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I’m a huge golf fan. I love playing it, I love watching it – especially the majors – especially The Masters and the U.S. Open. So I’m a bit disappointed that Day 1 in 2009 lasted only a few hours before the rain was too much to continue to play. Looked a lot more like a British Open than a U.S. Open where extreme heat is normally the weather headline.

It does bring up an interesting question about what kind of scores we’ll see this year. The forecast calls for wet weather all weekend long so we may be looking at a Monday finish again this year even without a playoff. On an exceptionally long course, the ball running in the fairway is a big help – that will be gone on a soggy course. US Open rough is brutal when dry, when this wet the common belief that a ball in the rough is equal to a one stroke penalty at the Open becomes “I hope it’s only a one stroke penalty” so it gets even more important to hit the ball straight off the tee – like Tiger did to near perfection 2 weeks ago in his win at The Memorial. So two big elements of the game will be tougher than usual but one will be easier. Golfers will experience unusually soft and receptive greens at Bethpage Black. They may need it when firing from 60-70 yards farther back from wet fairways. Should still be a great weekend of golf – just a little longer and probably a little different than we’re used to for a U.S. Open.

Sorry for the golf detour – I know not many of you come to a sports handicappers blogs for golf talk but hey, it’s the U.S. Open and I just can’t stomach talking about the Lakers winning another championship.

Missed opportunities are everywhere.
A great deal on something you’ve been wanting to buy that just ended. Just passing the last bailout exit before you hit huge traffic.

In sports handicapping I miss opportunities sometimes as well. A starting pitcher who has gone 110+ pitches in his previous 2 starts. A back-to-back game in the NBA when the whole team was out at the local bar until 2am last night. Some are easier to spot than others.

Ask Courtney Lee and the Orlando Magic about missed opportunities. Was Courtney Lee’s shot the easiest of the night? No. Was it a VERY good look considering time and situation? Yes it was.
Did the ball coming out of the basket end the Magic’s chances at an NBA Title? Probably so.

The difference between being tied 1-1 (thus the lower seed has stolen home court advantage) and being down 0-2 is rather significant.

In NBA history, 94.2% of the time teams winning the first two at home go on to win the series!
Only once has a team down 0-2 won the series when it’s happened in the NBA Finals!

And when the format of 2-3-2 is used (which I don’t particularly like but that’s another rant) only once has the team with 3 in middle won all 3 games. So unless this rarity happens again (and that’s very unlikely in this series) the Lakers will come back to Los Angeles no worse than needing to win 1 home game in 2 tries.
However, I don’t think it’s coming back to LA for anything more than a parade.
Lakers in 5
Magic win Tuesday, Lakers win the next 2 to take the title.

Well we didn’t get the Lakers v Cavs final many wanted and final I predicted. But I do believe that from a sports handicappers perspective we have some advantages. First, the Lakers are a very popular team and will get a lot of action from “fans” as much as gamblers. This tends to push the line just a bit to favor the Magic as the sportsbooks look to balance this tendency a bit. Adding to this factor is that the Magic remain an under rated team. A lot has been talked about and written about how Orlando was perfect (and maybe only) team to be Cleveland but they aren’t that good. Seems to me if that’s true they are a tough match up for LA as well. So I see value with Orlando plus the points, at least early on in the series. We’ll continue to make our picks looking for this added value with the Magic who few are giving a chance to win the series. We look for the Lakers to simply have too much in the end and win this series in 6 games but no game will likely be easy.

The dream match up of LeBron vs Kobe in the NBA Finals is going take a miracle now. The Cavs go down 3 games to 1 last night in Orlando. In another game that game down to the final seconds and this time LeBron didn’t hit the shot – it was a very tough shot but a decent look. Although tested it appears the Lakers are the superior team and will prevail in the West but it hasn’t been easy. For Cleveland the Magic were just the exact wrong match up and it’s going to cost us the James vs Bryant final we all wanted – not ALL of us I guess, but you know what I mean.

Maybe I’m selling the Cavs short. Maybe they can be the rare breed of team that comes back from down 3 games to 1. They do have home court for 2 of the 3 must win games. The problem is – the games have just been too close to believe the Cavs can find 3 straight wins. I’ll continue to root for the Cavs v Lakers finals (only partially because it’s what I predicted several weeks ago) and enjoy watching Kobe v LeBron.

The Lakers are making my point about the challenges in handicapping sports – particularly NBA basketball. Effort. It is difficult to predict effort, drive and desire. During the regular season this challenge is most prevalent and you’ll see NBA teams essentially “take the night off” and it’s obvious and they get beat. In a long season this may not ultimately matter. This happens in all sports, the degrees and frequency vary but no sport is immune.

One of the reasons we’ve always felt we had more success in handicapping and making picks in the post season is because the effort, or lack of effort, is largely taken out of the game. The Lakers have put it back in. Their 40 point drubbing of the clearly inferior Houston Rockets shows the effort factor in the NBA remains in the playoffs. Games get away, I get that – no win, or loss is ever as big as it ends up. Things get away. But you don’t beat a team by FORTY POINTS unless you are significantly better. Yet, the Lakers are headed to a game 6 in this series.
Why?
They didn’t go 100% every night in the series.