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AC TITTICOCK'S WEEKLY FREE NBA BASKETBALL PICKS AND WINNERS
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AC's Wagercom 2006-2007 NBA Picks Season Record
Wins: 107 Losses: 100 Ties: 2
NBA Picks Winning Percentage: 52%
Record updated Saturdays and Mondays
Contact AC at ac@wagercom.com or post your questions/comments on the Wagercom Message Board
Read AC's Bio
AC's outlook on the NBA is an entertaining original column featured here at Wagercom. If you are prone to NBA betting or even just an NBA fan, make sure you come back often to read his articles and free NBA Basketball picks against the spread. AC will be providing us with a weekly outlook during the basketball season including free NBA Basketball picks on some of the weekend games each Friday and Saturday.
Our NBA expert AC has had 3 consecutive winning seasons picking NBA games against the spread for a combined 317-281 record yielding a 53% winning percentage which would have won you money including the VIG. AC does this out of the kindness of his heart and for the naked pictures of your girlfriends you send him as a token of your appreciation. So enjoy the columns and the picks..
AC'S NBA FINALS FREE PICKS & COLUMN:
The NBA Finals are here and I am as excited as Michael Vick at a dog fight or whatever dude gets to take Allison Stokke to the prom (see picture below). Once again your boy AC outperformed most experts by picking the Cavs to make the Finals at the beginning of the year and all the way through the playoffs (You can see only two so called NBA experts also picked Cleveland ). While AC picked the Suns over the Spurs, had Amare and Boris Diaw not been suspended for Game 5, perhaps the Suns could have pulled it out (but only perhaps, so give props to San Antonio who are playing like a well-oiled machine).
 As for the Finals, it appears that most NBA fans (all three of us) are down on the Finals this year due to the location of the teams (San Antonio and Cleveland whose cities are to excitement and culture what Gary Sheffield is to eloquence and forward thinking), the at times boring to pedestrian style of play, and the overall feeling that the Spurs are going to crush the Cavs like a fat man falling on a midget (and not any midget, but a really short one, with no legs). To be honest, I don’t blame most fans for thinking this because it is all largely true. This Finals could be more boring than a network TV sitcom or anything written by Jane Austen or one of those dikey Bronte sisters.
On paper, Cleveland has as much chance of beating San Antonio as Christopher Reeve would have of beating Mike Tyson in a boxing match (and I mean the Christopher Reeve before he died, but after he fell off the horse), or as much of a chance as Paris Hilton would have of beating Brian Greene in a quantum physics quiz.
However, your boy AC disagrees and thinks there is some potential for this series. Cleveland has an outside chance of making this interesting and below are five reasons why/how Cleveland can win, five reasons why everybody is right and the Spurs will coast, five interesting things to watch, and AC’s Finals prediction.
Five reasons why/how Cleveland can win:
1. Control the pace and slow the game down. Cleveland has shown the offensive creativity of a person without a corpus callosum which is not good (perhaps someone should give Mike Brown an MRI). Since Cleveland’s offense relies on LeDong going 1 on 5 which is anything but reliable, they need to control the pace, slow the game down and limit the total number of shots taken. By keeping the game at a snails pace, the Cavs can get San Antonio into a low scoring game where a 5-10 minute LeDong hot streak can win it.
2. They’re not as bad as people think. Cleveland should have won all six games against Detroit and had this been a Detroit-San Antonio match-up, pundits would have expected the series to be closer than they are expecting the Cleveland-San Antonio series to be. The Cavs were able to roll through the East with less trouble than one would think. They have a decent offensively skilled big man (Ilgauskus), a couple of wings who can catch fire (Hughes and Boobie Gibson), a rebounder in Gooden, and an all around pain in the butt in Varejao. This is a fairly well-rounded team with a superstar playing at an incredible level.
3. Ilgauskus may be able to neutralize Duncan to some degree. The Cavs should try to establish Ilgauskus down low early on and hope he can get some early fouls on Duncan or score enough on Ellson/Oberto that they have to rotate Duncan on him. Zydrunas is better than you think.
4. Pressure Tony Parker with Boobie Gibson and Larry Hughes. Along with slowing the pace on offense, the Cavs need to make sure the Spurs don’t run on them in transition. To do this, they need to get in front of Tony Parker, push him around a little, and keep up the pressure. By rotating Gibson and Hughes on him every 4-5 minutes, Parker may get winded while Gibson and Hughes will stay relatively fresh.
5. This is Ledong’s world and we’re all just living in it.
Five reasons why/how San Antonio can win:
1. They are playing the best basketball of any team over the past 10 years. Offensively, defensively, in transition, in warm ups, in post game interviews, you name it, and the Spurs are doing it well. They play efficiently, smartly, and with the sole purpose of winning. If they can keep up the kind of intensity they have shown, this will be a short series.
2. Tim Duncan (Maybe it’s Duncan’s world and we are all living in it).
3. Tony Parker (the most underrated all-star in the league)
4. Manu Ginobili (he may play with Boobie Gibson like Boobie was really a Boobie)
5. Greg Popovich
5 Most interesting questions/things to watch
1. Can Bruce Bowen do anything to stop LeDong?
2. Can Ilgauskus be effective against the San Antonio bigs?
3. Can the Cavs slow down Parker?
4. Will LeDong make the Leap?
5. Will Tim Duncan simply take over and prove that he is the best NBA player of the last 10 years?
Who is going to win:
I have struggled with this for a week now. The easy pick is Spurs in 5, the hard pick is the Spurs in 6, the off the wall pick is Cavs in 7. I give the Cavs a 10% chance of winning the series, a 40% chance of being swept, and a 50% chance of everything in between. So on a weighted basis, they should win 1.4 games (0 * .40 + 2 * .5 + 4 * .10 for the maffamatecians) which rounds to Spurs in 5. I’d like to be a hero here and predict otherwise, but the Spurs are just too good.
