There’s nothing I hate more than days like yesterday where there’s not a lot of action on the board at sportsbooks worldwide.  Sure, most of the attention of the US sporting public was focused on the two NFL playoff games but that’s still no excuse for the NBA, NHL and college hoops to curtail their schedules so drastically.  It reeks of collusion if you ask me.  Anyway, we’re back to work today with a nice selection of NBA basketball betting opportunities and at least a few games in college hoops and hockey.

We’ll head to the beautiful Pacific Northwest for this game, where the Portland Trailblazers will host the New Orleans Hornets at the Rose Garden Arena.  The Blazers just completed a 2-2 Eastern road trip which they’ve got to be fairly happy with despite the breakeven record.  Brandon Roy injured his hamstring and was out for most of those games but despite his absence the Blazers won a couple of games and were very competitive against the Celtics at Boston before losing in overtime.  Now they’re back on their home court and they’re one of the toughest home teams in the NBA.  Portland is currently in 4th place in the Western Conference, 1/2 game ahead of San Antonio.  They’re just 2 1/2 games behind third place Dallas and 3 behind 2nd place Denver so despite their spate of injuries this year are still well positioned to get a good playoff seeding.

New Orleans is in 11th place, 1/2 game behind Memphis and Oklahoma City who are tied for 9th and just one game behind Houston for the 8th and final playoff spot.  The Hornets problem is inconsistency, and compounding that problem is the fact that they haven’t played well on the road this year.  New Orleans is 7-16 away from ‘The Big Easy’ this season and that’s just not going to get it done in the highly competitive NBA Western Conference:

NEW ORLEANS HORNETS VS. PORTLAND TRAILBLAZERS

Blazers will be without Brandon Roy again tonight, but they’ve responded to his absence like most good teams do to short term superstar injuries.  Reserves who usually don’t get a lot of minutes have stepped up to pick up the slack–most recently it was Martell Webster who scored a career high 28 points in Portland’s victory over Detroit on Saturday.  Some concern about the big minutes that Blazer starters have been playing recently, but they’re a young team and they sure haven’t looked fatigued despite the short bench they’ve been playing with.

David West is questionable for tonight’s game for the Hornets with an ankle injury.  Hornets are just 10-13 ATS on the road and only have four pointspread covers in their last 10 games.  Portland knows they’ve got to get the wins where they can if they want to keep their good position in the conference and have a tough stretch after this with a game against Utah at home and back to back weekend contests in Texas against Houston and Dallas.  Watching the Blazers game in game out, one of the most impressive things about the team is the fact that they almost always give a good effort.  You can count the times the Blazers have come out ‘flat’ this season on one hand.  Against a team that struggles on the road there’s no reason not to lay the small price with Portland on their tough home floor.  They should get a win and cover for us tonight.

PLAY PORTLAND -2′ OVER NEW ORLEANS