Weekend winners
LeBron and the Cleveland LeBrons. The Eastern Conference finals may get fun if the LeBrons deliver a Game 4 performance similar to the Game 3 showing Saturday night. James had a +31 plus/minus and each Cleveland starter had a better than +20 differential. Of course James was aces, scoring 27 on 12 shots with 12 assists. (And some of LeBron’s bounce passes deserved to be viewed as like 1.5 assists because they were that impressive.) We have tried to avoid the “one-game overreaction” that comes with the NBA playoffs. But we’re pretty excited about tonight’s Game 4.
Braves. Man, that was fun. (Great recap and opinion here from TFP ace sports columnist Mark Widener on the Braves scoring six in the ninth Sunday for a 10-9 win.) OK, one game in May is one game in May. But there is no dying the belief, the energy and the fun that emanates from this bunch. And that, in a 162-game marathon, is way more valuable than a May win, no matter how big the ninth-inning comeback.
Horse racing. There are few sporting events as solely dependent on preceding events as the Belmont Stakes. Justify – and a lot of rain – has made the last couple of races fun.
Keith Mitchell. Yes, Aaron Wise won the rain-delayed PGA event in Texas. That’s fine. But our dude Keith Mitchell finished tied for third and collected a cool $400,400 check. He dropped a 63 on Sunday and posted all four rounds in the 60s. Dude has now made more than $1.2 million with three top-10 finishes. He jumped from 93rd to 58th on the money list friends and has some eye-popping stats with a driver in his hands. He is fourth on Tour in shots-gained off the tee and he’s ninth on Tour in driving average.
Las Vegas Knights. It’s impossible to overstate the amazingness of an expansion team making the championship in their sport. It has happened once – in the NHL in the early 1960s when the St. Louis Blues did it. But to be fair, all of the teams in the Blues’ conference were expansion teams, so it was a certainty. This is truly unprecedented in a lot of ways.
Roulette and other casino games were offered at the All in for ALS event.Weekend losers
NBA fans. Sure, James was great and Steph Curry was playing an insane game of “Watch this” in the third quarter of the Warriors’ 41-pantsing of Houston. But, gang, other than a couple of Boston-Philly games that went down to the wire, where is the in-game drama? It’s staggeringly bad and becoming more and more easy to click these games off midway through the third quarter. (Important to note here that even with those dramatic games, Boston ran away from Philly in that series 4-1.) The closest conference finals game on either side has been 13 points.
NBA awards. As anyone noticed that the front-runners for the NBA awards – which for some reason will not be handed out until late June – are getting housed in these playoffs? The front-runner for coach of the year was fired, the front-runner for MVP is getting housed in the Western Conference finals and looks like maybe no better than the fourth-best player on the floor, and the front-runner for rookie of the year was whipped by a rookie from Boston and outperformed by a first-year player in Utah on the big stage of the postseason.
Las Vegas casinos. While the Knights are the talking point of the NHL, the tickets held in Vegas with the Knights as a preseason 200-to-1 (and even a 500-to-1) pick to win it all are now four more wins from delivering a monster loss to the Vegas sports books. This story will get more play in the coming days.
NFL leadership. Gang, forget the gambling decision and the kickoff rules and even new Carolina Panthers owner David Tepper. The big story this week at the NFL owners meeting is figuring out a way to put the protest issue to bed. Because whether you are Colin Kaepernick or Jerry Jones, Eric Reid or Bob McNair, you have to see that this issue hurts the business of football – players and ownership. And in truth, if the players’ union was doing a real union’s job and representing the entirety of its membership, they need to pull up a chair and address this. This week. And we are not holding our breath. (How is that losing the weekend you ask? Well, name any NFL leader who has voiced a solution or a plan or a direction on addressing this issue. Is there a $10-plus-billion industry anywhere else that has the leadership vacuum that the NFL does?)
MMQB. So long Peter King, who left the Monday Morning Quarterback and SI to pursue other projects
Boston Celtics guard Jaylen Brown, rear, drives against the defense of Cleveland Cavaliers center Kevin Love during the second half in Game 2 of the NBA basketball Eastern Conference finals, Tuesday, May 15, 2018, in Boston. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)Let’s discuss
OK, we mentioned above about fighting the urge not to overreact to one game in an NBA series.
In today’s modern NBA, the fight to four seems to be paved with more and more 20-plus-point decisions. It makes sense in a lot of ways, too, because if the wheels start to wobble, save energy and juice to fight the next battle.
But the national narrative that the Cavaliers are rolling and Game 4 is now a must-win for Boston seems over the top.
And that too is understandable, because everything around us is over the top. The reaction. The overreaction. The backlash to the overreaction and then the backlash to the backlash to the overreaction.
It feels like the sports stories version of the Ben Wallace corollary.
Back in the day, Ben Wallace with the Cavs was the ultimate get-the-dirt-done guy who guarded and rebounded relentless and did not need shots. Dude was a monster in 2001-02, leading the NBA in rebounds (13.0) and blocks (3.5) while taking only six shots per game.
Everyone talked about how underrated he was. And those numbers are gaudy as all get out for a guy who was making less than $6 million per. He was underrated.
Then, as everyone talked more and more how underrated he is, the switch flipped and he somehow became overrated. This was long before he was overvalued by his 2006 contract.
He was underrated because no one really talked about him, and while being the same player, he became overrated because we started talking about him.
Strange right?
Well, some of that’s on us, right, and that was a decade ago?
Look at the headlines and the hand-wringing from the weekend:
Tom Brady skips OTAs. Odell Beckham attends OTAs. Karl-Anthony Towns liked a Tweet. We have the fall out Julio Jones.
And don’t even get us started on the Royal Wedding. Buckets of rice and bubbles, we have relatives we didn’t want to watch get married, so we’re going to get up before the crack of dawn to watch two folks who we’ll never meet get hitched? PUH-lease.
So is that the nature of the beast? Is that the result of so many platforms and a 24-hour-news cycle? Is it our lust in modern times for the controversy and the juicy parts of stories? Is it the media, like many of you seemed to be convinced about?
Let’s discuss.
This and that
– Johnny Football has signed with the Hamilton Tiger Cats, who open their season June 1. This seems like the first solid move that Manziel has made in an effort to get back to the NFL. Because let’s face it, if he has any chance to be back in the states taking snaps on Sundays, he was going to have to take some positive strides on a side road back to the league.
– We mentioned Keith Mitchell and his hot streak. Calling what Michael Arnaud a hot streak is extremely underselling it. On the Web.com Tour, he shot a 27 (with a bogey mind you) on the front nine on Friday and a 28 on the same stretch Sunday.
– Nashville is expected to be announced as the host for the 2019 NFL draft per Adam Schefter. This news makes my heart happy.
– This is pretty slick. Tiger Woods challenging the Long Drive champ to a driving competition and HAMMERING one down the middle.
Today’s questions
Weekend winners and losers. Go.
Sunday was May 20, and it was the 25th anniversary of the series finale of Cheers. If we had to list a Rushmore of sitcoms, that has to make it. Man, that’s a tough Rushmore. (Here’s a review that I enjoyed.)
As for today – May 21 – well, let’s review.
On this day in 1832, the first Democratic convention was held. That was the last one Hillary Clinton missed. Allegedly.
FIFA was formed on this day in 1904. Bribes were not formally introduced until 1919.
Jeffrey Dahmer was born on this day. He would have been 58 before dying of ‘natural’ causes in 1994.
Mr. T was born on this day in 1952.
Let’s go with a Rushmore of T. And be creative friends.