Programming Guides

The Cleveland Browns was that their offense came out swinging on Saturday night, scoring 20 points in the first quarter en route to victory. Browns QB Derek Anderson played well, while the Detroit Lions rookie signal caller Matt Stafford struggled mightily as the Browns easily took a 27-10 decision in NFL preseason action. Both teams are now 1-1 in the preseason.

Anderson led the Browns to their first offensive touchdown in seven games, and left the Cleveland QB battle between himself and Brady Quinn a tossup. He gave a fairly positive assessment of his play in postgame interviews:

“I thought things went well. I played all right. I made some good throws and a couple I wish I could have back. It was an opportunity and I was happy to go out there and play well while I was in.”

Quinn entered in the second quarter, and was only 3 of 5 for 29 yards. After the game, Browns coach Eric Mangini deflected comments on which signal caller had the upper hand for the starting job:

“I’m really not going to assess it that way now. We’ll keep rolling along and move into next week and see where it goes.”

The NFLs first overall draft pick, Lions QB Matt Stafford threw an interception on his first play from scrimmage and finished with 34 yards on 5 of 13 passing. He tried to maintain an upbeat tone in his postgame comments:

“That’s what football is. You’ll play good some weeks and bad some weeks. The tough part about preseason is you get your allotted amount of plays. You can have a bad 25 plays and not get a chance to come back and fix it and make it right in the second half.”

Lions coach Jim Schwartz has the unenviable task of trying to turn around a team that went 0-16 last season and on this night had to deal with the fallout of a fight during warm-ups between his own players. Tight end Carson Butler and Dewayne White went at it before the game. Schwartz sounded relatively unfazed by the fracas:

“I’ve never seen that before.The thing I like about it is they were competitive and going hard. I came in and said, ‘Some of y’all thought the game started at 7 o’clock instead of 7:30.’ Obviously that’s something that shouldn’t happen and it’s already been addressed.”

Providing a good example of the lack of chemistry on a losing football franchise, White is still holding a grudge :

“We’ll probably have to go at it one more time when we’re not playing a game — next week sometime. There’s going to be bad blood between us.”

The Lions will continue their NFL preseason slate next Saturday night as they welcome the Indianapolis Colts to Ford Field. Cleveland will also play at home, with the Tennessee Titans providing the opposition. Both teams will open the NFL regular season on Sunday, September 13th with Cleveland hosting the Minnesota Vikings and the Lions traveling to New Orleans to take on the Saints.

Ross Everett is a well known freelance writer, he wrote the definition of what is what is price per head or also know as what is pay per head or per head. He is a staff handicapper for OddsBay where he is responsible for providing daily reviews. In his spare time he enjoys fine dining, falconry and scuba diving. He lives in Las Vegas with four dogs and a pet coyote.

Many serious sports bettors consider the futures wager the province of rank amateurs trying to go for the big killing. They’re the sports betting equivalent of the wanna-be stock investor who always gripes if only I had bought Microsoft when they went public. They’re not the type who’ll do the work to grind out profits in the market, nor are they forward thinking enough to find the next big company to go public. They’d rather lay some money on a high priced dog and hope for the best, which seldom (if ever) occurs. Right now at some sportsbooks a $100 bet on the Cincinnati Bengals to win the 2010 Superbowl will pay back $10,000. The problem is that the true odds of Cincinnati winning the Superbowl are probably in the range of 50,000 to 1 which makes the +10000 you’re getting in this bet a bad value from the get-go.

For the more serious bettor, there’s a number of obvious problems with futures wagers. They require that your wagering ‘capital’ be tied up for months. Furthermore, once you’ve placed your bet you’re at the mercy of injuries, suspensions, trades and the other numerous factors that can spell defeat for a sports team. It’s no simple task keeping up with these variables on a day to day basis, and predicting them over a longer term is the province of psychics and not sports handicappers.

So futures plays have no relevance to a serious approach to sports handicapping? Not necessarily. It’s crucial to think of the sports betting discipline in terms of value. Used properly, futures wagers are frequently a good way of maximizing line value and finding overlay situations. Here are some ways in which future wagers can be successfully leveraged.

