Misc

[random axe]

I am a huge Celtics fan and have been since the 80s, but . . . I want to see the Cavaliers beat up the Lakers in the Finals this year.



I think each team would tend to dominate at home, but I believe the Cavs could humiliate the Lakes at least once in LA.

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Yes, I think the Sports Guy might be right when he says you can go ahead and pencil in those two teams for the Finals, especially the way that other teams seem to be playing right now. Celts don't seem to have quite the same spark as they did in that remarkable season last year (which, as a fan of the sport, was a blast to watch)...Sunday's game only served to reinforce that, though.

Apparently LBJ caught an offseason interview with Kobe where he said something about having to be at the gym by 6am, and resolved that he was going to have to work at least that hard to beat the guy, so he's stepped up his game and his regimen this year by a huge amount, with positive results so far...but hey it's the playoffs, who knows what'll happen (or how the NBA will direct its referees to influence what happens)

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Yeah.  The Celts seem curiously subdued.  I know they've been on the injury treadmill, but they often seem just plain old tired.  They might be able to walk through the first round and then step it up, but maybe not, too.  It's funny because everyone expected them to be jaded at the beginning of the season, and that's when they were amped up.

James, to me, seems like the real deal.  Honestly, Kobe is a good defender and a better passer than he usually gets credit for, but he's basically an incredible scorer.  James is a force of nature . . . and more likeable, anyway. 

[random axe]

Right now, the Bulls and Celtics hate each other so much that it's almost love.

Previously, no NBA playoff series had ever had three overtimes.  This one (a pretty unimportant first-round series) has had four so far.  Both teams are ridiculously beat up but playing like it was the championship.  It's flat-out crazy, and I think the next game is going to be 90% bruising grudge match.  I'm a-feared someone's going to get hurt.  Worse than already, I mean.

This bodes well for next season, though.

[flipper]

How did one team in the playoffs score almost double the points of the other team.  NBA time to pare down the playoffs.

[random axe]

Sometimes the teams wind up wildly out of balance.  There's considerable (and plausible) conspiracy theory as to how the Lakers made their blockbuster recent trade-acquisition and that the league facilitated it to counter the Celtics amazing but at least more explicable blockbuster trade-acquisitions.  The Lakers wound up way, way better than most teams out West, though, and the first round of the playoffs puts the #1 team against the #8 team in the conference, the #2 against the #7, etc.  There's going to be some non-contests, and some teams are going to get discouraged and give up.

Seriously, though, the playoffs are like half as long as the regular season, and so many teams have so many injured players . . . you're right that they should pare it down.  Make the first two rounds best of five's instead of best of seven's.

I also like the proposed plan of letting the #1 team in the conference pick their first-round playoff opponents, and then let the #2 team pick theirs from the remaining contenders, etc, for each round until there are only two left.  It would be an interesting experiment.

I still want to see the Cavs play the Lakers in the finals this year. 

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Anyone want to "Cel" me their "tics" to this incredi-"Bull" series? This thing's had more crazy endings than the Kennedy family!
-Fake Rick Reilly

It's definitely been the series to watch. Mavs knocked the Spurs out too, which squelched a lot of local jawing.

But yeah, injuries. That series might have been different with Ginobili (and Garnett certainly would've helped the Celts situation right about now)

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That would have helped the Sharks if they could have picked anyone but those fucking Ducks.

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Yeah, a lot of teams are stuck in Injury City without a bus ticket right now.  The Bulls are pretty hampered, without Deng and with Gordon and Salmons both playing gimpy, and the C's are so low on uninjured personel that two of the guys seeing serious minutes in the playoffs had hardly played in the last several weeks (because they were injured, too).  Meanwhile, unfortunately, Starbury hasn't been a disaster but hasn't been much of an asset, either, and new backup hole-filler Moore has been surprisingly useless.  It may just be that the learning curve on the C's defense requires more than a couple of months.


Sharks vs Ducks is a dumb team name lineup in the same realm as Vikings vs Dolphins.  It just shouldn't happen.  But then why the hell (money is no excuse) did the league allow Disney to buy that team name?  They might as well have created a team called the Love Bugs or the Cats From Outer Space.

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Holy crap.

Tonight's game is currently in triple-overtime.

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What a game! Sports Guy weighs in

This weekend a lot of the sports and entertainment world appears to be converging on Kentucky for the Derby. Paris Hilton is there hanging out already, Kim Kardashian is hosting a party tonight at a club called Glassworks...in between the Derby and the boxing match and Game Seven, there's a surfeit of big sports stuff goin' on...

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Sports Guy weighs in

  I know why Doc put Tony Allen in, though.  He was afraid Davis would foul out too early -- which happened anyway, in the third OT.

The real main problem is that Allen and Scalabrine missed so much time to injuries that this might as well be Game 3 of the season for them.  A tad rusty and confused.  Boston just has virtually no bench left -- Powe's gone to injury, Davis has become a starter since Garnett went out, House's role is disrupted by Starbury's arrival, and Starbury and Moore have been nearly useless.  In a better world, neither Scalabrine nor Allen would've played any significant minutes for the rest of the season.

I'm not making excuses, but the C's basically have about 5.5 players.  You look at Game 6's box, you see that four Celtics were in the game for over 50 minutes, and Perkins (44 minutes) would've played longer if he hadn't fouled out.  Actually, so would Pierce and Davis.  The Bulls are in a not entirely dissimilar depleted situation -- they, too, only gave two subs significant minutes, but Hinrich played 43 minutes of substitution and Miller played 35. 

I think there's a decent chance Game 7 might be a blowout.  Either team might show up with not much left in the tank.

I at the bit about Rondo hitting Salmons with a chair.  Rondo was such a quiet kid, but this series is getting to him . . . .

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This is, seriously, my favorite NBA playoff season in a long time.  I don't even care when the Celtics finally drop out, and I am loving the crazy effort by underdog teams this year.  I did want to see the Cavs play the Lakers in the Finals, but now it really doesn't look like that's going to happen.  The Lakers are ridiculously overpacked this year but have been playing like whiny snowflakes in the playoffs, and now it looks like they might not even beat Houston (who are missing their best two players, for crying out loud) -- and if they do beat them, I don't see them beating Denver.

But LeBron vs Carmelo Anthony would give the commentators something extra to comment on, so that would be nice.

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It's diminished somewhat for me by the constant reminders that the whole thing is as rigged as pro wrestling.

They see to it, for example, that the Mavs never win a championship as long as Mark Cuban is their owner (unless maybe he performs some sort of long tortured public contrition or something). Game 3 was blatantly snatched away from them on a shitty no call; the league puts out a "whoops our bad, we shoulda called that" statement right after the game, but the damage was done. And "the Mavs are thugs" is the most Rovian reality switchup since that swift boat business where going back under fire to rescue his crew made dude into a yellow bellied coward. This Denver group is one of the most obnoxious and thuggish sports teams in years (just the tatted up Slap Chop guy should be enough to give any thinking person douche chills), but yet it got spun as just the opposite. Everybody saw the vid of Cuban yelling at Martin's mom but very few saw the vid of Martin calling Cuban a faggot motherfucker. Anyway it's done now, but it's hard to take the league too seriously when I have to see shit like that and the ridiculous Mavs-Heat finals a few years back going down.

Celts woulda got merked already this round if it weren't for the terrible coaching on the other side, but now it's down to one game so who knows there. Lakers are very inconsistent, but Game 7 is at home, Kobe will likely step it up for this one, and the league will do everything in its power to make sure they advance.
 

[flipper]

Cavs vs Nugs are what I'm hoping for.