The Los Angeles Lakers are into the second round of the NBA Playoffs. The Dallas Mavericks and the Phoenix Suns are not – and L.A. is the reason why.

The Lakers were able to trade assorted parts and draft picks for Pau Gasol. The Mavs (Jason Kidd) and the Suns (Shaquille O’Neal) made blockbuster deals in response, but those moves failed in the short term because the teams gave up too much talent and failed to play cohesive playoff basketball.

Los Angeles is still on an NBA Finals collision course with the rebuilt Boston Celtics, and the way Boston honked two games in Atlanta has to be encouraging for Lakers supporters. At press time, the Celtics were the NBA championship favorites at 7-5; L.A. is second at 9-4.

As they say, anything can happen in a short series, but I prefer the Lakers as a value pick and feel very confident in their chances of winning.

Despite a heavy wind, Aussie Matthew Goggin managed a three-under-par 67 and with that score he has the early lead in Round 1 action at the EDS Byron Nelson Championship, which got underway today in Irving, Texas.

“It was pretty brutal out there especially for a new course,” Goggin told reporters. “This is what we got in Australia when I was growing up, a heavy wind with a lot of humidity.”

Tournament: EDS Byron Nelson Championship
Location: TPC Four Seasons Resort
Purse: $6,400,000

Odds to win the EDS Byron Nelson Championship: Matthew Goggin 66/1. Adam Scott is 12/1; Luke Donald is 14/1; and Trevor Immelman is 18/1 odds to win.

The NHL playoffs continue Thursday with two of the four conference semifinals. The first game sees the Philadelphia Flyers cross the border to face the Montreal Canadiens. In the nightcap, the Colorado Avalanche meet the Detroit Red Wings. Montreal and Detroit are the top seeds in the East and West. Odds had yet to be released at press time.

The Canadiens will be the more rested team in their matchup. Philadelphia eliminated Washington Tuesday night in overtime; Montreal’s series with Boston also went the full seven games, but ended a day earlier. The Habs will have captain Saku Koivu available for Game 1; after missing the first five contests against the Bruins with a broken ankle, Koivu contributed three assists in two games.

Detroit will start Chris Osgood in goal against Colorado; Osgood leads all playoff goalies with a .982 save percentage, while Jose Theodore is fourth at .940. The under is a combined 89-70 for these two clubs.

The cell phone giant Nokia announced this week that they are finally going to launch their N-Gage gaming service. This will mark the first mobile phone manufacture to make a large venture into the online mobile gambling sector with expectations of generating over $7 billion in revenue by the end of 2008.

If you want to be one of the first to get your hands on this, you have to get yourself Nokia’s top performing handset, the N95. The service will also be available through the N81, N81 (8Gb), N82 and N95 (8Gb). A little disappointing for all of those who thought this was going to happen also with the iPhone. Apple is still not ready to be your portal to mobile online casinos.

If you don’t have an N95 or one of the variations, don’t worry. Remember back in the 90’s when people said that you would get a brain tumor from your cell phone but now they say it’s all good? Well research now tells us that too much time on your cell phone might not be as great as they now say. If you want more to read up on this issue check it out here.

cell phone gambling

They’re down to the final seven at American Idol 7. As expected, David Archuleta is still in the competition. He’s the prohibitive favorite at 10-11; the only real contender is David Cook at 13-5.

Archuleta has done this kind of thing before, winning Star Search in 2003. Then again, Carly Smithson (10-1) and Kristy Lee Cook (25-1) had professional experience in the music biz before ending up on this showcase of so-called undiscovered talent. David Cook played with the Kansas City indie band Axium from 1999 until their breakup in 2006.

The kicker for the 17-year-old Archuleta is his giggling fan base. The “Arch Angels” are keeping their hero in the competition even after such unforgivable flubs as forgetting the words to “We Can Work It Out” by the Beatles. Richard Rushfield of the Los Angeles Times has his finger on the pulse: “(No) demographic can match the voting power of hysterically excited tween girls.”

Baseball will enjoy another week or so in the spotlight before the crushing weight of the NBA and NHL playoffs siphons off viewers. Meanwhile, the favorites on the World Series futures markets are getting their bats handed to them. The Boston Red Sox (9-2) were swept by the Toronto Blue Jays (25-1). The Detroit Tigers (15-2) started the season with seven straight losses.

Given the way everything is chaotic in the MLB standings these days, it may be difficult to see very far into the future. The Chicago White Sox (35-1) and Kansas City Royals (125-1) were atop the Central Division with five wins and two losses apiece. The New York Mets (6-1) dropped four of their first six games and lost Pedro Martinez for six weeks to a hamstring injury. New York’s fortunes should improve, but what about the White Sox and Royals for the World Series? You never know these days.

Knowing the gambling percentages can help you decide on where the best place to lay down your money for your skill level should be. Casino advantages in the major games stack up this way:

Now that we’re down to the Final Four at the men’s college basketball Tournament, betting on the futures market has to be handled a little differently – almost like handicapping a single game straight up.

Using this approach, the Memphis Tigers are the easy pick at 27-10. The Tigers are favored by two points over UCLA (63-20) in Saturday’s semifinal; since we’re picking straight up to go to the championship game, a 2-point spread is a fair indicator that Memphis has a better chance of advancing. That’s not always the way it happens, of course, but there is a correlation between the pointspread and who wins straight up.

The Tigers would then either face North Carolina (7-4) or Kansas (31-10) in the final. The Heels are 3-point faves in their semifinal, so let’s project them to advance. In a hypothetical Memphis-UNC matchup, Memphis is the easy pick because of the bigger payout in what looks like a toss-up.