Heat bring in veteran Howard

Basketball Betting Lines

07/20/2010 - Miami, FL (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - The Miami Heat continued their radical roster reshaping on Tuesday by signing journeyman forward Juwan Howard.

Per club policy, terms of the deal were not disclosed. However, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported it is a one-year deal for the veteran minimum of $1.4 million.

"This is a great addition for us," said Heat president Pat Riley. "We feel that Juwan's ability to play both the four and five spot will be complimentary to what we have put together. He also gives us incredible professionalism and is a perfect fit behind Chris Bosh and Udonis Haslem."

The 37-year-old spent last season with Portland, where he averaged 6.0 points and 4.6 rebounds in 73 contests.

Since breaking into the league in 1994 as the fifth overall pick of Washington from the University of Michigan, Howard has racked up 14.3 points, 6.5 rebounds and 2.4 assists per contest in 1,116 NBA games with the Bullets/Wizards, Mavericks, Nuggets, Magic, Rockets, Bobcats and Trail Blazers.

Howard joins previous front-court additions Zydrunas Ilgauskas, Dexter Pittman, Bosh and LeBron James on the new Miami roster as the club looks to win their second NBA title in franchise history.

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What Is the Point Spread?

What are Sports Betting Point Spreads?

In any football or basketball game (the main sports that use point spreads) there are two teams playing against each other.

Those teams, though, are rarely exactly evenly matched – meaning that typically one team has a better chance than the other to win the game. If bettors were allowed to bet on who was simply going to win the game, smart ones would obviously bet on the better team (likely winning more than 50% of the time in the process).

If winning were that easy the Las Vegas and online sportsbooks would stop taking any bets! This is where the point spread comes in: the basic function of the point spread is to balance the likelihood of each team “winning” by adjusting the final score by the point spread. After this adjustment is made you get the Against The Spread result (ATS result for short).

Let’s look at Super Bowl XXXIX, New England Patriots vs. Philadelphia Eagles. Most people believed the defending champ Patriots to be the better team – so if betting were simply based upon which team would win the game, an uneven majority of people would have wagered on New England. But, by using the point spread, the bookmakers adjusted the terms of the bet, evening the proposition so about half the people believed the Pats to be the smart bet, while the other half considered Philly to be the smart bet.

How to Read Point Spreads

New England Patriots -7 vs. Philadelphia Eagles

The better team, called the Favorite, is expected to win the game and must “give” or “lay” points to the weaker team. The favorite is listed with a minus sign and the number of points they are favored by (e.g., New England -7)

In the case of our example, New England must not only win the game, but they must win by more than 7 points for Pats bettors to have a winning ATS result. An Eagles bettor wins his bet either if:

To visit this internet sportsbook go to MySportsbook.com for all your football betting and World Series odds.