Johnson agrees to become Nets head coach

Basketball Betting Lines

06/09/2010 - Bristol, CT (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Avery Johnson has confirmed that he has come to a verbal agreement to become the next head coach of the New Jersey Nets.

Johnson will return to the sidelines after a two-year absence and inherit a team that compiled the worst record in the NBA last season at 12-70, which included a history-making 0-18 start.

"We've come to a verbal agreement and hopefully the Nets will have an official announcement tomorrow," Johnson told ESPN's Hannah Storm. "But, yes, I am headed to New Jersey."

"You look at a team that won 12 games, so the sky's the limit," Johnson continued. "There's so many great possibilities and so much potential here."

The 45-year-old Johnson was fired from his first head coaching job after the Dallas Mavericks' ouster from the first round of the playoffs in 2008 and has been working as an analyst at ESPN since then.

Ironically, that post-season defeat was orchestrated by his hometown New Orleans Hornets, who earlier this week spurned Johnson to hire Portland Trailblazers assistant coach Monty Williams to fill their head coaching vacancy.

Johnson led the Mavs to a 194-70 record during his three-plus regular seasons, the best winning percentage (.735) in league history, but his postseason mark was 23-24, including losses in 12 of their last 15 playoff games.

The 16-year NBA veteran, who spent most of his career in San Antonio, took over for Don Nelson with 18 games remaining in the 2004-2005 season and the team finished 16-2. The Mavericks reached the second round of the playoffs that year before falling to Phoenix.

"The Little General" guided the Mavs to a 60-22 record and their first NBA Finals appearance in 2005-06, earning Coach of the Year honors. Dallas jumped to a 2-0 lead in the Finals against Miami, and looked like it was on the verge of finally bringing outspoken owner Mark Cuban his first championship.

It all went downhill from there, in terms of postseason success, as the Heat came back to win four straight and the NBA title. Cuban inked Johnson to a five-year extension that offseason, which was scheduled to keep him in Dallas through the 2010-2011 season.

The 2006-07 season included a franchise-best 67-15 record, but it ended with the eighth-seeded Warriors, coached by none other than Nelson, upending the top-seeded Mavs in six games, becoming the first No. 8 seed to win a seven- game series.

New Jersey fired head coach Lawrence Frank on November 29 after the first 17 losses and replaced him with then-general manager Kiki Vandeweghe for the remainder of the season.

Vandeweghe was removed from the position by new owner Mikhail Prokhorov when he officially purchased the team last month.

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SPORTS BETTING - Tennis is an underrated and under-utilized bettors' sport.

Ten years ago, at just about this time, I called Alan Boston in Vegas and left him a voicemail that went something like this (abridged version): "Hey Alan, Chad Millman from ESPN The Magazine calling. I want to do a book about wise guys, you in?"

A couple weeks later I got a message back (abridged version): "I don't know, maybe," Boston said. "Call me and we'll talk about it. But not later today. I got $1,000 on Andre Agassi to win the French Open at 40-1, and he's in the finals."

Here's what happened next (abridged version): Agassi won his tourney. Boston won his $40,000. I wrote sportsbook.

In the ten years since, how much has been wagered on the big-time tennis events? Put it this way: The Nevada Gaming Commission doesn't even track the number year by year because it's so small.

"Tennis makes up about one-tenth of one percent of our take," says Lucky's bookmaking boss Jimmy Vaccaro. "The last big golf major we probably had $100,000 worth of bets. In tennis, we might have written two big tickets."

Tennis' lack of popularity amongst the American bettoratti is no surprise, really. For starters, the biggest sports betting holidays -- the Super Bowl, the NCAA tourney -- are must see TV. People, at least the degenerates I know, plan vacations around watching those events in Vegas sports books.

But Wimbledon? Doesn't exactly reel in the whales. "Seriously, it's the nuts as an event," says Boston. "But who even knows when it's on?"

Here's another reason that helps explain why golf gets traction, something I call "The Bubbe Theory." My Bubbe is pushing 95 and has cataracts so bad that, to her, even the most crystalline Chicago day is mostly cloudy. But she still listens to the Cubs games, and she still calls me in a fit if she disagrees with something Rick Telander writes in the Chicago Sun Times. She's a sports fan. If she doesn't know you, you're just filling a niche. And niche players, even historically good ones like Roger and Raf, don't drive betting volume. Only the highest profile names attract square money, which inflates wagering totals like a shot of saline to the lips. Bubbe, and the public, loved Agassi, tennis' last cross-the-rubicon, mainstream draw. She also has a crush on Tiger. She's given me standing orders to put a sawbuck on the big cat whenever I walk through a sports book (or mistakenly tap into one via my Internet machine.) That explains why the Masters is getting $100K in action at some books while the four tennis majors might not get that combined this year.

This isn't a case of tennis being a difficult sport to bet. In fact, in Europe, it's probably the second most popular sport for gambling after soccer. Granted, as the WSJ football betting last week and The Mag's Shaun Assael examined in even greater depth last year, that might be because gamblers across the pond see it as an easy game to fix. But it could also be because, over there it holds the kind of sway the big two do over here.

Street corners in Spain are peppered with public courts and kids doing their best Raffy impressions. In some war torn parts of Eastern Europe poverty-stricken kids view tennis as an escape route, like football or basketball here. A couple years ago The Mag's Lindsay Berra wrote a great piece about Belgrade's Jelena Jankovic, Ana Ivanovic and Novak Djokovic. They learned the game as kids while bombs were raining down on their homeland. They practiced in drained swimming pools. Not exactly Nick Bolletierri conditions.

In the United States, casual fans think tennis is played four times a year. But on the tightly packed European continent, national interest in homegrown talent runs deep every weekend. Of the ATP's current top 20 players, only two, tennis betting and James Blake, are American. Fourteen are from Europe, representing six different countries.

No wonder fans from Lisbon to Bhudapest get jacked up for the net game, whether it's Wimbledon or a low-level tourney like the Estoril Open in Portugal (congrats to Spain's Albert Montanes for winning that one, btw). Chances are good that someone representing their flag will not only be playing, but have a shot at winning.

And that's all any bettor can ask for.

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