Futures can be a good way to leverage value on propositions where your knowledge is greater than the bookmaker’s. For example, many sports books offer betting propositions on entertainment oriented events like the Academy Awards. A handicapper who pays close attention to the movie industry and Hollywood news can stay one step ahead of the linesmaker.

Every year some sportsbooks start to take action on the big Academy Awards categories like Best Picture and Best Director well before the actual nominations are released. If you can stay up-to-date on the buzz surrounding certain films you can get substantially better value than if you wait until after the nominations are released.

Making the Academy Awards an even better candidate for futures wagers is the nature of the film business itself. The release schedule for films is set well in advance, and after the year end cut off date no ‘surprise’ releases can sneak in to consideration. At this point, its relatively easy to narrow down the serious contenders and with some work to come up with a ‘short list’ of Oscar candidates.

It’s also possible to leverage value in the ‘stick and ball’ sports with future wagers. There are obviously more variables in sports than in the entertainment industry and the top teams are never going to be found ‘under the radar’. For example, you can already bet that the Patriots will win the 2010 Superbowl but you’ll be hard pressed to find a value price on such a popular team with the general public.

The place to find value in this sort of proposition is to look at the less obvious teams. A few years ago an associate of mine took positions on several teams NHL that started slowly, including the Calgary Flames at 40/1. By the end of the regular season they were down to prices as low as 5/1 or 6/1.

This play wasn’t based on any sort of certainty that this team would win the Stanley Cup, but rather on the value they presented. In other words, the true odds of this dark horse Cup win is more in the range of the current price so the 40/1 is a clear overlay. Once the playoffs begin, this sort of positional play offers a lot of options to hedge and to lock in a profit.

Don’t forget the field. Many bettors dismiss plays on the field in a futures wager out of hand, thinking that the wager represents all of the entrants not good enough to justify an individual price. If you pay attention, however, you can frequently use a field wager to your advantage. Shortly after Dale Earnhardt’s tragic death at the 2001 Daytona 500 I found a sportsbook that was offering a field wager on the NASCAR rookie of the year award at 15/1. Richard Childress Racing hadn’t officially announced Harvick as the fulltime replacement for Earnhardt, but the word on the streets strongly suggested that would be the case. I knew that Harvick was a talented young driver (he was the 2000 Busch Series rookie of the year), but the unique situation with a rookie driving for one of the best financed and most experienced teams in the sport was too good to pass up. I made the bet on Harvick at just the right time, since after he was announced as the replacement for Earnhardt the line dropped to 5/1. After he won his first race (in his third race) the line dropped to 2/1 and by mid season the field was a -250 chalk.

Clearly the Harvick play was a ‘best case scenario’ but there are other instances where value can be had on ‘the field’. While sportsbooks have learned a lot about NASCAR in recent years, up until a few years ago it was frequently possible to find a ‘field’ bet on road course races that included the ‘specialists’ that teams frequently hire for these events. In other words, it was possible to bet a group of road course ‘ringers’ such as Ron Fellows, Scott Pruett and Robbie Gordon with one wager. Again, you have to keep your eyes open and be ready to act quickly to take advantage of these rare opportunities.

Don’t forget to shop around for the best wagering value. This is true with any sports bet, but particularly so with futures wagers as the prices you find will vary much more than a typical pointspread. A little bit of effort can easily reveal a more advantageous price, meaning greater line value.

Ross Everett is a well known writer specializing in price per head, horse racing, travel and fencing. He is a staff handicapper for Anatta Sports where he is in charge of providing daily how to become a bookie to a number of websites and broadcast media outlets. He lives in Las Vegas with three dogs and a wombat.

The chief culprit causing the present environmental problem is the human being. So who’s to blame, the uninformed malaise of the masses or the unrelenting pursuit of profits at all costs by the huge businesses? At the end of the day, Joe Soap is accountable for most of the irresponsible and wasteful use of our natural resources. The nature of things is, unfortunately, that the general populace usually swallows the spin put out by the powers that be. While much of the ecological balance has been affected by global warming, the impact on the ecology can be lowered by people by taking certain options.

