Lin's Exploits Lead Las Vegas Books to Cut Knicks' Title Odds - BusinessWeek

February 16, 2012, 12:23 AM EST By Erik Matuszewski

Feb. 16 (Bloomberg) -- Jeremy Lin’s revival of New York’s season has prompted sports books to slash the Knicks’ odds of winning the National Basketball Association championship by more than 50 percent.

The Las Vegas Hotel and Casino lowered the Knicks’ chances of collecting their first NBA title since 1973 to 25-1. The Knicks’ future odds had been 50-1 before Lin was inserted into the starting lineup six games ago.

The former Harvard University point guard has since become the only player to score more than 20 points and win each of his first five starts since the NBA merged with the American Basketball Association in 1976. The Knicks have won seven straight games overall to improve their record to 15-15.

“They’ve been supported in the last week pretty heavily so the liability adds up,” Jeff Sherman, the LVH assistant sports book manager, said in a telephone interview. “Between the Lin phenomenon, the Knicks on a winning streak, bettering their position and the money we’ve seen coming across the window, it’s a combination that causes them to go down.”

Although the Knicks are in eighth place in the Eastern Conference, their championship odds at LVH are now eighth among the league’s 30 teams.

Lin has been the impetus, revitalizing a team that’s been without All-Star forwards Carmelo Anthony and Amar’e Stoudemire for much of the winning streak. Anthony has totaled six minutes in the past five games because of a groin strain, while Stoudemire returned to the Knicks two days ago after a four-game absence following his brother’s death.

‘Missing Part’

John Avello, director of race and sports operations at the Wynn Las Vegas, said he lowered the Knicks’ odds of taking the NBA title to 20-1 from 30-1 because Lin may be “the missing part” of the offense. The Knicks had lost 11 of 13 games before Lin started seeing extensive playing time with 25 points off the bench in a Feb. 4 win over the New Jersey Nets.

“Now the question is how is Lin and Carmelo and Stoudemire going to mix together,” Avello said by phone from his Las Vegas office. “What’s going to happen when we get all three of them? Is Lin going to get less shots, are they going to go back to the way the Knicks had been playing?”

Lin, 23, wasn’t drafted after graduation from Harvard and then was cut by two NBA teams before being signed by the Knicks on Dec. 27. During their 8-15 start, the Knicks used Toney Douglas, Iman Shumpert and Mike Bibby at point guard before turning to the 6-foot-3 Lin, who was a unanimous first-team all Ivy League selection during his senior year at Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Harvard in 2010.

Lin’s Run

Lin scored 28 points in his first career start against the Utah Jazz on Feb. 6, and then had 23 points and 10 assists in a win over Washington two days later. He scored 38 points against the Los Angeles Lakers on Feb. 10, had 20 points against Minnesota the following day, and two nights ago totaled 27 points and 11 assists in Toronto while hitting the winning three-pointer in the final second.

Against the Sacramento Kings at Madison Square Garden last night, Lin had a career-high 13 assists in a 100-85 win.

“There is a new energy,” Lin said during a Feb. 14 news conference. “Everyone is excited. It’s not because of me. It’s because we’re coming together as a team.”

Online sports book Bovada.lv has lowered its odds on the Knicks to win the championship to 18-1 from 40-1. Now, Bovada’s oddsmakers are instead listing Lin’s odds of winning the NBA’s Most Valuable Player award at 40-1.

Sports books are also listing proposition bets to take advantage of the attention on Lin, whose play has boosted the Knicks’ ticket and apparel sales. At Lucky’s Race and Sports Book in Las Vegas, bettors could wager whether Lin would surpass or fall short of his projected total of 22.5 points and eight assists at home against the Kings. He finished with 10 points after sitting out the fourth quarter.

“Whatever creates interest is worthwhile,” Jimmy Vaccaro, director of sports operations at Lucky’s, said by phone. “In the world we live in, in the five-week stretch after the Super Bowl and before the NCAA tournament heating up in March, we welcome anything that brings any attention to the books.”

--Editor: Jay Beberman, Dex McLuskey.

To contact the reporter on this story: Erik Matuszewski in New York at matuszewski@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Michael Sillup at msillup@bloomberg.net

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