Pacers close out homestand vs. Toronto

Basketball Betting Lines

01/27/2007 - (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - The Indiana Pacers will close out a four-game homestand this evening when they welcome the Toronto Raptors to Conseco Fieldhouse.

Indiana is 2-1 on the homestand and has posted back-to-back wins, including Wednesday's 96-94 overtime win against the Miami Heat. Troy Murphy had 17 points and 12 rebounds for the Pacers, who won their second straight after a four-game skid. Danny Granger added 16 points in the win,

The Pacers, who own a 12-7 mark at home this season, are 2 1/2 games off the lead in the Central Division.

Meanwhile, the Raptors have won three straight and closed out a five-game homestand with a 4-1 mark. On Friday they posted a 96-90 win over the Boston Celtics at the Air Canada Centre.

Anthony Parker scored a career-high 23 points behind a career-best seven three-pointers to lead the Atlantic Division-leading Raptors, who ripped off a 19-0 run in the fourth quarter to win for the ninth time in their last 12 games and send Boston to its 10th straight loss.

Chris Bosh ended with 26 points and eight rebounds, while Jose Calderon added 10 points and eight assists in the win. Raptors guard T.J. Ford (sore right ankle) is expected to miss Saturday's game against Indiana.

Toronto will hit the road where it is 8-15 this season.

Saturday's game between Indiana and Toronto is the second of three meetings this season. The Raptors won the first meeting, 92-83, on November 26 this season at the Air Canada Centre.

Indiana has won eight of 12 and 12 of the last 17 meetings with Toronto, which has lost seven of its last nine at Conseco Fieldhouse.

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FOOTBALL TRASH TALK

NFL Football Trash Talk

Trash talk has a place in every competitive endeavor (except baseball; those stirrup-wearers are too busy chewing on their sunflower seeds and their supplements to worry about what their opponents are doing).

Fantasy sports is no exception. Any intelligent discussion of the subject would probably start with a thesis statement or a definition of terms. Thankfully, this wont be an intelligent discussion.

Let me just say that I am happy to take a place in this space alongside my talented colleagues, even our commissioner. (You should see how she bleats like a demented paper boy about league fees on our fantasy site).

Trash talking, I would argue, is primarily about amusing your friends, their sheeplike demeanors and sloping foreheads notwithstanding. The best place I have found for football trash talking is at www.SportsAlarm.com.

Beyond the entertainment factor, though, I would recognize that the sophomoric ritual has one advantage, when properly applied. It magnifies your fantasy triumphs and mitigates your fantasy failures by transforming the eventual point total into an afterthought. Winning makes it seem like your opponent really is a truss-owning, lapel-pin-wearing nitwit. And in defeat, trash talk can be the air bag to break the fall from your hyperbolic heights. The plug-necked yahoos on your team, you can say, will be sacking groceries by the end of the season.

The best trash talk, in my view, is layered and nuanced. And it doesnt focus only on your opponents team. It picks apart your opponent. The idea is to create a shock-and-awe-scale blizzard of nonsense, and the goal is to make your opponent drop his hands from his keyboard in exasperation.

What team does your opponent root for? Accuse a Giants fan of having a Joe Namath pillowcase. Wheres your opponent from? Give a look of concern no matter his reply, then say, I'll try to type slower for you next time. Is your opponent into politics? Label everyone a tax-and-spend corporate shill.

Cap all that with a liberal application of irrelevance. For instance, dont just conclude by saying your opponent is a twerp who drafts like my grandmother. Say that your opponent is a sweater-wearing, eyebrow-plucking twerp who drafts his team about as well as Zsa Zsa Gabor gave acceptance speeches at the Oscars. By the time your foe makes sense of that, his starting running back will have had puppies.

But what about you? Hmm? Recall a memorable slam? Have a tried-and-true technique? Know someone who seems impervious to insult? Take a moment and tells us about it. Put together some (fit-for-publication) thoughts. You wont be too busy returning phone messages from your friends, Im sure, to reply.

In addition to the trash talking, the Sports Alarm has a huge gallery of high resolution pictures of beautiful women and models in bikinis. The most popular models are: Lindsay Lohan, Carrie Underwood, Alessandra Ambrosio, and Paris Hilton.