30 Something: Durant, Thunder visit Kings

Basketball Betting Lines

03/07/2010 - (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Kevin Durant and the Oklahoma City Thunder will close out a three-game road trip Sunday against the Sacramento Kings at ARCO Arena.

Durant led the Thunder to a 104-87 victory over the Los Angeles Clippers on Friday, pumping in 32 points and nine rebounds. Durant, the NBA's second leading scorer with 29.7 ppg, has scored 30 or more points an NBA-high 35 times this season and is one game shy of breaking Spencer Haywood's franchise record set during the 1972-73 campaign. Oklahoma City is the sixth seed out West and 24-11 when Durant hits the 30-point mark.

Rookie James Harden tallied 17 points, while Russell Westbrook finished with 15 points, nine assists, seven steals and six rebounds against the Clippers. Jeff Green ended with 14 points and Nenad Krstic added 13 with 11 boards for the Thunder, who bounced back from a 119-90 Wednesday loss at Denver to win for the fourth time in five contests.

"Our defense has gotten us this far and it helped us tonight," Harden said. "We were able to get some steals that led to some easy baskets."

The Thunder are 18-13 away from the Ford Center this season.

Sacramento has dropped two of three and seven of its last 10 games. It is coming off Friday's 108-100 loss at Dallas in which Carl Landry contributed 21 points and Andres Nocioni added 15 in his return from a two-game suspension.

Beno Udrih and Rookie of the Year candidate Tyreke Evans scored 20 points apiece for the Kings, who went 1-2 on a three-game road trip.

"We're a young team and don't have a lot of experience. So we're just trying to learn and get better," said Udrih.

The Kings will put their two-game home winning streak on the line this evening and are 15-14 in California's capital. Evans is averaging 21.7 ppg in last six contests, while Landry has scored in double figures in each of the last eight games.

Oklahoma City has won two of three meetings with Sacramento this season and four of five matchups overall. The Kings, however, are 10-4 in the previous 14 encounters as the host in this series.

Durant is averaging 33.7 points, 8.7 rebounds, 2.7 assists and 1.3 steals in three games against the Kings this season.

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SPORTS BETTING - Tennis is an underrated and under-utilized bettors' sport.

Ten years ago, at just about this time, I called Alan Boston in Vegas and left him a voicemail that went something like this (abridged version): "Hey Alan, Chad Millman from ESPN The Magazine calling. I want to do a book about wise guys, you in?"

A couple weeks later I got a message back (abridged version): "I don't know, maybe," Boston said. "Call me and we'll talk about it. But not later today. I got $1,000 on Andre Agassi to win the French Open at 40-1, and he's in the finals."

Here's what happened next (abridged version): Agassi won his tourney. Boston won his $40,000. I wrote sportsbook.

In the ten years since, how much has been wagered on the big-time tennis events? Put it this way: The Nevada Gaming Commission doesn't even track the number year by year because it's so small.

"Tennis makes up about one-tenth of one percent of our take," says Lucky's bookmaking boss Jimmy Vaccaro. "The last big golf major we probably had $100,000 worth of bets. In tennis, we might have written two big tickets."

Tennis' lack of popularity amongst the American bettoratti is no surprise, really. For starters, the biggest sports betting holidays -- the Super Bowl, the NCAA tourney -- are must see TV. People, at least the degenerates I know, plan vacations around watching those events in Vegas sports books.

But Wimbledon? Doesn't exactly reel in the whales. "Seriously, it's the nuts as an event," says Boston. "But who even knows when it's on?"

Here's another reason that helps explain why golf gets traction, something I call "The Bubbe Theory." My Bubbe is pushing 95 and has cataracts so bad that, to her, even the most crystalline Chicago day is mostly cloudy. But she still listens to the Cubs games, and she still calls me in a fit if she disagrees with something Rick Telander writes in the Chicago Sun Times. She's a sports fan. If she doesn't know you, you're just filling a niche. And niche players, even historically good ones like Roger and Raf, don't drive betting volume. Only the highest profile names attract square money, which inflates wagering totals like a shot of saline to the lips. Bubbe, and the public, loved Agassi, tennis' last cross-the-rubicon, mainstream draw. She also has a crush on Tiger. She's given me standing orders to put a sawbuck on the big cat whenever I walk through a sports book (or mistakenly tap into one via my Internet machine.) That explains why the Masters is getting $100K in action at some books while the four tennis majors might not get that combined this year.

This isn't a case of tennis being a difficult sport to bet. In fact, in Europe, it's probably the second most popular sport for gambling after soccer. Granted, as the WSJ football betting last week and The Mag's Shaun Assael examined in even greater depth last year, that might be because gamblers across the pond see it as an easy game to fix. But it could also be because, over there it holds the kind of sway the big two do over here.

Street corners in Spain are peppered with public courts and kids doing their best Raffy impressions. In some war torn parts of Eastern Europe poverty-stricken kids view tennis as an escape route, like football or basketball here. A couple years ago The Mag's Lindsay Berra wrote a great piece about Belgrade's Jelena Jankovic, Ana Ivanovic and Novak Djokovic. They learned the game as kids while bombs were raining down on their homeland. They practiced in drained swimming pools. Not exactly Nick Bolletierri conditions.

In the United States, casual fans think tennis is played four times a year. But on the tightly packed European continent, national interest in homegrown talent runs deep every weekend. Of the ATP's current top 20 players, only two, tennis betting and James Blake, are American. Fourteen are from Europe, representing six different countries.

No wonder fans from Lisbon to Bhudapest get jacked up for the net game, whether it's Wimbledon or a low-level tourney like the Estoril Open in Portugal (congrats to Spain's Albert Montanes for winning that one, btw). Chances are good that someone representing their flag will not only be playing, but have a shot at winning.

And that's all any bettor can ask for.

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