event it opened the door for American dominance. That year the NBA assembled a squad referred to as the ‘dream team’ that included the likes of Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird. In fact the combined wages of the team’s roster came to around $90 million more than it cost to build the Olympic Stadium. Needless to say they went on to dominant the competition and take gold, which was the pattern until the Athens games four years ago.

Perhaps down to the popularity of the 1992 side Basketball kick started world-wide, which meant other nations ploughed money into their own leagues and players. As a result the world has caught up and the US only took bronze in 2004.

This year though they are odds on favourites with the bookies to reclaim gold and after their demolition job on china in the opening game that is probably justified. The NBA has a new focus and philosophy to regain top spot and you’d be a brave man to bet against them.

At a bigger price Argentina looks the each-way value to take silver.

When you first think of NBA Basketball Betting the USA must come high up in your thinking, because America and Basketball goes together like Chalk and Cheese or Ducks and water.

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As a country they are that far ahead of everyone else (although Russia and Canada are improving) you could get the best player from every leading country put them all together and I am convinced they would still get destroyed by any team the US put together.

Look at the Olympics Basketball bet, they win gold medals without really breaking into sweats and I know this is largely due to their college draft system which sorts out the best players from the bad and gets them involved with Pro teams quickly to advance their talents but they could not play Soccer twenty years ago now they are in the top 20 in the world rankings so they must do something correct so why can’t the rest of us??

Growing up as a child I always can remember them big trainer boots ‘Nike Air Jordan’s’ who were endorsed by possibly the best basketball bet player to ever live Michael Jordan who together with the Chicago Bulls won many NBA titles and took the sport global with many countries now having established leagues, but except for a few countries like Spain, Russia, Canada and the US who have a Professional format the rest are all Amateurs playing in front of next to no one and having to have full time jobs to pay bills.

So to close, unless the rest of the world does not take Americas stance on Basketball in terms of revenue being pumped into the sport the Americans will dominate it for another century as well.

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With the new season only 4 weeks away now I would like to give my views on who will be challenging for the title, and who will be fighting to stay in the Premiership.

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As per usual the title will be between the usual suspects, Man-Utd, Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool but I expect there to be a couple of surprise title challenges this year from the likes of Tottenham Hotspur and Aston Villa, Tottenham will be a lot stronger this year with new manager Ramos now beginning to put together the team he would to have and with his tactical awareness and his ability to get that bit extra out of ordinary players will be a big plus for Tottenham and could see them end up in a Champions League spot come May, Villa however are starting to rebuild, with Barry’s likely departure to Liverpool expected to be confirmed next week Villa’s manager Martin o’ Neil has already filled his boots with the acquisition of Sidwell from Chelsea for a reported 5 million pounds.

But If I was to stick my neck on the block I think the title will be going to Stamford Bridge this season, with so much talent already there and with the likely introduction’s of some of the best talent in the world and when you couple that with Ronaldo’s desire to join Real Madrid I can only see the Championship ending up at West London.

At the other end the new boys of hull City and Stoke City have it all to do and to be honest I think they have bitten off more than they can chew and will both go back down along with Fulham who I think have been lucky to stay up for quite a few years now and this season will be the one that will see them fall through the trap door back to the Coca Cola Championship.

The Bet.com NBA basketball season may just have finished but the league is already gearing up for next campaign with the 2008 draft which takes place on the Thursday.

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The Chicago Bulls will have the first round pick when we get underway and they are likely to plump for Memphis guard Derek Rose. The six foot three league freshman of the year will bring the Bulls all the attributes you want from a guard.

He has excellent speed and stamina as well as that important calmness in front of the basket. Nicknamed “Pooh” he averaged 19 points in his 30 games for Memphis which helped him earn a place in the USA Basketball Junior National Select Team.

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Kansas State forward Michael Beasley is the probable choice of Miami as the second draft pick. A giant at six foot nine he averaged an impressive 26 points at college level and won countless awards for his efforts. He’ll be a good addition for the Florida side with unbelievable strength, which he uses to good effect to grab rebounds and has the ability to score from almost anywhere.

After these two the draft is more open. OJ Mayo could be packing his bags and heading to Minnesota. His all round attacking brilliance impressed the scouts last season while Jerryd Bayliss’ speed and reading of the game could see him off to Seattle.

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