This is the final edition of the MVP Rankings that will be published from our corporate headquarters in New York this month. As I promised in the preseason, I am heading to Las Vegas to gamble on basketball and write about it on this site, diary style.
Wish me luck.
I know, I know … they build great big hotels in Vegas because of folks who head out to the desert trying to get rich quick. Myself? Not really trying to get rich, just need a break from the Big Apple and want to be one of the pioneers in mixing gambling journalism and basketball journalism. If I hit it big, I add “tout” to my Twitter profile.
Then again, Evan Abrams has been doing some fine gambling journalism work for this site, and now is a good time to look back at a couple of his offseason posts to see how on or off the money the oddsmakers were.
When it comes to the MVP race, you could have gotten LaMarcus Aldridge at 125-1, and Paul George at 35-1. I pity the fool, if there is one, who laid down their hard-earned cash on Kobe Bryant at 25-1. LeBron? Yes, he was the favorite at 1.4 to 1.
Abrams, who can be found on Twitter under the handle @Betropolitan, also published a post on teams’ over/under win totals … and let’s just say that optimistic Philly fans are only five victories away from cashing. Vegas put their over/under at 16.5 in the preseason, and here we are in the second week of January looking at Sam Hinkie’s team tied in the win column with the New York Knicks.
Vegas also had the Portland Trail Blazers at 38.5 wins, and Terry Stotts’ machine of a team should go galloping past that number by the time my excursion ends on the first day of February.
This is going to be new territory for me, but I checked with my editor and learned that company policy at SheridanHoops does not preclude gambling on basketball. The last time I was in Vegas I took a tiptoe into the pool and nearly hit a six-team parlay, nailing five of them.
The parlay will be a big part of my January strategy, and I hope to keep you entertained with stories of my financial triumphs as the money stacks up.
Back in the day when Mark Cuban first started BlogMaverick.com, he predicted that someone would start a basketball gambling hedge fund at some point in the future, and they would find success. Maybe this is the start of something big. Or maybe this is foolishness personified. We shall see.
It’s only money, right?
Onto the rankings … with some big movement from the guy from Portland who Kobe Bryant has been campaigning for.
I wouldn’t have Wade in the top 20 – he can’t really play back-to-back games. Kyle Lowry deserves to be in the conversation.