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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: 101 Ties: 2
NBA Picks Winning Percentage: 51%
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 season is finally over and we all witnessed the worst basketball since the strike shortened season. Teams tried to lose, fans stopped watching, and Adam Morrison bricked about 3,000 open jump shots. On top of that, the Finals were as dramatic as a Brady Bunch episode and as suspenseful as a Scooby Doo cartoon (I kept waiting for Tony Parker to rip off LeDong's mask and see it was really Mr. Beepers. Oh those pesky kids).
With the draft a week away and with the Spurs celebrating their 4th title in 10 years (no doubt by imbibing much alcohol, feasting on many tails of lobster, and experiencing much fellatio), I thought it would be good to gather some insights as to what we learned this NBA season. So below are the top 8 things we learned this year in the NBA.
1. Tim Duncan is the best player over the last ten years and may be one of the top ten players ever. Really, he is that good. After Michael, Larry, Magic, Russell, Wilt, and Oscar Robinson, who is better? You can debate 10 to 15 more names and Duncan would be in that debate. He is that good. While he might be as flashy as Bea Arthur (and hung almost as well as she is), Duncan simply gets the job done.
2. Tanking doesn't help. We all witnessed the travesty of the worst teams not getting the top picks in the lottery. Some people claimed this was retribution or karma for having tanked during the regular season, and it may have been, but I maintain that had the Celtics, Grizzlies, Hawks, etc. all played up to their full capabilities, they still would have sucked. Since everyone tanked, it all evened out, and the ping pong balls fell as they would have. The only negative effect of tanking therefore was playing players who have no chance of ever being good (Allen Ray) while resting players that need all of the experience they can get (Ryan Gomes and Al Jefferson). Losing on purpose was the right strategy, but when everyone does it, the benefits are negated.
3. The US is pretty crappy at basketball. Five out of ten starters in the NBA Finals were not born in the continental US (Duncan, Parker, Oberto, Ilgauskus, and Pavlovic) and that doesn't include Varejao and Ginobili. Not only that, but three of the top six players in the league were born outside of the continental US (Nash, Dirk, and Duncan). There is a reason the US can't win a gold medal anywhere anymore and it has to do with more than just Larry Brown's craptastic coaching. If I were an NBA GM, and one day I will be, trust me on this one, I would immediately hire the Argentinean national coach. I don't care if he doesn't speak a word of English (it's not like NBA players speak English all that well either), those international teams know how to win.
4. You don't have to be successful to be an NBA general manager. In case you missed it, Chris Wallace, the GM behind the Vin Baker trade, the Rodney Rogers trade, and the Jerome Moiso and Kedrick Brown drafts, was hired to be the GM of the Memphis Grizzlies. Did I mention that Wallace has been the GM of the Celtics for 10 years and the current incarnation of the Celtics won 24 games this year and 33 last year? How does this guy get hired again? No really, how does this happen? It's like hiring the designer of the Hindenburg to build a hot air balloon or Ruben Patterson to drive your babysitter home. This is really just preposterous, I will never understand this, never. And sorry Memphis, but you probably don't deserve an NBA team anyway.
5. Kobe Bryant is more than just a man who likes to forcibly go back door on hotel workers. Kobe is an enigma, wrapped in a riddle, put inside of an egomaniac, and sprinkled with a bit of the crazies. He is the most dominant player in the league, the biggest prima donna, and now the biggest whiner. He wants to be traded, he wants to stay in LA, he just wants to be loved, right? Kobe has changed his mind more times this week about wanting to be traded than Floyd Landis has alibis. Kobe saw the attention that LeDong was getting in the Finals and decided he needed to do something stupid enough to get him back into the limelight. So he wants to be traded out of LA, not realizing that without LA, he is Jason Richardson with a better jump shot. Good luck Kobe. Who is handling your PR, Britney Spears' manager?
6. People hate watching a crappy product. Despite the success of All About Jim, Deal or No Deal, and Robin Williams' whole career, I firmly believe that people are generally rational when it comes to what they consider entertainment. Actually, scratch that. Let me take a different angle. More people watched Dancing with the Stars than watched the NBA Finals. The league is so bad right now that some figure skater dude doing a pas de deux drew twice as many viewers as what should have been the pinnacle series in the sport. This is just downright un-American. The NBA needs to fix the playoff system which is flawed right now due to the top seven teams (and growing thanks to Oden and Durant) being in the West. Fix the product and viewers will come. Either that, or make the cheerleaders topless, actually, do that anyway.
7. The refereeing gets worse and worse every year. I swear Violet Palmer is either blind, mentally challenged, or doesn't know the rules of basketball (and as an aside, I find it warming to know that Violet Palmer is an anagram for "male tip lover" and "volatile perm" and please insert your own jokes). I don't know how the refereeing degrades every year but it does. The NBA needs to fix this by either getting their referees to actually read the rule book to understand what constitutes a foul or by letting players call their own fouls like they do on the playground. I mean, could it get any worse? I don't know which has fallen off more, NBA refereeing or Gary Coleman's acting career (and you know what I am talking about).
8. Betting on the NBA is almost impossible when teams are trying to lose. This year was a horrible year to be an NBA handicapper. Every night featured teams that were sitting their best players or playing rotations that didn't make sense. There was almost no way to make money this year unless you bet the second half lines because it was never clear which players would actually be playing on any given night until the opening tip off. That said, your boy AC still managed to win 51.5% of the games he picked for you. His fourth consecutive year over 50%. He had to foul off a lot of curve balls, but he kept you in the game. Next year, when teams go back to trying to win, AC will win you enough money to get your Dirk Nowitzki tattoo removed and to live it up at the fabulous Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas, home of the world famous Inclinator.
Editor's Note: Check out AC's "ASK AC" column during the off-season and please keep those questions (and naked girlfriend pictures) coming in.
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