Recapping the Week 4/25-5/1

Owners vs. Players- I was almost forced to go back to the old moniker of NFL for this section after the lockout was lifted briefly on Wednesday but thankfully for all NFL fans and players the league came back to their senses and the lockout was reinstated on Friday. I’m not going to get into the legal talk too much but the players were one vote, a two vote to one vote margin in favor a emergency stay (halting all operations), from ending the lockout. Unfortunately the owners won the motion for an emergency stay and for the time being we are back in lockout mode. Still this has to go down as positive news for NFL fans, or fantasy football fans like me, because progress was made towards football operations returning to normal. Once again the future of the league will be determined in the courtroom this week, a ruling will be made on whether to make this emergency stay a temporary stay. If the court decides to strike down the emergency stay then we could be looking at the end of the lockout immediately or if they choose to upgrade the emergency stay to a temporary stay than the battle in the courtroom could drag all the way through the summer meaning that the 2011 NFL season would be in danger.

On a lighter note this past week brought the conclusion to America’s favorite tournament, April Madness or the Madden Cover Athlete Tournament. Much like this years NCAA tournament this tournament was one for the ages with buzzer beaters seemingly at every turn and Cinderella’s registering shocking upsets over more highly regarded opponents. After four weeks of heart pounding action the sports gods brought us the tantalizingly matchup of Peyton Hillis versus Michael Vick for the spot on Madden Armageddon. Sorry I won’t try a joke that bad ever again, I meant Madden 2012. Just as everyone predicted Peyton Hillis pulled off the victory defeating Vick with 65% of the fan voting. Obviously no one predicted that Hillis would win so that is why I am giving Hillis winning the Madden Cover Tournament the number one spot on my list of unexplainable things in life. For those that are wondering the other spots in my top three unexplainable things in life are occupied by me getting into college and my sports teams never winning anything. Seriously there is no real explanation for how Hillis won this tournament, no one outside of Cleveland knows who he is. From all accounts the Hillis title celebrations in Cleveland, marking the first time in millenniums that a Cleveland sports team won something, were rowdy beyond belief. Hillis winning something elevates Cleveland out of their top spot in cities with the worst sports teams; you guessed it, Seattle slides into their unoccupied slot. In other news what am I going to write about for the owners vs. players section now that April Madness is over?

Moving on, this weekend was also the NFL draft, which for some reason tried to market itself as primetime television. I’m sure that starting the draft on Thursday night helped ESPN’s ratings but if it were me I would just do the whole draft on Sunday, just go from 9 AM to 9 PM. Seems ridiculous but it could actually be done, this draft took 15 hours and 38 minutes according to ESPN, you would just cut down on the length of time in between picks by something like 45 seconds or a minute. Really how many picks do you think really come down to the last minute? Think of all the possibilities that could happen if the draft took place on just one day. First off it would have its own nickname, Not Moving From Couch All Day. For whatever reason the NBA and NFL draft can captivate people even though there is no physical action, just talking heads. Then there’s the fact that you would get to watch the commentators heads explode as they tried to process what Al Davis and the Raiders were doing during the draft. I think that there heads have come close to exploding before, Darius Heyward-Bey in the 2009 draft, but were saved because the Raiders had no more picks until the next day. Then there’s the best part, at least to me, would Mel Kiper Jr’s hair stay perfect throughout twelve hours of coverage? My money would be on a no answer to that question but you just never know. I could go on forever with the possibilities but I think I lost enough readers already with those two hypothetical’s. I’m going to keep my thoughts on the draft pretty brief but the one thing I will say is that if you don’t have a proven quarterback you should take a quarterback in one of the first three rounds. If you already have a proven quarterback than you build up your offensive and defensive lines, all the skill positions are meaningless unless you have a franchise QB and a good offensive and defensive line. I’ve been working on a more in depth article about drafting that was supposed to be ready by the draft but have fallen way behind, bottom line look for the article to publish at some point before summer.

