Sports Betting Blog

The LA Clippers have had two games to reach their 50^th win of the season, a franchise record to say the least, but they have failed to reach that benchmark so far. A team that has been known this season for it’s particularly though defense, had very little to stop a team that found a key to break open that lock: open up the defense and spread the ball. The Houston Rockets were playing without their best scorer for the third time this season, as he is suffering from a sprained ankle. You would expect the Rockets to have a difficult time finding the basket without a player that is averaging 26 points per game this season, the 5^th best mark in the league, but they did just fine without James Harden. As a matter of fact, the Rockets took a whole another approach and spread the love. Jeremy Lin, Chandler Parson and Francisco Garcia finished the game with 15 points each while Omek Asik added 13 points for the night to take a 98-81 win over the LA Clippers at the Toyota Center in Houston.

 The game could had gone either way until the Rockets, at 40-33 for the season, got the ball in the third quarter and broke lose. Last year’s hottest NBA sensation, Jeremy Lin found in Chandler Parsons his perfect crime accomplice and together they combined for 13 points in the third quarter alone. The Rockets went on a scoring spree and managed to outscore Los Angeles 30-13 to open up a big gap and never look back. The rally gave Houston a 22-point lead heading into the fourth quarter, and there was simply no way to cut this one down. Perhaps that’s exactly why the Clippers head coach, Vinny del Negro, though to himself, enough is enough sat down Blake Griffin, DeAndre Jordan, Caron Butler and Willie Green for the entire fourth quarter. After all, there was no point risking injury in a game that they were not going to win and he opted to leave only Chris Paul in the game.

 Sure enough the Clippers were playing their fourth game in 5 days. Del Negro was very displeased by his team performance, and said the schedule was in now way a valid excuse for how poorly his team played. “We were terrible, our effort was terrible, our attitude was terrible and our urgency was terrible,” Del Negro said in the postgame press conference. “They know exactly how I feel, and they didn’t say much. That’s not what we’re about.” Chris Paul guided the visiting team with 19 points, seven assists and three steals, but it was clear that he was not pleased either with his own work or that of his teammates. The thing is that, no matter where you looked at it, the Rockets were clearly more dominant. Consider the following in the way of example. The home team outscored the Clippers 48-26 in the paint, and as is that was not enough, their bench outscored Los Angeles’ reserves 39-31. Carlos Delfino scored 11 points and Patrick Beverley added nine for Houston coming off the bench.

The Houston Rockets are not at their best this season. I mean, on the one hand, they are 6-7 for the season, certainly not the start many were wishing for when they signed Jeremy Lin over the summer. Then again, the $25 million dollar player hasn’t reached his full potential at his new home and considering what we have seen so far, it’s unclear if he’ll be able to reach the heights of his game as he did back in February when the linsanity kicked off. Sure enough the Knicks didn’t want to match the lucrative offer made by the Houston Rockets. And he has yet to play with the Rockets like he did with the Knicks, but heck, after a brilliant start for the season, the 8-3 New York Knicks have now lost two games in a row and after this debacle one can’t help but to wonder if they were simply over rated a bit on their early success.

Considering that Jeremy Lin hasn’t been up to speed, it was up to James Harden to lead the way for the Rockets. And that he did quite well. He scored 33 points and 9 assists. Chandler Parsons had a career-high 31 points to help the Houston Rockets fly by to a 131-103 manhandling of the New York Knicks on Friday night. Jeremy Lin added 13 points, seven rebounds and three assists in his first game against the team where he rose to prominence.

Just for the sake of story, let’s go back and remember what went on in February 2012. With Carmelo Anthony out with an injury, the Knicks needed an answer, someone to put an end to the losing streak. And let’s not forget that his story is quite amusing. Jeremy Lin went undrafted out of Harvard and became a sensation when he scored at least 20 points in nine of 10 games towards the end of February this year. Let’s not forget that this included a phenomenal nationally televised game where he scored 38 points and seven assists in a 92-85 victory over the Lakers on Feb. 10. Yeah, the Lakers had Kobe Bryant, Pau Gasol and Andrew Bynum in the starting lineup that night.

The New York Knicks just never had a chance against the Rockets last night. Carmelo Anthony scored a season-high 37 for New York. They just couldn’t get it together and they were not able to come up with any excuse. The Knicks, a team that just last week we were calling a prospect to be a contender, was completely out of this one. “They beat us in every way you can beat a team,” Knicks coach Mike Woodson said. “I know throughout the course of the year or the season you have games like this, but it’s not acceptable. We just weren’t ready to play and that’s on me.” Tyson Chandler had one of those games to forget. He finished off with 6 points and 7 rebounds. Reymond Felton chipped in with 17 points and 8 assists, but it was nowhere close to what needed to be done to even make this a game.

