Free Las Vegas Dollars

We’ll find out soon enough.

After failing to acquire another legitimate player to help Dwyane Wade before the trading deadline expired in the 2010 NBA basketball season, the Miami Heat should consider going to their initial plan of getting a free agent in the offseason.

While the New York Knicks, the Chicago Bulls, the Washington Wizards, the L.A. Clippers, and the Sacramento Kings made a surplus of combined trades to give them major cap relief after the season, the Miami Heat were caught on the sidelines watching their advantage fade away.

Chicago and New York were already expected to make a run for Dwyane Wade, but now they can offer him the chance to possibly play alongside LeBron James, Chris Bosh, Amar’e Stoudemire, or Joe Johnson.

”You pay attention and notice what’s going on around the league because you’re a player in this league, and there’s also a business factor,” Dwyane Wade said of teams looking to join the summer sweepstakes.

”But no team is more important than the team you play for, and seeing your team put itself in position to win at a high level for a long time.”

A Chicago Bulls tandem with Derrick Rose or any of those names would have to be enticing for Wade. If Miami isn’t able to convince him the team will contend next year, the Chicago native would have a hard time saying no to a Bulls offer like that.

Same goes for New York. Would Wade really pass up the chance to…

Related posts:

1. Miami Heat better win the NBA title or Wade leaves Yep, that’s the ultimatum the NBA All-Star has slapped…
2. Should LeBron James join Dwyane Wade in Miami? Yes, another ”where will LBJ go in 2010” talk….
3. Should LeBron James join Dwyane Wade in Miami? Yes, another ”where will LBJ go in 2010” talk….

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Of course, all them trades that happened a few days ago will have a huge impact on who these sportsbooks favor.

The trade deadline this 2010 NBA basketball season has come and gone and while the Cleveland Cavaliers didn’t get Amare Stoudemire like they wanted, they still were able to score Antawn Jamison from the Washington Wizards and Sebastian Telfair from the L.A. Clippers.

”We are very excited to have an experienced all-star player of Antawn’s caliber and character join us,” said Cleveland Cavaliers GM Danny Ferry after making the deal. ”He has the ability to add a special, unique dimension to our team with a strong inside presence and the ability to stretch teams defensively, while impacting the entire court.”

As it stands, online sportsbooks have Cleveland as the odds-on favorite at -110 to win the Eastern Conference and +225 to win the NBA championship. The trade was consummated on Feb. 18 and Jamison made his debut a day later and since then, the Cavaliers are 0-2 straight up and against the spread.

After a game against the New Orleans Hornets on Tuesday night, LeBron James and the rest of the Cavs will hit the road for a two-game Atlantic division swing with games against the Boston Celtics and the Toronto Raptors.

Let’s look ahead to that road trip…

Related posts:

1. Some More Trade Rumors in the 2010 NBA Season We’re letting these out now before the trading deadline…
2. Some More Trade Rumors in the 2010 NBA Season We’re letting these out now before the trading deadline…
3. Some More Trade Rumors in the 2010 NBA Season We’re letting these out now before the trading deadline…

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

We already know who are the starters, now it’s time to familiarize ourselves with the reserves.

The 2010 NBA All-Star Game is just around the corner as the NBA’s midseason classic will officially shift the attention to hoops with football season officially over. LeBron James and Dwyane Wade lead the East as they take on Kobe Bryant and Carmelo Anthony of the West.

As far as the reserves are concerned, we have a few first-timers. Four first-timers come from the Eastern Conference; Rajon Rondo of the Boston Celtics, Atlanta Hawks center Al Horford, Charlotte Bobcats forward Gerald Wallace and 2009 Rookie of the Year Derrick Rose of the Chicago Bulls.

Completing the East reserves are Toronto’s Chris Bosh, Atlanta’s Joe Johnson and Boston’s Paul Pierce.

Rondo is the second All-Star from the Draft class of 2006, joining the Blazers’ Brandon Roy, who earned his third All-Star selection this year. Horford joins the Thunder’s Kevin Durant as the first All-Stars from the Draft class of 2007 while Rose is all alone as the first All-Star from the class of 2008.

Derrick Rose will have a very busy weekend in Dallas. He and his fellow sophomores will take on the rookies in the T-Mobile Rookie Challenge & Youth Jam on All-Star Friday and as the reigning PlayStation Skills Challenge champion, he’ll likely defend his title on All-Star Saturday.

Another first-timer on the East is Charlotte’s Gerald Wallace. With…

Related posts:

1. The Reserves for the 2010 NBA All-Star Game We already know who are the starters, now it’s…
2. Who has better starters for the 2010 NBA All-Star Game? It’s that time of the year when the NFL…
3. Who should be in the 2010 NBA All-Star Game? We know the starters, now it’s time to find…

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Yes, another ”where will LBJ go in 2010” talk.

We’re not even halfway into the 2010 NBA basketball season and yet, people are already trying to figure out where will LeBron James end up once the biggest name in pro hoops land on the 2010 free agency market.

Will LeBron James resign with the Cleveland Cavaliers? Will he finally move to New York? Will he really play for the Cleveland Browns? Well, if he wants to be a world champion, then Miami should be the place he should move to.

