THE WEEK IN SPORTS
We are entering one of the last truly busy times in sports and wagering before the summer slowdown and if last week was any indication, this week promises sports fans and players even more action. The finals of the NBA are finally here, the Stanley Cup finals have kicked off and we are in the middle of the biggest tournament of the clay season in Tennis. Lets start off by looking at the NBA where Los Angeles meets a surprising opponent in the Orlando Magic.
Certainly the most surprising aspect of these NBA finals is that the team facing Los Angeles is not the Cleveland Cavaliers but the Orlando Magic. The Magic outlasted defending champion Boston Celtics and and beat the best team in the regular season and home of the league’s reigning most valuable player, LeBron James, to claim the Eastern Conference Finals crown. Now they face the L.A. Lakers and former MVP Kobe Bryant in hopes of claiming their first NBA title.
LA on the other hand seem on a mission to redeem their poor performance in the finals last year where they suffered absolute ass whippings like the humiliating 131-92 dismissal by the Celtics in Game 6 last year. I have been reading alot of the boards and stories and LA seems on a mission. This quote seemed to sum it up for me, Bryant admitted during the Western Conference finals that he’s not sleeping much. He’s been sending text messages to Gasol in the wee hours and getting responses.”We exchanged a couple of text messages making sure we’re on the same page,” Gasol said. “It just brings us together.
LA has home court advantage but they havent really used the actual advantage so far in the playoffs, dropping games to Houston and Denver at Staples.
An interesting piece of news for the game is that the Magic are reevaluating Jameer Nelson and he may play in the finals.
Magic spokesman Joel Glass said yesterday that Nelson’s rehabilitation from a shoulder injury is ahead of schedule but that his status remains uncertain. Nelson has been out since early February with a shoulder tear.
The finals begin Thursday night in Los Angeles.
TV NOTES AND SCHEDULE
* Game 1 @ LAL
Thu, Jun 4 9:00pm EDT
TV: ABC, TSN
* Game 2 @ LAL
Sun, Jun 7 8:00pm EDT
TV: ABC, TSN
* Game 3 @ ORL
Tue, Jun 9 9:00pm EDT
TV: ABC, TSN
* Game 4 @ ORL
Thu, Jun 11 9:00pm EDT
TV: ABC, TSN
* Game 5 @ ORL
Sun, Jun 14 8:00pm EDT
TV: ABC, TSN
* Game 6 @ LAL
Tue, Jun 16 9:00pm EDT
TV: ABC, TSN
* Game 7 @ LAL
Thu, Jun 18 9:00pm EDT
TV: ABC, TSN
The Stanley Cup has already kicked off and you may want to tune in pretty soon because this one may not last more than 5 games. The Stanley Cup Finals feature a rematch between the Detroit Red Wings and the Pittsburgh Penguins, the first finals rematch since the New York Islanders and Edmonton Oilers faced off in 1983 and 1984. The Red Wings are trying to become the first NHL team to repeat since they did it in 1997 and 1998. The Penguins are trying to win their first Stanley Cup since 1992.
As I had reported earlier in one of my blogs, the NHL originally put out a release saying the finals would begin June 5 unless both conference finals were sweeps and then changed its mind mid-stream when it realized a nine-day break would be a horrible for holding on to fan interest.
The series has already seemed pretty one sided as the Detroit Red Wings claimed a 3-1 victory over the Pittsburgh Penguins on Sunday night to open a 2-0 advantage in the best-of-seven Stanley Cup final.
The Penguins, who lost 4-2 to the Red Wings in last year’s Stanley Cup final, are basically playing a must win game when they host game three on Tuesday.
The only good news for the Penguins is the fact that they still have Malkin for game three. It looks like that reading the wire reports ” Although the NHL’s leading scorer was assessed an instigator penalty for starting a fight with Henrik Zetterberg with 19 seconds left in Detroit’s 3-1 win, NHL director of hockey operations Colin Campbell rescinded the automatic one-game suspension, pending a review.”
The sad truth is the numbers are already against the Penguins, Defending champions are 17-0 when taking a 2-0 lead in a final series. Home teams are 33-1 when going ahead 2-0 in a final series..
33-1!
TV NOTES AND SCHEDULE
NBC
Game 3 Red Wings
at Penguins Tue.,
8 p.m.
Game 4 Red Wings
at Penguins June 4,
8 p.m.
Game 5* Penguins
at Red Wings June 6,
8 p.m.
Game 6* Red Wings
at Penguins June 9,
8 p.m.
Game 7* Penguins
at Red Wings June 12,
8 p.m.
Finally, we are coming off a shocking upset on Sunday in the French Open as four-time defending champion Rafael Nadal suffered the first French Open loss of his career Sunday, falling to No. 23 Robin Soderling 6-2, 6-7 (2), 6-4, 7-6 (2). Nadal was 31-0 and had lost just seven total sets in five years at Roland Garros prior to Sunday’s match. This is one of the greatest upsets in Roland Garros history and is absolutely unfathomable to me how this happened.
The door is wide open for Federer now, as the French Open is the only Grand Slam that Roger Federer is yet to win.
Defending women’s champion Ana Ivanovic was also eliminated in the fourth round, losing 6-2, 6-3 to No. 9 Victoria Azarenka. The Belarusian teenager will be joined in the quarterfinals by top seed Dinara Safina, who trounced Iranian-born Frenchwoman Aravane Rezai, 6-1, 6-0. The world No. 1 has lost just five games over four matches in Paris. Maria Sharapova and No. 20 Dominika Cibulkova also advanced. On the men’s side, No. 3 Andy Murray, No. 10 Nikolay Davydenko and No. 12 Fernando Gonzalez all won their matches in straight sets.
I had a conversation with someone on a tennis board the other night and we were talking about the differences between clay and grass and hard courts. I am a huge tennis fan and I am going to try and explain it as best as I can and as I understand it.
The reason guys like Nadal have dominated on clay and great players like Federer and Sampras and Becker never won on clay may be in the way the ball moves on clay. Some of the math on here can be checked on the ITF web site but I will try and relate it as best I can and with some help from the ITF ratings .
The math equations of the clay surface are very different than on grass or hard-court surfaces. All officially recognized courts have a court pace rating (CPR), which rates the “speed” of the court — and clay courts are at the bottom of those rankings.
The crushed-brick mixture that constitutes the base of a clay court produces a the highest bounce and most friction of the three surfaces, meaning they have the lowest CPR of all three surface types and are considered as the “slowest”. Grass courts are generally have the highest CPR numbers, and are the “fastest” courts. This is why you see so many player hit high arching shots and try to go deep on opponents on clay , because of the bounce.
The CPR numbers give you an idea as to whether a ball will bounce higher or lower on a specific surface, and how much friction there is to either slow the ball or allow it to skid on.
An example court pace rating for each surface may be 23 for a clay court, 35 for a hard court and 46 for a grass court.
This number is calculated by considering both horizontal speed and vertical bounce of a tennis ball off a court. The equation used is CPR = SPR + 150 x (0.81-e).
If you want a better understanding of this rating, the International Tennis Federation, the game’s law-makers, have produced a chart which simply matches the coefficient of friction (friction) and coefficient of restitution (bounce) to produce a court pace rating.
You also have to take into effect the ability to slide on a surface like clay which good clay court players like Nadal has mastered. The slower pace also hampers really hard servers.
So there you go, this is a great time to get in on Tennis wagering and NBA and NHL as well because we really won’t have a week like these two upcoming ones for quite awhile this summer. Check out our odds page and hook up with some of the great deals the books on here are offering and have some fun this week.
Have a great week
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