Somebody stop me before I praise the Cleveland Browns again.

Every summer, I end up thinking, “This is the year the Browns finally get over the hump.” And then they don’t. Cleveland is 19-45 straight up and a lame 27-36-1 against the spread over the past four seasons.

Well, here we go again. The Browns had another solid draft, filling several major needs. Will that be enough to put Cleveland back into winning territory? If so, then the Browns should also excel at the pay window. Drafting OT Joe Thomas with the No. 3 overall pick gives them an immediate upgrade at a position that the betting public has yet to truly appreciate.

Trading up for QB Brady Quinn, though, might do the exact opposite. He may or may not be ready right out of the box to take Charlie Frye’s job. But Quinn brings high expectations wherever he goes. His star presence had something to do with the Notre Dame Fighting Irish going 5-7 ATS last year. Then again, the weak Irish offensive line had a lot more to do with it, and Cleveland appears to have addressed its own O-line issues.

If Cleveland hasn’t enjoyed the best offseason in the NFL, then that honor probably goes to the New England Patriots. Tom Brady must feel like a kid in a candy store. He has a shiny new receiving corps to play with: in order of apparent importance, Randy Moss, Donte’ Stallworth, Wes Welker and Kelley Washington.

The Oakland Raiders also did well – although “cutting their losses” by trading Moss for a fourth-round draft pick just underlines how toxic the environment in Oakland had become. Having the fortitude to finally draft a blue-chip quarterback is a big step in the right direction. It’s highly unlikely that JaMarcus Russell is the next Todd Marinovich.

Brush up on your teams and players so you are ahead of the game when you start you NFL betting.

Anyone who doesn’t agree the Detroit Pistons are the best team in the Eastern Conference playoff bracket is just kidding themselves.

Detroit breezed through the Orlando Magic in the opening round and if Game 1 of their second-round series with Chicago means anything, that matchup won’t last long either. The Pistons simply obliterated the Bulls in Game 1 by a lopsided score of 95-69. The Pistons and Bulls looked like a pretty even matchup on paper, but in the opener Detroit outplayed Chicago in every facet of the game. That win clearly anoints the Pistons over the Bulls in the Conference, but what about the rest of the East?

Let’s start with the New Jersey Nets because, really, that won’t take too long. The Nets are lucky to even be in the playoffs, period. Sure, they knocked off Toronto in the opening round, but they didn’t exactly make it look easy. The Nets, to put it bluntly are Vince Carter, Jason Kidd and Richard Jefferson. Take one out of the equation (which isn’t as hard to do as it seems) and the Nets are sunk. Carter has a reputation of coming up short and the Nets will too in the playoffs, at least as long as VC is their go-to guy.

That leaves the Cleveland Cavaliers. With LeBron James in tow the Cavs probably have the best chance of taking away the Pistons’ Eastern Conference crown. Cleveland did almost send Detroit packing in last year’s postseason before Detroit regrouped and throttled Cleveland when it really counted. LeBron James may yet hoist the NBA Championship trophy, but he’s still a year or two – and another player or two – away from even getting out of the East just yet.

The reason the Pistons are so good is because of their balance. Not only do the Pistons do an excellent job of balancing offense and defense, but their roster excels at balancing the scoring output. When you have Richard Hamilton, Chauncey Billups, Tayshaun Prince, Rasheed Wallace and Chris Webber all running down the floor toward you, which one do you expect to score? With the Pistons the answer is all of them, making them incredibly difficult to guard and contain.

NBA playoff odds can be found here.

Somebody’ got some ‘splainin’ to do.

The Dallas Mavericks are going to have one of the worst offseasons any pro sports franchise has endured. Dirk Nowitzki will have to wear a brown paper bag over his head when he collects his MVP award. All because the 7-5 favorites to win the NBA title hit a rough patch and were eliminated in the first round.

Nobody said winning a championship was easy. That’s why you probably wouldn’t have wanted to play the Mavs on the futures market, even if you believed they were the best team in the league. The risk wasn’t worth the reward. The “best” team doesn’t always win.

Now that Dallas is no longer in the mix, the San Antonio Spurs are the favorites to come out of the Western Conference. They’re 7-4 to win the title, thanks in part to their series-opening win over the Phoenix Suns (11-5). Golden State and Utah were tied at 10-1 heading into the first game of their second-round affair.

It’s easy to see why the Spurs have vaulted to the top of the odds table. Teams like Dallas and Phoenix tease with their ability, but have yet to make the leap to true greatness. San Antonio has done it three times since Tim Duncan came to town. A casual bettor would look at this and simply say the Spurs know how to win.

Nonsense. There is a different environment in the NBA playoffs – away crowds are more daunting, and facing the same team over and over again requires tweaks in strategy. But basketball is basketball. Every pro player knows how to win; it’s just a question of whether they’ll perform at a higher level than the opposition when the time comes. That’s why they play the games.

In my evaluation, Phoenix is a better team than the Spurs, although the Suns’ effort in Game 1 was subpar – and they still might have beaten San Antonio had Steve Nash and his bloody nose not been forced to the bench in the last minute. But my evaluation also assumes the Suns will play up to their own level. Would I bet on it? That’s another story.

