Harrison Wind Harrison Wind @HarrisonWind about 5 minutes ago Western Conference win totals from @LVSuperBook just dropped - Warriors 62.5 Rockets 54.5 Thunder 50.5 Lakers 48.5 Jazz 48.5 Nuggets 47.5 Pelicans 45.5 Timberwolves 44.5 Spurs 43.5 Trail Blazers 41.5 Clippers 35.5 Grizzlies 34.5 Mavericks 34.5 Suns 28.5 Kings 25.5 The top rated sports book in the world projects Blazers to be 10th in West this season. Glad Neil stood pat and is letting the cake bake.
I actually find this interesting, these are people who literally have money on the line. So they are aiming to set a line to get people to bet on both sides.
It comes down to lazy analysis, IMO. The Blazers young talent ,according to these so called experts, has not developed any further over the summer, but other teams have. The Spurs w/o Kawhi are going to be better? I doubt it. It's all good. Doubt Dame if you will. I like this Blazer team's chances .
So I’m actually surprised at the Spurs predictions Kawhi basically missed the season and they’re adding DeRozan to that squad. The only real knock is do they have any 3 point shooting at all...? I think the teams that are being considerably over valued are OKC and the Nuggets.
Sports books are in the business, literally, of predicting accurately. If they don't, they go out of business. This year, 41.5 sounds about right. The books underbid the Blazers a few years ago, but the Blazers ain't sneaking up on anyone this year, there's no Nurk fever to jump from, no free agent to build on, there's just the same 'ol, same 'ol. So 41.5 sounds right, unfortunately, especially compared to the logical numbers for the others teams mentioned..
Fair enough, but the same old, same old got 49 wins. We can excuse away injuries and whatever say they were lucky. No matter how you spin they got 49 wins. Did they get 7.5 games worse? I think they desperately need a trade to balance the roster. These numbers are interesting and who knows maybe they have a really bad year, but I think so far as Dame has gotten better and matured towards his prime he has carried the team to better records every year. They’re banking on internal growth and that has worked for teams before.
If so many of you think the Blazers are unfairly underrated then put your cash on the line, should be easy money right?
I don’t think it’s lazy analysis at all. Vegas doesn’t look at this from a standpoint of analysis of which teams are actually the best; they look at it from the viewpoint of what most betters think the order of finish will be. That factors in a whole lot of things that don’t relate to how good teams actually are. It includes fans’ tendencies to overvalue their own teams and make bets that don’t necessarily make sense based upon the strength of the team’s rosters. A whole bunch of Laker fans may have undue expectations for the piss and gold.
Not quite. They're in the business of predicting accurately, yes, but what they need to predict is not how well teams will play, but how the public thinks teams will play. All that matters to them is that the bets on both sides of any line come out about even. Consider last year. If they had set the over/under for the Blazers at 49.5, they would have been within a half game, but they'd have lost their shirts on the 85-90% of the bets that would have been placed on the under.
I made $500 (the max amount I could bet on a particular website back then) 3 years in a row from 2006-2008. Easiest money I've ever made and there was no sweat at all since they cleared the totals easy. Since then with the way injuries played out with Roy and Oden I don't like to chance my money on the team staying healthy (well mainly Dame, CJ, and Nurk this year). The Spurs at 43.5 might tempt me to lay down a wager.
I was just in Vegas WAITING on this line but it wasn't available yet. I'll take this bet ANY day. Yeah, I'll bet money that we win 42 games.
If the Blazers prove to be the 10th place west team this franchise needs to evaluate the long term strategy. Dame and CJ are in the middle of their prime right now. I'd say blow it up, trade Dame and CJ, then rebuild. Dame and CJ would bring back great young assets. I'd rather this team finds a way to improve and contend in the next 3 years. But if we are so far away to be 10th right now that isn't realistic. We will have to see how the first half of the season plays out!