From one finals to another

The last few posts I had, I was looking forward to the regular season ending and the playoffs starting. Then, I would have some interesting stuff to post about. Then finals happened. The couple weeks I spent wrapping up classes and working on finals took up most of my time and completely threw me off my rhythm.

Now that finals are over and I'm sitting in front of a computer for eight hours a day, I think it's time I try to get back into that rhythm. And you know what? It's a shame that I haven't posted for the last couple of weeks, because I missed out on some good stuff. Here are some things off the top of my head that I missed:

• Tim Duncan vs Joey Crawford -- I will be campaigning for this to be on the undercard of the inevitable De La Hoya-Mayweather Jr. II fight.
• Golden State Warriors vs Dallas Mavericks -- The series paved the way for the Spurs to have possibly their easiest route to the finals ever. And it gave me something to harass 50% of my friends about until November.
• San Antonio Spurs vs Phoenix Suns (or more specifically, Robert Horry vs the city of Phoenix) -- The most controversy the Spurs have ever been involved in. Before that, it was Phil Jackson campaigning for the Spurs to have an asterisk next to their 1999 title. For what it's worth, the rulings against Amare Stoudemire and Boris Diaw were unfair considering the circumstances, but they clearly violated a rule. As much as it sucks for the fans of the Suns and that series, the right ruling was made. The rule definitely needs to be addressed in the offseason.
• LeBron James vs Expectations -- LeBron knows what he's doing. He didn't care when people criticized the way he was playing in the regular season, when he was saving a lot of energy for the playoffs. Now he's four games away from reaching the NBA Finals against a team that he almost single-handedly beat in last year's playoffs. The Eastern Conference playoffs might finally get interesting.

Hopefully I'll be able to keep on track now that I have the time. We'll see. Enjoy the conference finals.

Wake Me Up When April Ends

I've had better days. I think I broke my foot playing basketball, but I'm tough and I'm fairly positive I can post with pain.

All I want right now is for the playoffs to start. This is bar-none the worst part of the regular season right now. The good teams are starting to rest their players. The bad teams are resting their players in hopes of getting a worse record so they can have better odds at getting one of the top two picks in this summer's draft.

The only exciting stuff going on right now is the race for the eighth playoff spot in the West and the jockeying between Denver and the Lakers for the sixth and seventh seeds.

As of tonight, before any games have started, Golden State holds the last playoff spot. The Clippers are just half a game behind them and New Orleans/OKC just a game back.

Personally, I'd like to see the Warriors hold onto the eighth spot. They would end up playing Dallas in the first round and, besides the Suns, nobody has played the Mavericks better than Golden State. They have beaten Dallas in both of their games so far this season, with a third scheduled for the 17th of this month.

In the two spots ahead of Golden State, the Nuggets currently sits in at the sixth spot and the Lakers are in the seventh spot. The Lakers are a game and a half back of Denver.

In their current positions, the Nuggets would end up facing the Spurs in the first round and the Lakers would play the Suns. I think everybody (me included) would rather see a first round matchup between the Nuggets and Suns.

The speed that these two teams have on floor would make for a very entertaining game. Who wouldn't want to watch two future Hall-Of-Famers in Steve Nash and Allen Iverson (and possibly Carmelo Anthony and Amare Stoudemire) go at each other for seven games. These are two of the fastest guys in the league; guys who never seem to slow down. Sounds like can't miss games to me.

I also think it would be more competitive than if the Suns played the Lakers, despite the seven game series the two teams had in last year's playoffs. Both teams styles of play make for an easily watchable series.

I think a matchup between the Lakers and Spurs would be a better series then the Spurs taking on the Nuggets. It also has an outside shot at reviving the on-life-support Lakers-Spurs rivalry of the early years of this century. A rivalry that all but died when Shaq was traded to the Heat. But it probably won't revive it, it might just bury it for good. Buy hey, we'll never know until it happens, right?

These teams also have styles of play that would matchup well and make for great basketball to watch. The Lakers and Spurs played one of the better games I watched this season when the Spurs beat the Lakers 96-94 in overtime on January 28th in L.A.

Me being in favor of a Spurs-Lakers first round series has nothing to do with my personal bias' (amazingly), I am just thinking which matchups would be more competitive and better for the fans to watch. Honestly.

As for the Eastern Conference playoff races, well, no one cares.

The Suns Own the Mavericks, The Spurs Own the Suns

The Spurs beat the Suns 92-85 last night in the late game on TNT. Watching the game, the Spurs dominated the pace of the game. Holding a team that leads the league in scoring at 110 points per game to 85 points is impressive.

The win by the Spurs brings the within two games of the Suns in the standings and home court advantage in the second round series between the two teams, if both teams get out of the first.

Steve Kerr brought up a good point last night when talking about home court advantage. Kerr said that even though both of these teams are great road teams, they want to have game seven if, should the series go that far, on their home floor.

Speaking of Kerr, he is easily one of my favorite color guys in the game. At the house I was at last night, I refused to let them turn on music over the game because I enjoyed hearing what Kerr had to say.

I'm very excited for the playoffs in the Western Conference to see how it comes down between the Suns, Spurs, and Dallas Mavericks. The Eastern Conference? Not so much....

Word just came out that Texas A&M head coach Billy Gillispie just took the head coaching job at Kentucky.

This is a big blow for Texas A&M, who was one of the up-and-coming programs in college basketball. I imagine after losing Gillispie, they will fall back to mediocrity in college basketball and return to being a football school.

For Kentucky, this is great. Gillispie has that great combination of being a talented recruiter and coach. Most of the great programs in college basketball have coaches are only good recruiters. But with Gillispie they get both and I imagine that they will be back in the Final Four in a couple of years.

March Badassness

I watched probably the best basketball game of the season so far last night when the Suns beat the Mavericks in double overtime. Everybody and their step-mother has already written about it today, I'll just say that it was everything it was expected to be and leave it at that.

There was one thing I was thinking during the game though. Whenever Phoenix gets scored on, they take the ball out of bounds and head up court immediately. They are obviously the fastest team in the league at going from defense to offense, thanks mostly to Steve Nash.

My thought was this: why don't teams try to slow down the Suns by pressuring the inbound pass off of a score? The man closest to the inbounds pass could pressure the ball. I'm not talking a full-court press, I'm just talking about something to slow down that inbounds pass to give you a chance to set up your defense before the Suns get down on offense.

I don't know, I'm not an NBA coach, obviously, but it's just a thought.

The NCAA tournament starts today, actually, I'm watching the Maryland-Davidson game on-demand as we speak. I'll have my thoughts on the first day posted late tonight or tomorrow morning. Not that they really matter, it just keeps me entertained.

Who's my pick to win? My bracket has the Ohio State University beating Florida in the finals, so by my calculations that means neither of those teams will make it past the Sweet Sixteen.

I saw 300 a couple of nights ago. Awesome movie. It's badass level was pretty much off the charts. One thought I had throughout the movie was that it was good to see John Amaechi get a start in movies:



Oh boy, I'm going to hell, no more gay jokes. Enjoy the tournament.