The big story about the draft was undoubtedly the run on quarterbacks in the first twelve picks and even though some people have problems with them being drafted too high I don’t have a problem at all with what teams like the Tennessee Titans and Minnesota Vikings did. Both of these teams need a franchise quarterback and both picked presumably the top one that was available to them. Tennessee’s pick of Jake Locker looks a little weird because Blaine Gabbert was still on the board but I still can’t fault them because if they think Locker was the best quarterback available than they made the right call and its now on the coaching staff to develop them. Teams that addressed their quarterback needs in the first three rounds almost always come away as draft winners to me because they got a quarterback and its now on the coaching staff to develop that quarterback. For that reason I think that the big loser in the draft has to be the Arizona Cardinals followed by the Buffalo Bills. The Cardinals were atrocious last year at quarterback and with the fifth pick passed up the opportunity to draft Blaine Gabbert, who some thought was the best quarterback in this draft class. There have been rumors that Marc Bulger is going to join the Cardinals as a free agent once the lockout ends but I would still draft a quarterback in the Cardinals position. Seriously does anyone think that Bulger is a “franchise quarterback?” The Bills are slightly different because they have a returning quarterback in Ryan Fitzpatrick so you can’t fault them for taking the best defensive lineman in the draft, but I would still either take Gabbert because quaterback is the one position where drafting value shouldn’t matter. Other than teams that took a quarterback I like the Lions as a winner for drafting Nick Fairley and the Seahawks as a loser for not addressing their own quarterback concerns. Side note how does only one Oregon player get drafted? They had a large draft eligible class that went to the national title and only one player gets drafted? That just doesn’t add up.

NBA- The first round of playoffs has ended which means thankfully we don’t have to look at Dwight Howard’s facial hair anymore. On the other hand we are unfortunately still left with the image of Steve Blake wearing a headband. For the third straight year the Blazers are first round casualties further proving that my sports teams never win titles. This was the first round matchup the Blazers wanted which is pretty sad because after watching all six games I can confidently say that the Mavericks are basically a better version of the Blazers. Their star power forward Dirk Nowitzki was much better than the Blazers star power forward LaMarcus Aldridge, their other options (neither team has a true second option) were much better than the Blazers, and their bench for the most part outplayed the Blazers. Crazy statistic for the Blazers starting point guard Andre Miller made as many three pointers in the postseason as he did in the regular season. This just shows how bad the Blazer offense was because when Miller shoots a three pointer its basically admitting the offense isn’t working. It does make the loss easier to handle when you consider that the Mavericks play the Lakers in their next series, which basically means that even if the Blazers had beaten the Mavericks their season would have been over in round 2 regardless. Considering that this was the year that the Blazers were supposed to ascend to true contender status you have to mark this season as disappointing but that’s mainly due to injuries to Greg Oden and Brandon Roy.

Elsewhere in the West the Memphis Grizzlies upsetting of the San Antonio Spurs was shocking and also depressing because if you remember I wanted to pick the Grizzlies in six but was scared off because legitimately no one thought they could do it. This is called karma. Too be honest I wasn’t too excited about this series but game five of the Spurs vs. Grizzlies was one of the best basketball games of the season, which is too bad because we were stuck with NBA TV and their biased regional announcers. Side note if you thought these announcers were bad make sure to listen to a Blazer game at some point, the Blazer announcing tandem of Mike and Mike puts these guys to shame. Then again can you blame the announcers? If you follow a team and its players/coaches around for a couple years wouldn’t you yourself get attached? Also a question that must be asked how does Grizzlies power forward and former Blazer legend Zach Randolph get the nickname Z-Bo? Obviously the Z part of the nickname makes sense but the Bo part has always been a question of mine ever since Randolph led the Blazers to continual mediocrity during his tenure in Portland. After watching him as a Blazer I never thought I would say that Z-Bo could be the number one option on a legitimate playoff contender but after watching him destroy the Spurs and Thunder in game one I appear to have been proved wrong. I don’t think that anyone has ever questioned Randolph’s ability to score but during his time in Portland Z-Bo was deemed a black hole for never passing the ball once he touched it. Too be fair to Randolph I’m not quite sure if there was anybody else that good offensively on the Blazers but the dude didn’t pass the rock. The only two times Randolph passed the ball were either when he was in such a bad position he couldn’t shoot or he knew that if he passed it he would immediately get the ball back. I can specifically remember a game where Randolph scored 42 points on 40 shots and the Blazer announcers were calling it a remarkable scoring display while all I could think of was how many shots it took for him to get those points. For comparison when Kobe Bryant dropped 81 points on the Raptors he took only 46 shots. I’m quite sure there were many other instances of Randolph scoring tons of points but I’m also quite sure that he took tons of shots to get there. My point is that his scoring in Portland felt pretty empty, now in Memphis he moves the ball with more regularity and attacks the basket more than he did in Portland leading to his evolution as one of the elite power forwards in the West. The funniest thing about Z-Bo is the fact that he’s listed at 6’9” and never dunks the basketball.