There is much to be attained from carrying out solutions proposed by the green movement. Going green seems like the only feasible alternative available to protect the earth. The situation, generally, will not become reversed, but the main part of the crisis can be avoided or at least reduced to a certain extent. People can at least forestall further damage to the environment by following and sticking to eco-friendly principles. Several pre-requisites exist that should be fulfilled before we can have a less polluted, more sustainable environment.

Rejecting the use of expendable materials, buying local produce to shorten the supply chain, adopting a meat-free diet and finding ways to re-use green waste are but several of these things. It’s basically only a matter of each of us resolving to maintain a conscious aim to execute those choices. Wiser and less wasteful consumption of electricity and water are required if the ecological balance is to be regained. The climbing level of CO2 gas in the atmosphere has been the cause of the environmental problem. The situation is worsened by the ongoing proliferation of mechanized means of production, in factories and on farms, all reliant on fuel or electricity and adding to the carbon emissions problem.

Masses taking to the streets over high food prices and shortages in supply, weather extremes not experienced for many decades, water being spoken of as the next oil and many recent natural catastrophes are all triggered by global warming. All the signals point to a worsening situation, requiring aggressive intervention to stay the decay. The most apparent thing to do is to persuade individuals that the best hope for the salvation of the earth, and ultimately human life, is embracing green living. So as to make a great impact on the world overall, a start needs to be made, and that is with small things. The media is evidently best-placed to take on the job of swaying the public that any step towards greener living is noteworthy and will make a huge impact.

If the masses don’t react appropriately, it may well be that we find that we have run out of choices. To keep the environmental problem from ruining everything, it is time to bring back the lost conscience concerning the planet. If people are unwilling to face facts and do their part in preserving the environment, how much time does the world have? The outlook for our future generation is a hopeless one, if humans continue along the path set by the present generation.

If you are frustrated with Pharmacy Technicians, then you may not know about this highly effective method to Enrolling as a Pharmacy Technician, yet. You do not have to face frustration with Pharmacy Technicians any more – you need this now, not later.

Presently, the most expected and promising MMO which is expected to introduce new ideas and to divide the current death grip of current market is the guild wars 2 release date. It is therefore experiencing amazing speculations. It has left many people with the question of when the launching time will be.

Sincerely speaking, no one is aware of when that time will be. Apparently, this day remains to be a mystery even to the developers themselves. Therefore everyone is left to wonder and speculate on it. It is majorly because of the development process used. They use the iterative development process. It involves testing and trying every single constituent of the hyped game as early as they can.

The probing is carried out to try and find out the operation of elements. Sometimes it becomes unavoidable to redevelop those parts which fail to properly function. It is in the aim to achieve perfection or something close to that. This kind of probing the best way used when developing such kind of sophisticated software. It is slow and time consuming which explains why it becomes tricky to foretell the date with high accuracy.

Currently they are courageous enough to say that some parts are completed and up to standard. They are even prepared to talk about them. The impediment they are facing still remains to be the main systems which include the guilds and crafting. These components are still under the development process. This makes the date to remain quite foggy.

However, all is not lost with the speculations surrounding the release date. It is probable that you make accurate and right guesses. You can be fight or wrong. But when you make use of some information, you stand a high chance of being accurate. And if you were not informed, then know that the beta of the expected guilded wars 2 were likely to start in the second quarter for the previous year (2011).

The implications are that the launch was to be from then onwards. The only setback has been the numerous probing tests carried out on the game. The closed beta test is a full part of the testing segment instead of a disguised demo like in the other games. To add on to this, there were expectations for the release of star wars. It was set for the fourth quarter of last year (2011). To avoid the clash of the dates, the developers of the guilded wars 2 had to postpone their own.

