Click here to read the whole thing!Don’t make the mistake of sleeping on this Spurs team. Yes, Duncan is old, as at 3, he’s older than everyone on the Thunder, save Derek Fisher. They don’t have the same star power Oklahoma City does. Durant finished second in MVP voting, Parker a distant fifth and Duncan picked up one fourth-place vote. Yet they roared into the postseason with the top seed in the west with the best SRS in their conference and were tied with the Bulls for the best record in the NBA.Still, it’s more than that. It’s taken years, but the Spurs have emerged as one of the most enjoyable teams in the league. It wasn’t too long ago that the Spurs played a style of basketball usually called boring: Duncan backing into the post, a half spin, a bank shot that rattles in. Their most recent championship was a Finals sweep of the LeBron-led Cavs, where the Spurs scored around 80 points per game. They were a team easy to dislike and easy to hate, especially after bloodying Steve Nash.
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
The Good Point: The re-invention of the NBA through the Western Conference Finals
Over at The Good Point, I weigh in on the NBA's Western Conference Final and especially on how the San Antonio Spurs have changed from a boring, borderline unlikable team into one of the most exciting and compelling in basketball. To wit:
Stanley Cup Final prediction
That was a hell of a layoff, wasn't it? The New Jersey Devils haven't played since last Friday and the LA Kings haven't since last Tuesday, a nine-day break. If one's the kind of person who believes in things like momentum or they're on a roll or whatever, you better not bust those phrases out after game one since you can't have momentum when you haven't moved in almost a week.
Still, these playoff have been all sorts of fun and I'm not really looking forward to them ending. The last round was somewhat anticlimactic, with series that didn't feel especially close, but there was still some great moments. To wit: game six of the Rangers/Devils series, where the Rangers had chances in overtime but just couldn't get it to happen. I hate to break everything to a simple line like this, but it genuinely feels like New York just ran out of gas: this was a great regular season team who admittedly did struggle in the first two rounds. It took them seven games to get past both the Capitols and Senators and those were two teams way below them statistically. Like the OT in game six showed, they just didn't have the horses to keep pace with (let alone pass) a team like the Devils.
And what then to make of the Coyotes? They fell back to Earth pretty quickly in the Western Final, being held to two goals or less in the first three games and Mike Smith was lit up by a team that's not especially noteworthy on the offensive end; after all, it was Jonathan Quick's goaltending that's gotten LA to the final (but more on that in a second). They looked like a different team than the one that crushed Nashville and even the one that held Chicago back in the first round. It felt different than the Eastern Final, though: they just ran into a team solidly better than them. Sure, the Kings were an eight seed, but how many people really think it was a tremendous upset?
Anyway there's only one series left, so here's my last prediction for the NHL Playoffs.
Stanley Cup Final: (6) New Jersey Devils v. (8) Los Angeles Kings
I have a feeling that when people, years from now, look back at these playoffs, it's going to look like a series of upsets and upsets with two teams meeting in the finals that nobody would really call the two best teams in the NHL. After all, the final pits a eight seed against a six seed: this is not exactly a final anyone would have expected back at the All-Star break.
Thing is, these playoffs have shown the Kings to be best team in the west, with Quick looking like the best playoff goalie since Martin Brodeur's heyday. His 1.54 GAA is 33rd best of any goalie in the playoffs, ever and that, his Save Percentage (.946) are better than anything Brodeur had in his trips to the Finals and is right up there with legendary Cup runs by Bernie Parent (1.89 in 1975), Ken Dryden (1.55 in 1977) and Dominik Hasek (1.77, ..939 in 1999). And like them, he seems impregnable: more than any goalie I can think of since Hasek, he just feels like someone who's on all the time.
True, he hasn't quite been tested like Dryden, Hasek or even Brodeur were in their best years - one hesitates before calling the 2012 Phoenix Coyotes a team on the same level as, say, the 1975 Buffalo Sabres - but still, these Kings have upset every team they've faced, including the two best teams in the NHL this regular season. And what's more, they're doing it quickly: they've lost twice this postseason, once to Vancouver and once to Phoenix.
