Bulls visit Charlotte to take on Bobcats

Basketball Betting Lines

01/05/2010 - (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - The Charlotte Bobcats have played well at home this season and shoot for their 12th win as the host tonight versus the Chicago Bulls at Time Warner Cable Arena.

Eleven of Charlotte's 14 wins this season have come at home, where it has lost just four times. The Bobcats have won two straight overall and rode the dynamic duo of Stephen Jackson and Gerald Wallace to a 91-88 road victory over LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers on Sunday. Jackson finished with 22 points and made two key free throws in the final seconds, while Wallace contributed 19 points and 12 rebounds for the Bobcats, who had never won in 10 previous road games against the Cavaliers.

"We played great. We had a lot of guys that really played good," said Bobcats head coach Larry Brown. "We defended well; they shot the ball well, especially from three, and we kind of hung in and got a win on the road against a great team."

Raymond Felton added 17 points to help Charlotte finish 2-1 on a three-game road trip and improve to just 3-14 away from home. Jackson, who leads the team with 20.0 ppg, is averaging 29.0 points over the last three contests.

The Bulls hope to rebound from a 98-85 setback versus the Oklahoma City Thunder on Monday at the United Center, as Derrick Rose's 19 points and seven assists weren't enough to extend a four-game winning streak.

Luol Deng finished with 15 points and 10 rebounds, and Joakim Noah also recorded a double-double with 14 points and 10 boards.

"We didn't defend really well in the third quarter," said Chicago head coach Vinny Del Negro.

Chicago, which will also visit Milwaukee and is 3-11 as the guest this season, posted a 93-90 win over Charlotte back on November 7 at the United Center. It has won 13 of the 19 matchups with the Bobcats, who are unbeaten in the past two meetings as the host in this series.

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FOOTBALL BETTING : Crabtree's base deal: six years, $32 million

Football Betting

In the wake of the news that the 49ers have signed receiver Michael Crabtree after an extended holdout, there has been not a hint of the dollars to be paid to Crabtree.

And since this means that his agent hasn't leaked the numbers, it means that his agent feels no specific motivation to do so.

Possibly because his agent isn't all that thrilled to have his name on the deal.

So the numbers will come from sources other than Crabtree's agent. And we've gotten our mitts into them.

Per a league source, Crabtree has signed a six-year, $32 million contract. (The total includes guaranteed money, base salaries, and the one-time incentive based on achieving minimum playing time.)

The deal also includes $17 million in guaranteed money.

As reported elsewhere, the deal can void to five years based on performance triggers, wiping out a final year base salary of $4 million. But they won't be easily reached.

The source tells us that, in his first four seasons (including 2009), Crabtree must either qualify for two Pro Bowls, or he must qualify for one Pro Bowl in one year and he must participate in 80 percent of the offensive snaps in a separate year in which the team makes the playoffs.

In other words, if in 2010 he qualifies for the Pro Bowl and the team makes the playoffs and he participates in 80 percent of the snaps, he'll still need to make it to the Pro Bowl or achieve the 80-percent/playoffs in another season.

Since the chances of Crabtree making the Pro Bowl or participating in 80 percent of the offensive snaps this year is roughly zero percent, he'll have three years to get it done.

And it won't be easy. Frankly, he'll be hard pressed to make it to one Pro Bowl in three years with the likes of Larry Fitzgerald, Calvin Johnson, Anquan Boldin, Steve Smith, the other Steve Smith, Hakeem Nicks, DeSean Jackson, Johnny Knox, Percy Harvin, Greg Jennings, Roddy White, T.J. Houshmandzadeh in the same conference for sportsbook betting.

So, by all appearances, it's a six-year deal. And at $17 million in guaranteed money, the per-year guarantee is a tepid $2.83 million per year.

There's another problem with the deal -- it has no mid-tier incentive package. Instead, the additional $8 million that Crabtree can earn (pushing the max value to six years, $40 million) requires the kind of unrealistic, mega-star performances that no rookie is likely to ever achieve.

So while the contract paid to Packers defensive tackle B.J. Raji covers five years and pays $22.5 million, he has the ability (if he's a solid player) to make up the difference between his base deal and Crabtree's five-year, $28 million haul via the mid-tier incentive package in Raji's deal.

And unless Crabtree meets the performance thresholds necessary to void the sixth year, he'll be stuck under contract for another year at a base salary of only $4 million.

There's one other area of concern with the deal. Crabtree, per the source, received no option bonus. Instead, he has significant money tied to a fairly new device known as a "discretionary salary advance," which unlike an opition bonus is subject to forfeiture if Crabtree decides in a year or two that he wants to hold out for a better deal. (We're also told that the 49ers have included language that would make certain escalators subject to forfeiture, too.)

Meanwhile, the deal falls well short of the mark for which Crabtree and agent Eugene Parker were aiming -- the five-year, $38.25 million contract paid by the Raiders to receiver Darrius Heyward-Bey, the seventh overall pick in the draft.

Even if Crabtree successfully voids the final year, he'll make more than $2 million per year less on average than Heyward-Bey.

Thus, as we explained earlier in the day, this is a deal that Crabtree could have done in July, which would have given him a much better chance of making a contribution to the 49ers during his rookie year.

So while the final outcome can be described as win-win, the broader view suggests that it's really a lose-lose situation.

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