Posted on
8/14/2007 6:38:55 PM
NBA Betting - NBA Opinion 2007 – Making Sense Of The East
By Tim Furious
The Boston Celtics added big names in Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen. The Cleveland Cavaliers don’t have a penny to spend on support for LeBron. And the Miami Heat have added a Penny (Hardaway) to their ranks, reuniting him with Shaquille O’Neal. What the hell is going on in the busy Eastern Conference?
For those of you studying the BetUS.com NBA futures, Boston has the nod at +225. But for those of you that want to bet smart, stop loading the Celtics basket with your damn eggs for one second.
Last year’s eastern champs, the Cavs, will enter the 2007-08 season with essentially the same squad. Any team that has LeBron on its roster is a contender, which is something he proved last season. At +300, the payoff for the Cavs is not that big and the smart betting investor will realize that other teams in the east will contend for the Cavs’ crown.
Two teams I love this season are the Chicago Bulls and, again, the Detroit Pistons. Chicago is only at +300 to win the eastern conference, but they are a tempting +900 to win the NBA Championships. Looks like a saucy parlay to me. The Bulls are young, explosive, dynamic and will have one more year playing with Big Ben. They still need that elusive low post scoring threat, but they will enter the playoffs with the top seed or the second seed.
Detroit also stands at +300 to win the east and at +1000 to win the title. They are a grizzled veteran team that has been near the top of the heap for years. Unfortunately, they stood star struck by LeBron in the playoffs last year. There is no way in hell that a team led by Rasheed Wallace is going to let a two trick pony like the Cavs dominate them two years in a row.
The Toronto Raptors are a team that is constantly under the radar, but improved by leaps and bounds last season. They went from lottery picking to third in the east. At +1500 for the eastern title they are a tempting underdog. Like Chicago, they have another year under their belt as a team and hopefully Jorge Garbajosa, a solid glue guy in T-Dot, will stay healthy heading in to the playoffs.
One of my favorite eastern story lines is the continuing development of Chris Bosh. He is molded after Kevin Garnett, and now they are in the same division. The Raptors hopes rely heavily on how CB4 stacks up against KG during the season.
The Miami Heat are curiously given +300 odds in a weak east, but refrain from reading too much in to that. Their only weapon is Dwyane Wade and Shaq is getting too old to play the entire season. I don’t expect much out of them or the +1000 Orlando Magic.
People are jumping all over the +2000 New York Knicks but I will believe it when I see it. Zach Randolph and Eddy Curry are both effective when they have their back to the basket, so how on earth are they going to co-exist on the floor together? If you want to take a risky bet, the Knickerbockers are your team!
In the muddled and changing east Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, Toronto and Boston are the crème de la crème. Amongst those, Chicago has the best injection of youth, confidence, coaching, depth and explosiveness to emerge as the eastern conference champs.
Take your pick in the BetUS.com sportsbook and check out all our NBA futures and put yourself in place to win big during the upcoming 2007-08 season.
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