Prediction: Spurs in 5
As always, I will be picking every game of the Finals so check back for daily updates and be sure to forward naked pictures of the strippers you bang after you win cash on these picks.
Thursday 6/07/07 NBA Finals Game 1 Pick:
Cavaliers at San Antonio -7.5:
I have changed this pick 5 times already. I really wanted to take the Cavs because the Spurs could take them lightly in Game 1, but then I remembered it is the Spurs, they are on fire, and the Cavs may have the “inexperienced team first game of the Finals jitters.” The Spurs will likely come out on fire and the question is can the Cavs weather that storm and comeback in the second half. Unfortunately, I don’t think so in Game 1. Take the Spurs and hope they keep up the pressure for the whole game.
Sunday 6/10/07 NBA Finals Game 2 Pick:
First of all, it’s nice of ESPN.com to finally recognize the work of AC and www.Wagercom.com by giving a shout out to us in this column http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=gallo/070607. We are glad DJ Gallo is a fan and hope whichever rapper he DJs for is also a fan.
As for the Spurs and Cavs, it is what it is. The first half of Game One was uglier than a love child between David Wingate and that awful Kathy Griffin guy (or girl, not quite sure what it is).
Despite being colder than a Uzbekistanian winter in the second quarter, the Spurs still managed to do enough to easily defeat the Cavs. Cleveland simply had no answer for Tony Parker and no ability to keep the Spurs off of the boards. Larry Hughes was as effective as Shawn Kemp’s preferred birth control method and Boobie Gibson did not get enough run. Oh well, at least we all won some money.
Cavaliers at San Antonio -7:
Roses are red
Violets are blue
AC’s picking the exact same thing
For this crappy Game Two
Sure, the Cavs didn’t play well in Game One, but newsflash, neither did the Spurs. As long as Duncan /Elson/Oberto can keep controlling the boards and Parker can keep pushing the pace, the Spurs should prevail. Expect LeDong to drop 35+, but the Spurs will pull away in the end when it becomes a free throw game.
Tuesday 6/12/07 NBA Finals Game 3 Pick:
Wow, this series is went from bad to Paul Bettany’s acting bad in no time. I haven’t seen someone struggle as much as the Cavs since Paris Hilton tried to read.
Cleveland has been completely unable to slow down Tony Parker and once again unable to generate any kind of consistent offense. If this series were a porno, and how I wish it were, the Spurs would be the pizza delivery guy and the Cavs would be the nubile young buttocks of the college sorority girl who ordered the pizza.
I am sorely disappointed in this series and can only watch for 3 minutes at a time for fear the sight of Cleveland throwing up bricks will singe my eyes. Somebody needs to stop this, please. Mr. Stern, can we get a slaughter rule?
San Antonio -1.5 at Cleveland:
This is like taking candy from an armless baby with colic. Seriously, I pray everyday to the great Nipsey Russell for lines like this one. I honestly thought the line would be the Spurs -10 and I am usually within a point of guessing the correct spread. I know this game is in Cleveland but I also know the Spurs were up 28 points in third quarter before they stopped playing and before the Cavs hit some meaningless 3 pointers. Being at home in Cleveland is not worth 26 points, it’s just not, sorry. Take the Spurs and mortgage the house, the car, and your autographed Taylor Rain photo. This one is going to be lucrative (though to be fair, the last time I felt this good about a game was Ohio State giving 10.5 to my mighty Northwestern Wildcats in hoops on 1/24, and well, that didn’t quite work out so good for me. So buyer beware).
And yes, I plan on taking the Spurs and giving the points for the entire series. When you find something you’re good at, you stick with it, like Tim Duncan using the glass or Scottie Pippen having kids.
Thursday 6/14/07 NBA Finals Game 4 Pick:
If you thought Game 2 was bad, Game 3 probably made you wish you were a foster child in the care of Elijah Dukes’ relatives when Elijah came over to visit. I mean this game was so bad I am not convinced both teams weren’t trying to tank to get a higher draft pick.
But on the bright side, we all won money because somehow Vegas is swinging and missing on these lines like Wily Mo Pena. But hey, we deserve it after having to bet on the NBA this year where on any given night one or both teams could have been trying to lose (and speaking of tanking, how’d that work Danny Ainge? No really, how did that f*^$#ing work?).
San Antonio -3 at Cleveland:
Minus 3, really?? That is all this line is? Wow. I don’t see how Cleveland doesn’t lose by at least 8. The Game will be close until the Spurs pull away in the third, ripping the Cavs heart out like Mola Ram. Thank you Vegas for this line, and thank you David Stern for this awful product. If this Finals were a toy it would be the Bag O’Glass, if it were an author it would be Willa Cather, and if it were a stripper it would be the older one on the 2pm shift. Take the Spurs and enjoy counting your cash. Oh yeah, and remember your boy AC when you win, he has looked out for you in this playoff series out of the goodness of his heart.
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