Taking into an account other possible source of rivalry is the wow. If you can trace the previous expansions, it is quite evident that the newest expansion is set to be launched in the third and fourth quarter of this year. It will be a spell for doom for the new MMO in the event that they try to release on the same time.

Guild wars are most likely aiming at taking on the market when their rivals are out of scene. This is a scheme aimed at making the game the most popular without any compromise. This therefore leaves the expected date for guild wars 2 release date be precisely around April and June of this year(2012).

The highly anticipated Guild Wars 2 game is due to be released in 2012. You can find out the latest news at: http://guildwars2-releasedate.com/

The NBA All Star game was played without a couple of high profile participants this year as the Los Angeles Lakers’ Kobe Bryant and Philadelphia 76ers’ Allen Iverson would not play due to injury. Kobe and ‘AI’ were the latest in a string of injuries to All Star players that also claimed Portland’s Brandon Roy and New Orleans’ Chris Paul. The NBA has been much more strict about attendance at the All Star game since a number of players skipped out with dubious injuries.

Kobe Bryant has been plagued with minor injuries all year, but missed the Lakers’ last three games prior to the All Star contest due to an ankle sprain. Los Angeles is hopeful that by not playing in the game that Kobe will be able to return to action immediately after play resumes following the All Star break. Bryant did travel to Dallas to participate in All Star game festivities. Kobe is always up for a party, and reportedly had a fabulous time in Dallas over the weekend.

Iverson has missed Philadelphia’s past five games due to an illness suffered by one of his young children. Unlike Kobe, Iverson wasn’t expected to be in Dallas this weekend due to the nature of his situation. It’s debatable that Iverson deserved an All Star game nod in the first place. He quickly wore out his welcome in Memphis to start the year, and eventually landed back in Philadelphia where he’s averaged 14.4 points per game since his return. He was voted in to the starting lineup by NBA fans, and this renewed calls from the media to revise the procedure for selecting All Star game participants. Unfortunately, many of the All Star voters are dimwits and pick players based on their ‘name recognition’ rather than their in-season performance.

Jason Kidd of the Dallas Mavericks was chosen to replace Bryant in the Western Conference lineup, while New York’s David Lee was the East’s fill in for Iverson. The West already had two ‘fill ins’ named to their roster as Denver’s Chauncy Billups and the LA Clippers’ Chris Kaman took the place of Chris Paul and Brandon Roy respectively.

NBA betting enthusiasts had several options on the menu beginning with the annual ‘rookies vs. sophomores’ game on Saturday. The Sophomores were a -12 point favorite with the total set at 245′ but were crushed by the rookie team.

Ross Everett is a widely published freelance writer and respected authority on MLB free picks. His writing has appeared on a variety of sports sites including sportsbooks and NBA free picks sites.

Here’s a word of advice to future opponents of Bobby Lashley–don’t make fun of his background in professional wrestling. Mike Cook found that out the hard way in the co-main event of the Maximum Fighting Championships MFC 21: Hard Knocks event. After spending the run up to fight week making fun of Lashley’s tenure in the WWE, Cook lasted a mere :24 seconds before being choked unconscious via a guillotine choke.

Perhaps Cook felt he was creating some sort of self doubt in the former WWE superstar by suggesting that he was out of his element in a real fight, but he turned it up a notch at the weigh in and in his ring entrance by donning a Mexican Lucha Libre mask. That clearly incensed the massive 64 250 pound Lashley, who despite his inexperience in MMA is hardly the sort of individual prone to losing bowel control at the prospect of a fight.

Even after the opening bell rang, Cooks arrogant approach to the fight continued as he immediately clinched with his opponent as if he had no regard whatsoever for Lashley’s strength. Lashley immediately locked in a guillotine choke and basically yanked Cook down to the mat by his head. Once on the canvas, Lashley cinched it in deeper as Cook flopped around”partially in an effort to escape, partially in an involuntary muscle reaction as he sunk into unconsciousness.

After the fight Lashley gave his opponent a hug and flashed his trademark megawatt smile as if to say I told you so. In his postfight interview, however, he did slip in a final verbal jab toward his vanquished opponent saying that he didn’t come to play and that he is all business.