Sure, the Cleveland Cavaliers signed more talent this year in hopes of luring James back once the season is over but the fact of the matter is, he won’t win anything in Cleveland. Unless the Cavaliers really get hot soon, their performance at this point of the season really makes you think if that franchise is really motivated to win championships.

The Miami Heat, on the other hand, is probably the team that could give him the best shot at a title. Heck, they already won one when Dwyane Wade was still rolling with Shaq. And if by some stroke of luck that the Heat franchise manages to put Wade and LBJ on one roster, you can just imagine how many championships those two guys can get.

The fact that Dwyane Wade and LeBron James are the best of friends only makes James’ probable union with Wade in Miami all the more possible. And if LeBron wants to finally be rid of powerhouse teams like Orlando and Boston in the playoffs, he needs another superstar for a teammate like D-Wade to get the job done.

Sure, the Cavs got James Shaquille O’Neal this season. Now if…

Related posts:

1. Should LeBron James join Dwyane Wade in Miami? Yes, another ”where will LBJ go in 2010” talk….
2. LeBron James is the 2009 NBA Most Valuable Player This is probably the most surprising but expected result…
3. Dwyane Wade scores career-high 55 over the Knicks That’s a point shy of the Miami Heat franchise…

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Been following this Gilbert Arenas-Javaris Crittenton story over the last few days. You’ve heard about it, I’m sure. Started out as another one of those bizarre-sounding, outside-the-lines incidents in which professional athletes crazily risk their livelihood (or even lives?) thanks to some short-sighted behavior. As it has developed, though, it sounds like it is also turning into one of those not-so-good-for-poker stories. Like we need another one of those.

It was on New Year’s Day that the New York Post excitedly reported “Wizards Gilbert Arenas and Javaris Crittenton pull pistols on each other.” Kind of sounds funny reading that back. These guys aren’t real wizards, obviously. Figuratively or literally. They’re members of the Washington Wizards, the NBA team that used to be nicknamed the Bullets. The nickname was changed starting with the 1997-98 season because, as recently deceased owner Abe Pollin then explained, “Bullets” had negative connotations. Indeed, during the early 1990s our nation’s capital was also frequently referred to as the U.S. murder capital, too.

Thus did Peter Vecsey cheekily begin his New York Post article “Guess they’re still the Bullets at heart.”

The story is quite specific in its reporting that Arenas and Crittenton drew guns on one another in the team’s locker room on Christmas Eve. The dispute apparently was over “a gambling debt,” writes Vescey, who even is able to state that Arenas “went for his gun first” then Crittenton “brandished a firearm as well.” The article cites a friend of Crittenton’s as a source for these details.

ESPN picked up the story that day as well. There the story already has over 2,300 comments by readers. Noticed one comment that first day that read “arenas only shoots 40% so crittenton might have survived.”

Arenas also apparently initially adopted a jokey tone when commenting on the incident afterwards, downplaying its seriousness in messages sent on his Twitter page and in interviews. The jokes have stopped, though, and Arenas yesterday issued a seven-paragraph statement through his lawyer explaining his side of the story.

If you are interested in any of this, you are reading further details elsewhere, so I won’t repeat them all here. As you might imagine, Arenas downplays the severity of the conflict.

Oh, and that “gambling debt”? Yesterday’s New York Times states that “news accounts, based on unnamed sources” are reporting that Arenas and Crittenton “were involved in a high-stakes card game during a Dec. 19 flight from Phoenix to Washington.” Today the Post less cautiously clarifies that the debt at issue was for $25,000 and specifically notes Arenas has a “penchant for high-stakes Texas hold ’em poker.”

A-ha! So what we have here is Trouble with a capital “T.” And that rhymes with “P” and that stands for Poker!

We already knew Arenas was a poker player. Some might remember it being reported back in 2006 that the colorful Arenas — a helluva a scorer when he’s not injured — liked to play online poker, sometimes at halftime of games! “It’s just a mental challenge,” said Arenas, “to keep my mind going.” That was a few months before the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 was signed into law (in October), after which folks stopped talking so openly about playing online poker.

Kind of a bummer, then, the way this story has brought poker into the fray. Like those in The Music Man singing about the inherent dangers of pool, some will instinctively draw a causal relationship here, with poker somehow having started the trouble — whatever it was — that subsequently ensued.

We saw something similar happen with that Michael Phelps story from nearly a year ago, with some wanting to suggest his poker playing somehow directly led to a photo of the Olympian with a bong. (In any event, I think it is safer to speculate that the photo with a bong led to a reduction in Phelps’ poker playing.)

Poker will survive the hit. Lousy timing, though, what with lawmakers right there in River City Washington presently considering what to do about that awful UIGEA.

Related posts:

1. Arenas, Guns and a Joke on Crittenton Gone Wrong Add the fact that the freaking Charlotte Bobcats are…
2. Playing As If Your Life Depended On It Have found myself over on Deuces Cracked here of…
3. Online Casino Players Sending in their Greatest Gaming Stories for Free Credits The November Prop Bets Competition has just wrapped up…

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.