Spurs entertain Hornets in Alamo City

Basketball Betting Lines

02/02/2012 - (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - The San Antonio Spurs will resume a three-game homestand tonight versus the New Orleans Hornets at the AT&T Center.

The Spurs have been nearly unstoppable at home and have opened 11-1 in the Alamo City for the sixth time in franchise history. They opened the residency with last night's 99-91 victory over the rival Houston Rockets thanks to 25 points from Tim Duncan and 24 points out of Tony Parker.

"I was just trying to be aggressive," Duncan said. "I was trying to get in the paint as they were staying locked up on our shooters. They weren't double- teaming so I got a chance to attack a little more, get in the paint, and make some shots."

Gary Neal added 15 points for the Spurs, who overcame a 13-point halftime deficit and won for the fourth time in six tries.

"Tim Duncan went to the fountain of youth or something yesterday because today he looked phenomenal," said Neal. "Tim is one of our leaders, everybody knows that, and we just fed off Tim today."

San Antonio will close out the homestand versus the Thunder on Saturday and will commence its annual Rodeo Road Trip with nine straight games as the guest. The Spurs are just 3-8 away from home this season.

New Orleans will play back-to-back games as the visitor and has lost four in a row away from the Big Easy. It is just 2-7 on the road this season.

The Hornets have dropped three in a row overall, including Wednesdays 120-103 loss versus the Phoenix Suns. Greivis Vasquez paced the Hornets with 20 points and 12 assists -- both career-highs -- while Jason Smith and Trevor Ariza had 16 and 15 points, respectively, for New Orleans, which fell to a lowly 4-18 on the season.

"We played badly down the stretch of that first half. It carried over into the second half," Hornets head coach Monty Williams said. "I thought we got a little frustrated with Nash scoring a little bit. Their bench came in and did a great job and we never were able to recover from that."

Williams' bunch lost despite shooting 51.9 percent from the floor and 9-of-16 from three-point range. The Hornets will also visit Detroit on the quick trip before returning to the bayou for a four-game homestand versus the Kings, Bulls, Blazers and Jazz.

New Orleans suffered a 104-102 loss to the Spurs at home on Jan. 23, as Duncan finished with 28 points and seven rebounds to lead the way. San Antonio has won eight of 10 against the Hornets, who have lost 12 of 14 trips to the Alamo City.

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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.