Despite the fact that mixed martial arts and professional wrestling have been interwoven from the beginning, the American Top Team trained Lashley has been singled out by less knowledgeable fans for his tenure in the WWE. Against his next opponent, Bob Sapp, hell be facing a foe that has also spent some time in the worked environment of professional wrestling. In addition to his legit fighting experience in K-1 and PRIDE, Sapp has worked for several Japanese pro wrestling organizations and briefly held the prestigious IWGP Championship. The IWGP title has been held by pro wrestling legends such as Keiji The Great Muta Mutoh, Antonio Inoki and Tatsumi Fujinami, as well as reigning UFC heavyweight champion Brock Lesnar.

Even though Sapps days as a serious fighter are long past and he likely spends less time in the gym during a given year than Lashley does in a month, he does present an element of danger. Hes still got decent punching power, and his sheer bulk will be a challenge for Lashley who could give up as much as 100 pounds come fight night. Still, Sapp’s only victories in several years have been against overmatched and/or outsized opponents. Sapp remains a hugely popular personality in Japan, however, and simply by fighting him Lashley’s marketability in the lucrative Japanese fight sport market increases significantly.

Ross Everett is a freelance sports writer and highly respected authority on MLB free picks. His writing has appeared on a variety of sports sites including sportsbooks and NBA free picks sites.

Betting preseason NFL games never fails to elicit an irreconcilable difference of opinion among sports betting enthusiasts. Some consider it a very poor wagering opportunity, while others maintain that there’s no better moneymaking opportunity in sports than pro football’s preseason. The truth is probably somewhere between the two extremes–NFL preseason betting must be approached with caution and discipline, but offers the potential to make a tidy profit before the regular season kicks off.

The opponent of preseason wagering would suggest that its a bad wagering opportunity by its very nature alone–simply stated, the games don’t count meaning that the motivation and focus of individual teams is always in question. It’s hard enough to identify teams that are in a desirable ‘spot’ during the regular season, the often conflicting agendas of personnel evaluation, playbook testing, and injury prevention found in the preseason makes it impossible. All told, this uncertainty makes it very undesirable to get financially involved with preseason NFL games.

But like the old saying goes “every dark cloud has a silver lining”. And the divergent agendas at play in preseason football can be seen as precisely why it is a good wagering opportunity. For example, say the Superbowl champion Pittsburgh Steelers are set to play an ‘also ran’ team like the Houston Texans. By regular season standards, the Steelers would almost certainly be favored. In the preseason, however, they’ll often have a different agenda for the individual game. A “better” team has more concern about protecting key players. and usually has fewer personnel decisions to deal with. They don’t need to worry about implementing coaching changes, or creating ‘team chemistry’. As a result, ‘better’ teams frequently approach preseason games as a mere annoyance.

NFL ‘doormats’, meanwhile, have a markedly different agenda to their more successful counterparts. They’ve often got heated competition for starting positions or key back up roles. They’ve often got new coaching staffs that players want to impress. Most significantly, they’re in great need of establishing a winning attitude. A win against an elite team in a ‘meaningless’ preseason game often has a much greater value to this type of team than to a playoff contender.

Even teams that put a low priority on preseason games don’t want to lose them all. For this reason, a longterm winning situation has been to bet on teams that lose their first two preseason games outright. Over the past twenty years, 0-2 teams in this spot have produced a winning percentage right around 60%.

There may be no greater determining factor of a team’s preseason success than the philosophy of their head coach. Some coaches just don’t like to lose *any* game, and usually these hyper-competitive teams are good preseason bets. Bill Parcells, for example, was legendary for his serious approach to preseason games. The coaches that he mentored like the NY Giants’ Tom Coughlin have to some extent carried on this legacy. While the “good” preseason coaches are often reflected in the pointspreads assigned to their team, a motivated team is almost always worth a look.

