Bouncing Back on the Bottom Leg of a Sandwich
By Kris Lazaro (5/3/2007)
In the sports gambling world, a sandwich is generally referred to the phenomenon of two important games surrounding a "meaningless" game. Whether it is a divisional sandwich or a rivalry sandwich, there is always that middle game that a team can tend to overlook.
In cases where our team really does overlook the middle game and loses badly, they will usually perform pretty well in the following game. Let us look at this hypothetical scenario, the Lakers are coming off a hard fought win against their rival Suns and have two games on deck: a meaningless bout against the Wizards and then another rivalry against the Clippers. They will tend to overlook the Wizards because it is not a very good team and not in their conference. They may be anxious to face the Clippers. Well, what if they lose badly to the Wizards. We mean so bad that they do not break 75 points and give up in excess of 100 points.
Are they going to lose mightily against the Clippers. Nope. This is because the reason for their loss to the Wizards almost undoubtedly is the fact that they were looking forward to playing the Clippers. Think about it, are they really 30 points worse than the Wizards? And if you factor in that they probably rested their starters so that they could be rested for the Clippers, you will see a Lakers team that is hungry and going to run over the Clippers.
The other team may also be looking ahead to this game but chances are that they are not experiencing the embarassment of losing their previous game by around 30+ points.
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