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AC TITTICOCK'S WEEKLY FREE NBA BASKETBALL PICKS AND WINNERS
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AC's Wagercom 2007-2008 NBA Picks Season Record
Wins: 79 Losses: 77 Ties: 4
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 4 consecutive winning seasons picking NBA games against the spread making 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 2007-2008 WEEK 20 FREE NBA PICKS & COLUMN:
It’s NCAA tournament time and I care about it as much as Michael Jackson cares about females or Eliot Spitzer cares about his wife. With the NBA enjoying one of its best season’s ever, I would much rather watch any West Coast game or any Celtics game than Tennessee against American (and shouldn’t Tennessee fans be put to trial for being Anti-American?).
Anyway, instead of watching the NCAA tourney last night, I watched the Celtics-Mavericks as the Celtics completed the first three game Texas sweep (San Antonio, Houston, Dallas) since Sacramento did it in 2001. The Celtics are now 6-0 against the Texas teams this year and since the additions of PJ Brown and Sam Cassell have only been getting better. There are not enough words to describe how good this Celtic team is playing right now and how many different weapons they have. Before the Cassell acquisition, I was convinced they would lose to a healthy Laker team in the Finals, but not anymore. The Celtics play hard, inspired, and are deeper than a thought by Jack Handey.
Continuing with my distaste for the college basketball tournament, here are the top five reasons why college basketball is inferior to the NBA:
1. The players suck:
There are maybe 10-15 college players a year who are actually good enough to be relevant in the NBA the following year so out of the 320 starters on the 64 NCAA tournament teams, fewer than 5% are actually any good right now. In other words, there is only one almost ready NBA player for every four tourney teams (assuming all of the NBA ready players made the tournament). Underdogs have a chance because everyone basically sucks. I can’t stress this enough, college players are by and large 30% as good as NBA players so why would I want to watch a game played by crappy players when I could watch the pros? It’s like choosing to listen to Vanilla Ice instead of Big Daddy Kane or going to a Ray Romano stand-up show instead of a Chris Rock show. I prefer to watch the best players going at each other rather than ok players trying not to screw up.
2. One and done:
The best team doesn’t necessarily win the NCAA championship. The one game nature of the tournament means if your star player’s case of herpes is acting up or your team for some reason comes out flat for one game, you are screwed. How does this make sense? In the NBA, you have to win a series and no matter what you think, the better team always wins the series (except for last year when the NBA suspended Stoudamire from the Phoenix-Spurs series, but I digress). Sure, everyone likes seeing the underdog win but the problem is the next game the underdog plays, that underdog usually gets smoked and the game is horrible to watch. I want to watch the best teams, and you don’t necessarily get that in a single elimination tournament. If anything, the tournament should be double elimination like the NCAA baseball tournament.
3. False Advertising:
News flash, none of these guys actually go to college. They are enrolled, and they wear the uniform, but I am betting Pauly Shore’s career earnings that fewer than 10% of them actually go to classes. How many of John Calipari’s players are actually going to graduate? Zero or the square root of zero? And how much does Calipari care about that zero percent or less than zero percent? NCAA recruiting is dirtier than a Mayflower Hotel room after Ashley Dupre has been there. Most of the big time players are given some sort of incentive by boosters or coaches to attend the schools they choose and those incentives don’t include the quality of education or a college degree. At least with the NBA it is all in the open. Players are paid to play, it’s that simple. I hate the charade that the NCAA puts ups, it’s less believable than a plot of that awful Monk show, and less disguised than Britney Spears’ vagina.
4. The coaches suck:
I’ll give you $100 if you can name the last NCAA coach that made a decent NBA coach. Go ahead, try. There was Pitino, Calipari, Mike Montgomery, Jerry Tarkanian, Lon Kruger, Tim Floyd, and Leonard Hamilton (though he sucked in college as well) to name a few. Meanwhile, crappy NBA coaches have made good NCAA coaches such as Paul Westphal, Kevin O’Neal, and Jeff Bzdelik. The reason these guys win in college is because in college it is all about recruiting. The actual in game coaching is not as relevant as it is in the NBA. Getting talented kids into school is 90% of winning NCAA basketball games which is why shady coaches like O’Neal and Calipari can succeed. However, when they actually have to draw up Xs and Os in the NBA, they fail miserably.
5. I went to Northwestern University so I have no college basketball team for which to root:
Interestingly enough, Northwestern actually one time had a college basketball program, but I think that was in the early 1940s. Not only has Northwestern never been to an NCAA tournament but the highlight of their basketball program was a first round loss in the NIT to DePaul in 1999.
In his just completed eighth season as head coach, Bill Carmody led NU to a 1-17 Big Ten record and an 8-22 record overall. Again, this is his eighth year. Carmody is now 103-135 in his eight awful years as coach and the team gets worse and worse every year. It is pathetic that NU can not field a winning team given it’s proximity to Chicago, Big Ten affiliation, and the fact that you only need one good player in college basketball to be good.