The smart preseason handicapper makes use of the Internet, and more specifically uses it to follow the local sports media of NFL teams. During NFL preseasons, teams’ beat writers are anxious to write stories and need to fill articles but have little in the way of “real” news to write about. As a result, a handicapper can frequently find valuable details like a coach’s goals for the game, playing time for key players, and specific strategies that will be implemented. Occasionally, coaches will come out and say that they’re more interested in evaluating certain players for certain positions than they are in the outcome of the game. A thorough evaluation of this type of media coverage can often produce not only teams to play “on”, but teams with priorities other than winning to play “against”.

In conclusion, there are certainly strong opportunities for profit in NFL preseason wagering but its essential to understand that it cannot be approached in the same manner as the regular season. And, as always, its important to remember that there will be more strong opportunities down the road and that discipline and rigor in handicapping is just as crucial in the preseason NFL as it is at any other time of the year.

Ross Everett is a freelance writer specializing in price per head, horse racing, travel and jousting. He is a staff handicapper for Anatta Sports where he is in charge of providing daily how to become a bookie to a number of Internet and broadcast media outlets. He lives in Las Vegas with three dogs and a wombat.

After losing the services of starting goalie Roberto Luongo for the indefinite future with a broken rib, the Canucks may have breathed a sigh of relief too soon after backup goalie Andrew Raycroft’s performance in his first game in relief. After an excellent effort in an overtime victory over Los Angeles, Raycroft was torched for four goals in two periods before being pulled from the game. Corey Schneider, recently recalled from Manitoba of the AHL, played the third period in net giving up three more goals as Anaheim cruised to a 7-2 victory. The Canucks scored twice in the first five minutes of the game to lead 2-0 before giving up seven unanswered goals.

Anaheim has struggled to a 4-6-1 record this season, but rewarded their backers who chose to lay the -164 price as home favorites with the Ducks. The Canucks evened their record on the season at 7-7 with the loss. The 9 combined goals put on the board sailed OVER the posted total of 6.

The Ducks snapped a four game losing streak with the offensive outburst. Corey Perry and Bobby Ryan each tallied two goals and an assist in the lopsided victory. Mike Brown had the eventual game winning goal in the second period with his first career shorthanded marker, and even enforcer George Parros got in on the act with his first goal of the year. Jonas Hiller was sharp in goal for Anaheim, stopping 36 of 38 shots in the victory.

Vancouver’s problem this season has been not getting enough shots on goal and giving up too many. In the shootout victory over Los Angeles on Thursday, they were outshot 29-12 in regulation. They’d been kept in a number of games they should have lost due to the goaltending virtuosity of Luongo, and this game didn’t bode well for his absence. This was only the second time in eight games Vancouver has allowed more than two goals, a testimony to the ungodly skill of Luongo more than their defensive tenacity. They actually held a 38-34 shots on goal advantage despite the one sided tally on the big scoreboard.

Raycroft is expected to be back between the pipes for Vancouver’s next game, a Sunday home date against the Colorado Avalanche. The Canucks will host the New York Rangers on Tuesday night before a road game against the Minnesota Wild on Thursday. Anaheim will play at Phoenix on Saturday night before returning to the Honda Center for the next two games. They’ll host the defending Stanley Cup champion Pittsburgh Penguins on Tuesday.

Ross Everett is a freelance sports writer and highly respected authority on MLB free picks. His writing has appeared on a variety of sports sites including sports news and NFL free picks sites.

When legendary quarterback Brett Favre announced his return to the NFL from what has become a seemingly annual flirtation with retirement, many second guessed the Minnesota Vikings’ decision to sign “The Gunslinger”. On Sunday, Favre and the Vikings answered those critics in the best way possible-with a lopsided 34-3 beatdown of the Dallas Cowboys. Favre threw 4 touchdown passes in the victory and the Vikings’ defense sacked Dallas QB Tony Romo six times in the blowout. Minnesota will now face the New Orleans Saints in the NFC Championship game.

NFL football betting fans also cashed tickets on the Vikings as -3 point home favorites. This was the shortest pointspread of the divisional playoff weekend and many thought that Dallas’ momentum would carry them to victory. The 37 combined points went UNDER the posted total of 45.