Meanwhile, the Devils have pulled upsets of their own: they beat the Rangers in six, winning the last three in a row, and made short work of a high-scoring Flyers team. Although Brodeur is getting a ton of credit - and with his best stats since his 2003 Cup run, it's not wholly undeserved - don't look past the rest of the team: Zach Parise, Ilya Kovalchuk and Travis Zajac each have seven playoff goals and Kovalchuk's 18 points leads all playoff scorers. This is a much fuller team than the Devils are known for; they're usually winning in a high scoring game, not in a 1-0 overtime finish. But still, look at their goal differential: LA has a +19, New Jersey +9. While it's true the Devils can score, they're also being scored upon.
And to me, that's a crucial difference: not only the Kings have lost just two games, but they've shut down some very good offenses along the way. If this is a short series, and my gut tells me it will be, it plays right into the Kings favor: they might not score often, but they keep the score low and don't need more than two or three goals. Indeed, they've scored ten fewer goals than the Devils and still have a much larger goal differential.
Los Angeles in five.
Conn Smythe winner: Jonathan Quick
Last round: Two of two! Even nailed the number of games!
Still, these playoff have been all sorts of fun and I'm not really looking forward to them ending. The last round was somewhat anticlimactic, with series that didn't feel especially close, but there was still some great moments. To wit: game six of the Rangers/Devils series, where the Rangers had chances in overtime but just couldn't get it to happen. I hate to break everything to a simple line like this, but it genuinely feels like New York just ran out of gas: this was a great regular season team who admittedly did struggle in the first two rounds. It took them seven games to get past both the Capitols and Senators and those were two teams way below them statistically. Like the OT in game six showed, they just didn't have the horses to keep pace with (let alone pass) a team like the Devils.
And what then to make of the Coyotes? They fell back to Earth pretty quickly in the Western Final, being held to two goals or less in the first three games and Mike Smith was lit up by a team that's not especially noteworthy on the offensive end; after all, it was Jonathan Quick's goaltending that's gotten LA to the final (but more on that in a second). They looked like a different team than the one that crushed Nashville and even the one that held Chicago back in the first round. It felt different than the Eastern Final, though: they just ran into a team solidly better than them. Sure, the Kings were an eight seed, but how many people really think it was a tremendous upset?
Anyway there's only one series left, so here's my last prediction for the NHL Playoffs.
Stanley Cup Final: (6) New Jersey Devils v. (8) Los Angeles Kings
I have a feeling that when people, years from now, look back at these playoffs, it's going to look like a series of upsets and upsets with two teams meeting in the finals that nobody would really call the two best teams in the NHL. After all, the final pits a eight seed against a six seed: this is not exactly a final anyone would have expected back at the All-Star break.
Thing is, these playoffs have shown the Kings to be best team in the west, with Quick looking like the best playoff goalie since Martin Brodeur's heyday. His 1.54 GAA is 33rd best of any goalie in the playoffs, ever and that, his Save Percentage (.946) are better than anything Brodeur had in his trips to the Finals and is right up there with legendary Cup runs by Bernie Parent (1.89 in 1975), Ken Dryden (1.55 in 1977) and Dominik Hasek (1.77, ..939 in 1999). And like them, he seems impregnable: more than any goalie I can think of since Hasek, he just feels like someone who's on all the time.
True, he hasn't quite been tested like Dryden, Hasek or even Brodeur were in their best years - one hesitates before calling the 2012 Phoenix Coyotes a team on the same level as, say, the 1975 Buffalo Sabres - but still, these Kings have upset every team they've faced, including the two best teams in the NHL this regular season. And what's more, they're doing it quickly: they've lost twice this postseason, once to Vancouver and once to Phoenix.
