Let’s see if a look at Friday night’s card can give basketball bettors an edge over the sportsbooks.

1. Friday nights tend to be more of a handicap of true strengths and matchups in the NBA, as the short card on Thursdays means you don’t have a lot of back-to-back situations on Fridays.  So fatigue isn’t ordinarily an issue, though rested doesn’t always mean focused in the NBA, especially for non-contenders down the stretch.

2. The two teams that aren’t rested may very well match up in the Finals.  Cleveland is unrested at San Antonio after their loss to Houston.  The Lakers have more of a challenge, as they’re in Denver, a longer trip at a higher elevation.  The Lakers only loss in their last 14 games was in an identical “unrested in altitude” situation, 113-109 to the Jazz on February 11th.  But last night against Nash-less Phoenix was so easy, with only Lamar Odom playing more than 27 minutes, LA may be fresher than expected.

3. The Detroit Pistons have been a very professional outfit in recent years, but for the first time in almost a decade, basketball bettors must try to get a handle on Detroit’s effort level not due to scheduling, lookahead, or letdown situations, but simply based on the apparent lack of that aforementioned professionalism.  And some Michiganders have had their fill of Rasheed Wallace, who was ejected with his 2nd technical with the Pistons down 3 with less than 8 minutes to go in their close loss in New Orleans.

4. No line yet, as the injury list in this one reads like the Stimulus Bill, but the Kings could conceivably be favored over the scorching hot (for them) Clippers. If so, it will be the 11th time the Kings have been favored this year.  5 of those were before Thanksgiving, including laying 2 points at home to the mighty Spurs.  Of course both teams were very different when the Spurs earned a 90-88 win on November 16th.

5. The Ivy League plays on Friday and Saturday nights, and Penn hadn’t been swept at home on Friday and Saturday nights by an Ivy opponent in 41 years.  It has now happened on consecutive weekends to the Quakers at the Palestra, where they’re 2-9 straight up, 0-7 against the spread on what should be a very strong home court.  Penn opens a 3.5-point favorite against a Yale team they’ve already beaten up in New Haven.  Yale is 6-3 against the pointspread as an underdog this season.

Good luck your Friday endeavors, pointspread and otherwise.