After the contest, Favre boasted that a playoff run was a large part of his motivation to return to NFL action:

“”This is what I came back for. Probably the most fatigued I got today was celebrating. I feel like I’m playing the same way. I have the same enthusiasm. As long as I’m out there, the enthusiasm and the passion that you see is real. And I know the guys feed off of that. Fans enjoy that, because it is real and genuine. Today was like this season: It’s been wonderful.”

Former South Carolina Gamecock Sidney Rice caught three of Favre’s touchdown passes:

“Same ol’ Brett. He’s doing thing he’s done since he first came in the league: moving around, getting the ball out, breaking tackles and even running down the field and throwing blocks. That just shows you how big of a heart he has.”

Head coach Brad Childress mixed up a bunch of metaphors as he took a swipe at the prognosticators who picked Dallas to win:

“The Tasmanian devils were coming from Dallas that were about to bombard the state of Minnesota and run through us like Sherman through the South. All of us felt it quite palpably.”

Cowboys’ QB didn’t have much to say in defeat:

“Any time you come in with the expectations and goals we set and don’t accomplish them, No. 1, it’s frustrating. Right now, it’s just hard to think the season is over.”

Cowboys’ head coach Wade Phillips had a similar take:

“It’s like the elevator falling from the top. It’s tough when it’s over. If you don’t win it all, you have not reached your goal.”

The Vikings will now head to New Orleans for Sunday’s NFC Championship game against the Saints. Minnesota is a +3′ point road underdog with the total set at 52′. The winner will advance to the Superbowl to take on the winner of the New York Jets/Indianapolis Colts contest.

Ross Everett is a widely published freelance writer and respected authority on MLB free picks. His writing has appeared on a variety of sports sites including sportsbooks and NBA free picks sites.

The Chicago Bulls didn’t win the big prize in this summer’s free agent sweepstakes, with LeBron James opting to sign with the Miami Heat. They’ve made some nice acquisitions despite that, however, and appear to be on the verge of signing well traveled shooting guard Tracy McGrady. McGrady is very receptive to joining the much improved Bulls, though there are a couple of contingencies that need to be worked out before a deal is finalized. ‘T-Mac’ has also met with the LA Clippers and Miami Heat, but a move to Chicago would likely be the best fit for all concerned.

At this point, the major issues to be worked out before a deal is made concerns McGrady’s health and his role with the team. McGrady played only 30 games with the New York Knicks last season as he recovered from microfracture surgery on his left knee.

The secondary issue concerns McGrady’s role on the team and this could be an even greater concern. McGrady has butted heads with coaches and management at various points in his career over playing time and his role on the team. Chicago wants to bring McGrady off the bench, and obviously a contract offer depends on his willingness to accept that role. Indications are that McGrady is willing to accept a reserve role with the team, but the trick is to convince the Bulls of that fact.

McGrady has a high profile advocate in Bulls’ star Derek Rose. Rose reportedly was a big fan of ‘T-Mac’ as a teenager and is strongly in favor of bringing him to the team:

“I think that if he comes along, he could help our team. A player like him, with his experience and how he plays, I think it would help us. He’s a player. If he just gives us half of what he’s got, we’ll be all right.”

“But I know a player like him, he’s going to go out there and give us his all, but he’ll definitely help us if we get him on the team.”

McGrady would be Chicago’s sixth pickup of the off-season, joining Carlos Boozer, Kyle Korver, Ronnie Brewer, C.J. Watson and Kurt Thomas. There’s also reports that the Bulls have been talking to Shaquille O’Neal about joining the team but that would be contingent on him accepting a mid level salary exemption.

Ross Everett is a well known writer specializing in price per head, drag racing, travel and jousting. He is a staff handicapper for Anatta Sports where he is in charge of providing daily how to become a bookie to a number of Internet and broadcast media outlets. He lives in Southern Nevada with three Jack Russell Terriers and a wombat.