Tag Archives: Joel Embiid

What are the Playoff Expections for the Indiana Pacers?

The Indiana Pacers come into the weekend winners of six of their last seven games. They have three games left to play in the regular season and can be no worse than the fifth seed in the Eastern Conference playoffs.

As the Pacers surge towards the postseason, the same could be said for the Cleveland Cavaliers and Philadelphia 76ers. The Cavs have won nine of their last ten games and the Sixers have won twelve-straight games. Even though the Pacers have been playing great, they have barely kept up with them. They still have a shot at the third or fourth seed if either team loses the next two or three of their remaining games.

Sportsbooks currently have the Pacers odds of winning the Eastern Conference at 50 to 1 and even longer odds of 175 to 1 of winning their first NBA Championship.

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2018 NBA All-Star Weekend Betting Odds & Picks

There aren’t any regular season NBA games to bet on this weekend, but there are plenty of opportunities to lay down some jellybeans on the NBA.

NBA’s All-Star Weekend has some favorable betting odds for their three big skills competitions: Slam Dunk Contest, Three-Point Contest and the Skills Competition.

Some of the better rising stars are in the events and even some All-Stars decided to participate.

Will a young, hungry guy make a name for themselves and win one of the competitions, or will an All-Star show why they are one of the best in the league?

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Joel Embiid May Need Another Surgery

Philadelphia 76ers star Joel Embiid was a breath of fresh air in the NBA this season. He is great at social media, loves to poke fun at the Sixers tanking by owning the nickname ‘The Process’ and he was really, really good at basketball.

He may have only played 31 games this year, but his presence made a huge impact. He was averaging 20.2 points, 7.8 rebounds and 2.5 blocks per game before a partially-torn meniscus sidelined him for the remainder of the year.

Embiid had to sit out two seasons after undergoing two major surgeries on his right ankle. So the Philly fanbase is worried about Embiid possibly going under the knife again.

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‘2016-17 NBA Rookie of the Year’ Betting Odds

This year’s field for Rookie of the Year is wide-open in the NBA after #1 overall pick Ben Simmons suffered a season-threatening foot injury this preseason.

In order to be a true Rookie of the Year candidate, you need to be able to accumulate the kind of ‘sexy’ stats like points and rebounds. It also helps if your team improves by double-digit wins.

I don’t think defense-first players can truly win a rookie award, since voters are mostly just looking at the ‘back of the basketball card’ stats.

Will one of the Philadelphia Sixers win the Rookie of the Year award with Ben Simmons due to miss an extended amount of time?

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2014-15 NBA Team Preview: Philadelphia 76ers

To best explain where the Sixers are as a franchise, they left the 2014 NBA Draft with Joel Embiid (who is expected to miss the entire season) and Dario Saric (who may not play in the NBA for two seasons). Yes, this occurred a year after Philly drafted Nerlens Noel, who sat out all last year recovering from an ACL injury.

The 76ers have made little to no effort in improving their roster for this season. They signed borderline D-league players. Philly is already tanking and haven’t even played a single game.

It will be a long ass year in Philadelphia.

We will be posting a team preview for every team up until the start of the regular season.

Here is the 2014-15 NBA season preview for the Philadelphia 76ers.

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2014 NBA Draft Analysis – First Round

My favorite night of the year has arrived!

I love the anticipation and the speed of the NBA Draft. You don’t have fifteen minutes in-between picks like the NFL and you actually know these players, unlike the NHL and MLB.

If you can stomach two-three hours of Bill Simmons, it will be a fun night.

We give analysis for every pick in the first round of the 2014 NBA Draft.

1. Cleveland Cavaliers: Andrew Wiggins (Kansas) – No surprise here. Cleveland is looking to rebuild and they don’t need a player like Jabari Parker to be an instant boost. They loved Embiid, but they couldn’t risk a #1 overall pick on a player who is a major injury risk.

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2014 NBA Mock Draft: Who Will be #1?

Now that the NBA season is over, let’s focus on the NBA Draft. I personally think the NBA Draft is the best draft in any major sport. There’s usually more trades, the impact of these rookies is usually felt immediately and it doesn’t go on and on like the NFL Draft.

You will begin to hear a lot of rumors about what’s wrong with these prospects. You rarely hear anything positive until a day or two before the draft. Teams know how to leak information to attempt to hurt a player’s draft stock. It’s all smoke and mirrors at this point.

I try to forge through the piles of trash out there and give you where I think the player will be drafted. I personally wouldn’t draft a few of these players in the lottery, but it’s the NBA and there are a lot of bad General Managers in the league.

Here is my 2014 NBA Mock Draft for the first round.

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2014 NBA Draft: Top 20 NBA Prospects

The 2014 NBA Draft is stacked. NBA teams have been tanking all season to get the most ping-pong balls in hopes of landing the #1 pick. Two players in particular have NBA teams drooling, Andrew Wiggins and Jabari Parker.

Not only does this draft have two potential All-Stars, but it’s deep. You could get a player late in the Lottery that could start right away. You don’t see that in most drafts. Actually, the top five players in this draft would have been #1 overall picks in last year’s draft.

Players will begin to announce their intentions to either declare for the draft or stay in school. You have the usual suspects, but there are always a few wild cards that declare, but end up going back to school after the NBA Draft Combine

We list the top 20 prospects in the 2014 NBA Draft.

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2014 March Madness: #2 Kansas vs #15 Eastern Kentucky

We are picking every NCAA Tournament game in an effort to help you fill out your bracket and win your office pool.

Many of the players on the Kansas Jayhawks will be making a living in the NBA. They didn’t dominate college basketball this season, but they are a tough out in the tourney. They will be without Joel Embiid for a few games, but will they miss him against Eastern Kentucky?

Eastern Kentucky had to do a lot of work in their conference tournament to earn an automatic bid. Are they ready for Kansas?

Andrew Wiggins chose to attend Kansas with hopes of winning the NCAA Tournament and head into the NBA Draft as a winner. Can they win without Embiid?

Who do you think will win? We help you fill out your bracket.

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Sweetbob’s Saturday Betting Bonanza

I miss college football, so on Saturdays, I find myself watching everything. I use the word ‘everything’ because I seriously watch any sport that pops up on my DirecTV. At the moment, that means a lot of the Winter Olympics.

As I’m in the vortex of random sports, I find myself doing my fair share of betting. I had a great NFL and college football season and historically, I’m even better at college basketball.

This Saturday is filled with more than luge and figure skating. You have some great college basketball matchups (Syracuse at Duke) and UFC 170.

I pick February 22nd college basketball games against the spread and also pick the winners of tonight’s UFC 170. Will Ronda Rousey defend her title?

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