Brandon Roy has a bright future in Portland

Basketball Betting Lines

02/21/2007 - (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Brandon Roy is having a very solid rookie campaign for the Portland Trail Blazers, who are 23-32 and sit in fourth place in the Northwest Division.

Roy, who is a leading candidate for Rookie of the Year, is averaging 15.7 points, 4.1 rebounds and 3.5 assists in 35 contests this season. He has scored in double-digits in three straight games and has registered 20.3 points per game in that span. The 6-6 Roy is shooting 44.4 percent from the field, including 31.2 percent from beyond the arc.

All-Star Game MVP Kobe Bryant and the Los Angeles Lakers return to the court on Wednesday, as they welcome the Trail Blazers to the Staples Center. Bryant scored 31 points, dished out six assists and had six steals to lead the West to an easy 153-132 win over the East in the 56th annual All-Star Game on Sunday at the Thomas & Mack Center.

It is the second of three meetings between the Trail Blazers and Lakers this season. On November 8th, Zach Randolph posted 36 points and 10 rebounds as the Trail Blazers started picked up a 101-90 victory over the Lakers at the Rose Garden. Portland has lost three straight and nine of its last 10 at the Lakers. The Trail Blazers have won two of the last three contests in the series.

The Lakers are scheduled to host the Trail Blazers on March 16th at the Staples Center.

Portland plays its second game since the All-Star break against the Lakers. On Tuesday, rookie Brandon Roy poured in 27 points and dished out seven assists as the Trail Blazers edged the Utah Jazz, 103-100, in the first game for both teams coming out of the All-Star break.

Randolph scored 22 points and pulled down 12 rebounds in the win over the Jazz for Portland, which snapped a two-game skid, but began the second half of the schedule with one more win than they had all of last season. Ime Udoka ended with 15 points, while Dan Dickau netted 11 and Jarrett Jack finished with 10 points and six assists for the Blazers.

The Trail Blazers, who have dropped two in a row as the visitor, are 10-18 on the road this season. They return home to host the Seattle SuperSonics on Monday at the Rose Garden.

Portland is 11-4 when it scores 100 or more points this season.

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Sportsbook Betting Lines

Who Makes the Sportsbook Betting Lines?

Las Vegas Sports Consultants (LVSC) is the world’s premier oddsmaking company and the most respected authority on making the lines. Mike Seba is a Senior Oddsmaker at LVSC and has been making lines for the last six years. In our extended interview, Seba explained that there are 4-5 oddsmakers assigned to make lines for each of the major sports (pro & college football and basketball; MLB, NHL, boxing, golf). Each of these oddsmakers bring unique opinions, strengths and weaknesses to the process. Oddsmakers at LVSC are professional sports junkies who love what they do and would probably do it for nothing if you asked them, but they do get paid for it. By necessity their approach is very research-oriented and concise, since with millions of dollars at risk there is little margin for error.

“You either have a passion for it or you don’t,” Seba said.

“The #1 thing for us is to make a line for each game that creates good two-way action. We do this by drawing from past experiences and applying them to current situations. People think it’s much more complicated, but it’s not. “

What are the Football Betting Lines Trying to Accomplish?

There is a common misconception that point spreads represent the oddsmakers’ prediction of how many points the favorite will win by. That is not the case at all – their intent is NOT to evenly split the ATS result between the teams; rather, their goal is to attract equal betting action on both sides. Stated another way, they want to create a line that half the people find appealing to bet one way while the other half find it appealing to bet the other way (known as ‘dividing the action’).

Divided action means the sportsbook is guaranteed a profit on the game because of the fee charged to the bettor (called juice or vig – typically $11 bet to win $10).

How the Opening Line Is Made

The opening line is the first line created by the oddsmakers, which is then sent out to sportsbooks. Of course there is an entire method to the madness on how the opening line is created. Seba explained that it all starts with each oddsmaker creating a line on each game based upon their own personal approach. This usually includes having up-to-date power ratings on each team.

Power ratings are the oddsmaker’s value of each team and are used as a guide to calculate a "preliminary" pointspread on an upcoming game. The power ratings are adjusted after each game a team plays. Examples of non-game factors that would require an adjustment to a team's power rating are key player injuries and player trades.

Once a game’s power rating based pointspread is determined, the oddsmaker will make adjustments to that line after considering each team's most recent games played and previous games played against that opponent. Also, adjustments are made after reading each team’s local newspapers to get a sense of what the coaches & players are thinking going into the game.

Since the oddsmaker’s ultimate goal is equally dividing the sports betting action, public perception and sportsbook betting patterns must be taken into account. For example, the public might have heavy betting interest week after week on a popular college football betting team such as USC. If an oddsmaker comes up with a preliminary line of USC -7, then an adjustment up to -7.5 or -8 would be made in response to the public’s expected USC bias.

The last step in the line-making process for each oddsmaker is taking one final look to determine whether or not the line "feels right." This is where common sense and past experience with how games are bet enters into the picture.

A round-table discussion among the 4-5 oddsmakers involved in making the line for each sport is then conducted and a consensus line is decided upon by the Odds Director before it is released to the sportsbooks. Of the 4-5 oddsmakers, generally the 2 most respected opinions are weighed more heavily by the Odds Director before he decides on the final line.

Why Sports Betting Lines Change

Once the opening line is released by LVSC, the individual sportsbooks decide if they want to make any adjustments before offering it to the public. Reasons for such adjustments include:

Experts working for the individual books having a strong opinion on the game

Individual books having players who consistently bet with certain tendencies (such as an extreme bias toward favorites or toward a certain popular team like USC)

The purpose of these adjustments, like all line adjustments, is to more equally divide the betting action.

Once betting begins, sportsbooks can adjust the line at any time. In doing so they attempt to make more attractive the team that is getting less action. By moving the line, sportsbooks can influence how the public bets on a particular game.

For example, if the pointspread on a game is 7 and most of the money is coming in on the underdog (taking the +7), sportsbooks will then move the number down to 6 ½ to try and attract money on the favorite.

Moving the line is the oddsmaker's effort to balance betting action, and often times such moves can have a major impact on a bettor’s decision. Oddsmakers can also change the line depending on various event-related factors such as player injuries or weather. Obviously, if the line comes out a week ahead of the event (which is the case in football), there is much that could happen during the week leading up to the event that could affect the line. Oddsmakers have to determine if any changes are necessary and send out an "adjusted line."

“The main objective is that our clients get equal action on both sides,” Seba said. “We’re not trying to pick the team that covers the spread, we’re trying to make it a coin flip, a tough decision (for the bettor). If we’ve done that, we’ve done our job.”

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