Meanwhile, the Devils have pulled upsets of their own: they beat the Rangers in six, winning the last three in a row, and made short work of a high-scoring Flyers team. Although Brodeur is getting a ton of credit - and with his best stats since his 2003 Cup run, it's not wholly undeserved - don't look past the rest of the team: Zach Parise, Ilya Kovalchuk and Travis Zajac each have seven playoff goals and Kovalchuk's 18 points leads all playoff scorers. This is a much fuller team than the Devils are known for; they're usually winning in a high scoring game, not in a 1-0 overtime finish. But still, look at their goal differential: LA has a +19, New Jersey +9. While it's true the Devils can score, they're also being scored upon.
And to me, that's a crucial difference: not only the Kings have lost just two games, but they've shut down some very good offenses along the way. If this is a short series, and my gut tells me it will be, it plays right into the Kings favor: they might not score often, but they keep the score low and don't need more than two or three goals. Indeed, they've scored ten fewer goals than the Devils and still have a much larger goal differential.
Los Angeles in five.
Conn Smythe winner: Jonathan Quick
Last round: Two of two! Even nailed the number of games!
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
The Good Point: Pujols with a few holes in his bat
My latest for The Good Point takes a look at three of the American League's biggest bats - Jose Bautista, Josh Hamilton and Albert Pujols - and how each has started the 2012 season, be it on fire, slowly or not at all.
From my piece:
Click here to read the whole thing.
From my piece:
Back on May 6, the Toronto Blue Jays lost to the LA Angels, 4-3. It wasn’t exactly the most memorable game except for one at-bat. In the bottom of the 5th, on a 2-2 pitch, Albert Pujols hit his first dinger of 2012, a shot to left over the head of Eric Thames.It was Pujols, you may remember, that was one of the marquee signings of the 2012 offseason. He signed with Los Angeles for an astronomical sum: $254 million over 10 years, the second-highest contract in MLB history. And this season has not been kind to him.
Click here to read the whole thing.
Monday, May 14, 2012
NHL Round Three Predictions
There's a few things I'm going to wake away from the second round of the NHL playoffs
- Dale Hunter did a pretty alright job and his exit isn't a good thing for the Capitols. They went into the playoffs as a low seed and upset Boston in the opening round, in a pretty good seven game series. And then they took the Rangers - arguably the best team still in the playoffs - to seven games, including a gutty win in game six. They played a wildly different style of hockey than they had under Bruce Boudreau, a much slower game that kept Alex Ovechkin on the bench. An article I read over the weekend asked if this was the start of a new style of hockey: keeping the scorer on the bench until you need a goal. I'm leaning towards no, but I wonder of Ovechkin's name will be tied to Hunter's abrupt leave. Were there problems behind closed doors? Did Ovechkin pull a Dwight Howard - it's either him or me, chief? I have no idea. But I'm curious to see what happens next for the Caps, and if they'll go back to what worked for them in the regular season, if not the postseason.
- The Devils continue to surprise me. Not just in a "now they play fast" sense, but in a "who saw this coming?" kind of way. And this is from someone who picked them to roar past the Flyers. Marty Brodeur is ancient at this point, but is putting up some of his best postseason numbers. His GAA of 2.04 is the lowest it's been since before the lockout (and since the Devils championship run of 2003, actually) while his Save Percentage of .920 is better than it's been in a while. Meanwhile Ilya Kovalchuk's 12 points is second-best among all active playoff scorers. This isn't a team to sleep on.
- Speaking of goalies, Kings netminder Jonathan Quick is putting together one hell of a Conn Smythe resume: he leads all goalies with a 1.59 GAA, a .947 Save Percentage (not to mention nine wins, a product of me not posting this in time). These Kings are in interesting team to watch: they've blown away two very good teams in St. Louis and Vancouver, lead Phoenix one game to zip and remind me a lot of the 2006 Oilers, a team all but carried by Dwayne Roloson and Fernando Pisani to the seventh game of the finals (and would have won, I think, if Roloson didn't get hurt).
There's more I could write about: Phoenix looking really good against Nashville (does this mean Chicago was much better than I thought?; the Blues folding like a cheap card table; the Rangers were lucky to gut out a tough series; etc. It's a testament to how good these playoffs have been that I could write more words than you'd want to read. I've certainly been enjoying them. Picks follow the jump.
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