Nets, Hawks swap first-round picks

Basketball Betting Lines

06/24/2010 - New York, NY (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - The Atlanta Hawks and New Jersey Nets traded first-round picks during the NBA Draft Thursday night.

The Nets obtained forward Damion James, who was the 24th overall pick out of the University of Texas. Atlanta got shooting guard Jordan Crawford, who was taken 27th out of Xavier.

Additionally, the Hawks received German center Tibor Pleiss, who was taken 31st overall in the draft by the Nets. Pleiss was then dealt to Oklahoma City for cash considerations.

James finished his career at Texas with school records in rebounds, consecutive games played and games started. He also set the Big 12 record with 1,318 rebounds and 54 double-doubles.

Crawford gained headlines after dunking on LeBron James at the Skills Academy in the summer of 2009. He led the Atlantic 10 Conference in scoring at 20.5 ppg.

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What Is the Point Spread?

What are Sports Betting Point Spreads?

In any football or basketball game (the main sports that use point spreads) there are two teams playing against each other.

Those teams, though, are rarely exactly evenly matched – meaning that typically one team has a better chance than the other to win the game. If bettors were allowed to bet on who was simply going to win the game, smart ones would obviously bet on the better team (likely winning more than 50% of the time in the process).

If winning were that easy the Las Vegas and online sportsbooks would stop taking any bets! This is where the point spread comes in: the basic function of the point spread is to balance the likelihood of each team “winning” by adjusting the final score by the point spread. After this adjustment is made you get the Against The Spread result (ATS result for short).

Let’s look at Super Bowl XXXIX, New England Patriots vs. Philadelphia Eagles. Most people believed the defending champ Patriots to be the better team – so if betting were simply based upon which team would win the game, an uneven majority of people would have wagered on New England. But, by using the point spread, the bookmakers adjusted the terms of the bet, evening the proposition so about half the people believed the Pats to be the smart bet, while the other half considered Philly to be the smart bet.

How to Read Point Spreads

New England Patriots -7 vs. Philadelphia Eagles

The better team, called the Favorite, is expected to win the game and must “give” or “lay” points to the weaker team. The favorite is listed with a minus sign and the number of points they are favored by (e.g., New England -7)

In the case of our example, New England must not only win the game, but they must win by more than 7 points for Pats bettors to have a winning ATS result. An Eagles bettor wins his bet either if:

To visit this internet sportsbook go to MySportsbook.com for all your football betting and World Series odds.