INSIDER 2011-12 NBA PREVIEW:
NEW PECKING ORDER: WEST | NEW PECKING ORDER: EAST | BREAKOUT PLAYERS | BURNING QUESTIONS | BREAKOUT TEAMS | TITLE ODDS
LAS VEGAS -- Jimmy Vaccaro is the dean of Las Vegas bookmakers.
He has pretty much seen it all since coming to Vegas from his native Pittsburgh in 1975 as he has worked up and down the Strip -- including a legendary stint at the Mirage, where he was the only one to book the Buster Douglas upset of Mike Tyson in 1990 -- and is currently the director of sports operations and public relations for Lucky's Race and Sports Books. Ask him how teams in any sport will fare in any situation and he will speak from experience, including how wise guys and squares are likely to bet the game.
Even he is floored by what to expect this NBA season.
"We've never been down this road before," he said as the season was preparing to tip off this Sunday. "We can look at past trends of back-to-back games and East Coast-West Coast travel and some of the other factors that are coming into play with this condensed 66-game schedule, but some teams are going to be playing nine games in 12 days, so there's no history on that. Who knows how teams are going to react?"
But if you think he's afraid to book it, you've got another think coming.
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Chad Millman
Chad Millman, Editor in Chief of ESPN The Magazine, joined The Mag as an associate editor in 1998. A year later he left to write "The Odds" -- about a trio of Vegas bookmakers and wiseguys -- and to find riches working for an Internet company. He made tens of dollars on "The Odds," the web biz tanked and he returned to The Mag. He also worked at Sports Illustrated and wrote some other books, including "Iceman" with Chuck Liddell, "Invincible" with Vince Papale, "Pickup Artists" with Lars Anderson, and "The Detonators." His most recent books are the national bestseller "The Ones Who Hit the Hardest," about the blood feud between the 70s Steelers and Cowboys, written with Shawn Coyne, and the New York Times bestseller "They Call Me Baba Booey", with Gary Dell'Abate.
Millman's daily blog explores the culture of sports gambling; on Mondays and Fridays in the fall, he investigates trends in point spreads related to professional football.
E-mail Chad: Chad.X.Millman@espn.com
Follow Chad on Twitter: @ChadMillman
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