The spotlight on the NBA playoffs was dimmed slightly last week after the release of a new controversial study about the calls the NBA’s referees have been making.

According to a study by a University of Pennsylvania assistant professor and a Cornell grad student, white NBA refs have been calling more fouls on black NBA players and those same refs have been calling less fouls on white players. The study also found that black refs called fouls more often against white players, but not as frequently.

The study suggested that the differential in calls is large enough that the chances of a team winning can be affected by the racial makeup of the referee crew.

The study has drawn the ire of NBA commissioner David Stern who has questioned the validity of the way the study was performed. Stern’s argument may have some weight to it, as the study was done by looking at publicly available boxscores spanning 13 years through 2004. The problem with the boxscores is that it only shows the referee’s names and gives no information regarding who made the actual foul calls. Stern’s response to the study being reported in the New York Times was that racism “doesn’t exist in the NBA.”

So who are we supposed to believe? The study or the NBA? There’s no way the NBA is going to come out and call their referees racist without absolute proof. Not only would that be bad for business, but it wouldn’t exactly make them buddy-buddy with the refs and their union either.

The study itself sounds kind of shoddy in the way it was performed. How can you be sure you’re getting accurate data from boxscores that don’t designate which call is made by which ref? How does it work if there are both white and black refs in one game? Do both refs get charged with making a call against a white or black player? If that’s the case the study would have to be flawed.

Unless there is more info forthcoming on the methodology used in the study, the NBA will likely end up getting a pass on this possible public-relations nightmare.

For all your NBA playoff odds that aren’t flawed, check out this site.

Now batting clean-up for the Texas Rangers: No. 21, Sammy Sosa.

It took a while for the Rangers to find a place for Sammy Sosa – 18 years, in fact. Slammin’ Sammy was a skinny prospect out of the Dominican Republic when he made his major-league debut for Texas back in 1989. He was dealt to the Chicago White Sox after 25 unimpressive games. The White Sox didn’t see much in Sosa, either. He was shipped crosstown to the Cubs in a package for the fading George Bell. That worked out pretty well for the Northsiders.

Sosa, however, would eventually have a Bell-like collapse of his own. After 13 seasons with the Cubs, he was a bust as a Baltimore Oriole, lasting just one year before becoming a free agent at the end of the 2005 campaign. And when the Washington Nationals only offered a minor-league deal for 2006, Sosa declined, apparently content to ride off into the sunset.

Or not. Sosa did ink a minor-league contract with the Rangers, one laden with incentives. Good choice; playing in the bandbox known as the Ballpark in Arlington (1.013 park factor) is much more appealing than Washington’s RFK Stadium (0.881 park factor). Sosa also has plenty of protection in the batting order with the Rangers, and the year off appears to have done him some good at age 38.

But let’s not get carried away. As nostalgic as it is to see Sosa hitting home runs again (who else could have gotten away with corked bats and the taint of steroid allegations?), he’s nowhere near the Sammy of old. The 2007 model has a .856 OPS with seven dingers after 23 games. That’s pretty close to what we saw in his last Cubs season back in 2004 – still productive, though, and that’s what counts for Rangers fans right now.

Interested in MLB player props? Check these out.

Is Robert Horry a work of art?

ESPN commentator and noted Grateful Dead fan Bill Walton thinks so. During Game 3 of the first-round series between the San Antonio Spurs and the Denver Nuggets, Walton compared watching Horry play defense to watching a painter or a musician at work. Now there’s a true basketball fan – and someone handicappers can appreciate.

Finding value in basketball isn’t too difficult. Although it is supposed to win championships, defense is a commodity that rarely gets its due; individual exceptions include Ben Wallace and Ron Artest, two of the NBA’s most identifiable personalities. When defense is examined at any length by the conventional media, it’s almost always by looking at the numbers: defensive rebounds, blocks and steals. “Intangibles” like excellence in taking charges and working around screens are invariably missed, which explains why Marcus Camby (9.3 defensive boards, 3.3 blocks and 1.2 steals per game) is your 2006-07 Defensive Player of the Year.

But we come here to praise Camby, not to bury him. His work against Tim Duncan is one of the less talked-about reasons the Nuggets have been hanging with San Antonio. Meanwhile, Duncan himself joins Camby and Spurs teammate Bruce Bowen on the league’s All-Defensive first team. Add a dash of Horry, and the first three games of the Spurs-Nuggets series all went under the posted total.

The series between the Toronto Raptors and the New Jersey Nets also tells us a lot about the value of defense. The Raptors have not been able to raise their level of play, and it appears the absence of Jorge Garbajosa from the lineup is having a bigger impact than expected. His position on the floor was covered nicely during the regular season; the Raptors, however, could clearly use his defensive intensity during these playoffs. They allowed 102 points in each of Games 3 and 4 at the Swamp – a large total to give up to one of the slowest teams in the league at 93.6 possessions per contest.

Remember when the Spurs met the Nets in the 2003 Finals? If things keep up like this, we’re going to see it again.

Bet on the NBA playoffs…it’s not as hard as it looks.