In the past twenty years NU has seen it’s best players transfer (Rex Walters and Geno Carlisle to name a couple) while it’s worst ones have gained playing time (Dan Kreft and the worst college basketball player in history Jevon Johnson). Not only that but one of their best players in the 1990’s, Dion Lee, not only changed his name to Kenneth in the middle of his college career (likely to hide the fact that he was at NU), but he was also implicated in a point shaving scandal and it was in games that I actually sat through and watched. Imagine how awful it is to watch a terrible team and then imagine how awful it is to find out that terrible team was not even trying. Henry Bienen owes me some kind of tuition refund for that. You hear that Hank? And don’t lay it off on Arnold Weber.
NU’s program is awful and likely cursed (RIP Ricky Bridsong, RIP) and I feel disgraced as an NU alum with their basketball program. If I were new NU AD Jim Phillips, the first thing I would do is fire Bill Carmody and hire Brown’s head coach Craig Robinson. Robinson has not only done well at Brown, and is not only familiar with NU, but is Barack Obama’s brother-in-law and if he can’t parlay that into getting players from Chicago into NU, then we should just shut down the whole program and give the money to our fencing team. NU basketball you disgust me, and stop calling for alumni donations until you figure it out.
FRIDAY NIGHT NBA PICKS
You’re probably all watching the NCAA tournament instead of old videos of Ashley Dupree so for that, I am not sure you deserve these free winning picks. However, I realize sometimes we all can use bad judgment (hence Al Pacino taking a role in Gigli) and so for that, I will win you money anyway as the price of entertainment keeps going up.
Minnesota at Indiana -5.5:
It’s been awhile since we’ve picked against the TerribleWolves™ and awhile since we took Indy and gave the points, but this should be a double digit win for the Pacers despite the coaching of Jimmy O’Braindead. As expected, Indiana is a horrible team and their coach has done nothing to make them better. They don’t play defense, don’t shoot particularly well, and have no depth. In other words, they are a more veteran TerribleWolves™ squad. Minnesota has been playing better of late, but that is because they have been playing Memphis who should be relegated to the NCAA thanks to worst GM in history candidate Chris Wallace. Take the Pacers and hope this is the game Al Jefferson sprains his ankle.
Memphis at New York Over 203.5:
Isiah is going to play his young guys and Memphis is going to play their crappy players, I mean their regular team. Neither team plays defense, neither team plays with energy, and neither team deserves to win. In a match-up of the two worst GMs in history, take the over and hide the women and children.
Sacramento +12.5 at San Antonio:
When healthy, the Kings are a nice little team and from all I read, they will be healthy tonight. The Spurs are just getting out of a funk so there is a chance this will be a blow out, but more than anything I expect a 6-8 point Spurs victory. Kevin Martin has not had success against the Spurs so look for him to break out of that and put up some points. As long as Artest keeps his crazies in check, the Kings should cover.
Seattle at Los Angeles Lakers Over 221:
If you can tease this with the Lakers 18.5, don’t walk, run to your bookie and drop everything in your wallet on it including the four year old condom you never use. Taking the over is a little better than giving 18.5 because you never know how long LA’s scrubs will be in there. However, we do know that the Sonics hate defense and the Lakers love to score (even with hotel workers who say no). Take the over and root for Kobe to play more than twenty minutes.
Saturday Free NBA Picks:
A 3-1 night last as we lost the Sacramento-San Antonio game by ½ of a point. Tonight I will do better for all of you so you can make up for having UConn in your NCAA brackets. I really haven’t ever seen a worse performance from a top 4 seed than I did from UConn yesterday. They should be ashamed, like the entire management team of Washington Mutual.
Boston at New Orleans Under 187.5:
I have been burned three times in a row taking the under with the Celtics but I am determined to win on this bet. The Celtics have no business winning this game, and should get blown out, except for the fact that they are the best team in the league, play hard every night, and should be relatively healthy. I really have no idea who wins as my brain tells me New Orleans but my gut tells me Boston. So take the under and hope for a defensive battle.
Seattle +20 at Utah:
I simply don’t care about any of the particulars of this game. I know Utah has the best home record and I know Seattle is worse than Jennifer Connelly’s acting but I will never ever ever pass up 20 points in an NBA game unless a team is playing with only four players or Isiah Thomas is involved. Take the Sonics and root for them to play 15 minutes of defense, that’s all it really takes. And yes I know they lost by 52 to Denver last Sunday and 25 to the Lakers last night (and if you would have bet the teaser on that like I told you, it’d be all champagne, lobster tails, and Ashley Dupre for you right now).
Portland at LA Clippers Over 192:
They played last night and combined for 209 so they just have to be about 8% suckier in order to lose this game. While I detest taking the bet that won the night before when two teams play each other in back to back games, I don’t think these teams got 8% worse by flying to LA (though if they were out until 4am banging Lindsey Lohan, then perhaps they did). Take the over and root for Brandon Roy and Corey Maggette to forget to play defense. By the way, the fact that Dan Dickau is now starting for the Clippers should be a plus since he plays defense like OJ searches for the real killers.
New Jersey +9 at Philadelphia:
New Jersey is complete garbage, just a putrid, terrible, overrated team. Philadelphia is the opposite as they play hard every night. That said, the Sixers are not winning by double digits. They’ll win, but it will be closer. The Nets need a victory tonight so they should play with some effort so take the points and hope the Sixers are lethargic and overconfident.
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