Well, it seems that the Jeremy Lin’s successful but short run with the New York Knicks has come to an end. Earlier last week, the Houston Rockets made a big offer to Jeremy Lin to join its troops, and for a moment there it seemed as if the young player who came undrafted from Harvard and that became a sudden sensation in February, turning things around for the Knicks when both Amare Stoudemire and Carmelo Anthony were not at their best is now going to move on to the Houston Area. A week earlier it seemed really hard to believe that the New York Knicks would not give a fight for Lin’s services. After all, it was them who took the chances of brining him on, and it was them who had really discovered the full potential of this fast-paced point guard. At the end, however, the $25 million, three-year offer from the Houston Rockets was a little too much for the Knicks organization.

The problem is not the overall amount, but the wording in the contract set up byt the Houston Rockets. In his third year at Houston, Jeremy Lin could make as much as $14.8 million, more than half of what his three year deal will bring. Now, the issue here is that if the Knicks went on to equal that offer, because of the luxury tax, it will cost the Knicks somewhere around $30 million to get Lin playing that year. The big issue here is that Lin might ultimately cost the New York Knicks more than $30 million just around the time they would have to give up a combined $62 million for Carmelo Anthony, Amare Stoudemire and Tyson Chandler.

Knowing that Jeremy Lin was certainly out of the picture, the Knicks went ahead and got a little backup. The Knicks just signed Jason Kidd for three years and re-acquired Raymond Felton for three years, after they had sent him over to the Denver Nuggets as part of the multi-player transaction that landed Carmelo Anthony in the Madison Square Garden a season earlier. Now, the Knicks do realize that Jeremy Lin has potential, but then again, it’s unclear if that means that Lin will in three years become the next Rajon Rondo or Chris Paul for that matter.

Don’t get us wrong. The kid certainly is got game. Let it there be no doubt, we’ve got this one straight: any NBA player, even more, any rookie who can score 38 point against the Los Angeles Lakers, and who can follow that with 28 points and 14 assists on the Dallas Mavericks (the defending champions, at that) and who averaged more than 14 points and 7 assists in 25 NBA matches certainly has his game.

Last season, Jeremy Lin, made $788,000 last season and was crashing in one of his teammates sofas in New York City. He averaged 14.6 points, 6.2 assists and 3.1 rebounds in 35 games with 25 starts before his season was cut short because of surgery to repair torn cartilage in his knee. He didn’t came back in the postseason. He was either too worried to get injured again and risk a new signing, or he was just not willing to play at 85% in the playoffs and appear weak before a new signing. Whatever his reasons, let’s only hope he can deliver in the Western Conference.

The New York Knicks need to focus on the bright side of things. And trust on their own talent and the work that as a team they can put together. The NBA season is coming to and end and at the 8^th spot of the Eastern Conference, they are clinging for their last chances to qualify into the Playoffs. At 27-26 for the season, the Knicks are far away from been the prominent and dominating team that a rooster that included the likes of Amare Stoudemire and Carmelo Anthony was expected to be. Sure enough, they’ve been struggling with injuries all season long but they have also managed to find some interesting and unexpected surprises along the way. Not we have to mention one Jeremy Lin and the Linsanity that took over the NBA world in February. But then, on the other hand, they’ve had to dismiss their former coach Mike D’Antoni but have had some success with interim head coach Mike Woodson.

Now, facing the 17-33 Cleveland Cavaliers in the Madison Square Garden, a win was expected from New York. But just before the game began and knowing that the Knicks were already going to miss Amare Stoudemire because of injury, more negative news popped up the press conference when a couple of team officials said that Jeremy Lin would in would have surgery to repair a torn meniscus in his left knee and could miss six weeks. That is, Lin is probably going to miss the rest of the season, so that incident alone but an abrupt end to Linsanity. Now, on the long run, this is certainly going to hurt the Knicks as their second and third most prolific scorers are going to miss the last few decisive games of the regular season. But it seems that at least for now there’s no reason to panic. The Knicks have plenty of backup and if they can stay healthy, a spot in the Playoffs shouldn’t be out of the order.

J.R. Smith is something like the chosen one to fill in the scoring deficit that has been left by Stoudemire and Lin. And so far, he’s been doing a good job. Against the Cleveland Cavaliers he finished with 20 points and 9 rebounds, while the squad’s leader, Carmelo Anthony finished the night with 19 points and 4 rebounds, guiding the team to a 91-75 win over the Cavaliers. Tyson Chandler had 14 points and 12 rebounds for the eighth-place Knicks. The team spirit seems to be in the right place. “We’ve just got to hang in there together and keep the bodies that we do have healthy, keep them alert and ready to play when we step out on the floor,” said the Knicks interim head coach Woodson. “The season is what it is. I mean it’s not going anywhere. We’ve got remaining games left we’ve just got to take it one game at a time. We still control our own destiny and they’ve got to understand that.”

For the Cavaliers Antawn Jamison scored 13 points while point guard Donal Sloan chipped in with 10 points, 7 rebounds and 4 assists. The Cavs played without injured rookie Kyrie Irving. It’s not been a good season for this squad. They have lost seven consecutive matches and 10 of their last 11 games.