Moving to the Eastern Conference the Atlanta Hawks completed their upset of the Orlando Magic and Dwight Howard’s facial hair (huge victory) setting up a matchup with the top seeded Chicago Bulls. I like the Bulls to advance past the Hawks in six games or less mainly because I’m not sure who the Hawks can put on Derrick Rose. There best hope at containing the likely MVP was Kirk Hinrich but he injured his hamstring and is unlikely to play in game one or two. That being said the Hawks did win the regular season series against the Bulls so they have had some previous success with the Bulls. The other Eastern Conference matchup between the Celtics and the Heat is the one that everybody has been forward to and Game 1 didn’t disappoint. The Heat pulled off the victory by nine points but what made the game so great was the hostility between the two teams. A playoff series between two teams that have a rivalry between each other is almost always must watch television even if you don’t have a horse in the race. You can’t really call the Celtics vs. Heat series a rivalry because the bad blood was brought with LeBron James this summer but these teams really don’t like each other. Despite losing game one I’m going to stick with Boston in six games because I don’t think the Celtics can lose to the Heat. I know that sounds stupid but I just can’t see Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, and Ray Allen losing to the Heat this year, for lack of a better term I think it’s the Celtics final stand. This of course is completely reliant on if Kevin Garnett doesn’t pull a Chris Bosh like he did in Game one. For the record Chris Bosh pulled a Chris Bosh in Game one by registering seven points on an impressive three of ten shooting. And with the weekly Chris Bosh joke, I’m hoping to start a Ripken like streak in terms of this, that ends the NBA recap.

MLB- This week will undoubtedly go down as the best Mariner week of the season as the Mariners registered a shocking five game winning streak. Of course the Mariners lost the one game during the week that they were supposed to win on Sunday when they lost to the Red Sox with King Felix pitching but it was still a nice stretch. Moving on with MLB news that people actually care about Dodgers OF Andre Either stretched his hitting streak to 27 games on Sunday which puts him one game away from the halfway mark to the legendary 56 game hitting streak of Joe DiMaggio. I’ve said, along with many others, that Ichiro would be the person with the best shot of breaking the streak but Either has made a nice run of it so far. I don’t think he will get there but I would love to be wrong and see Either string together a hitting streak of at least 57 games. Lastly the Cleveland Indians and Florida Marlins continue to exceed expectations as both find themselves near the top of their respective divisions. The Marlins I had pegged as a wild card sleeper but have gotten off to their best start in franchise history despite the fact that star Hanley Ramirez apparently hasn’t realized that the season has started yet. The Indians on the other hand I predicted to be in a competition for the Seattle Mariners for the worst team in the American League. Led by thirteen straight wins in Cleveland and newfound ace Justin Masterson (5-0 2.25 ERA) the Indians find themselves atop the American League Central. I would say that the Marlins are the team most likely to remain competitive in the playoff race but so far in the AL Central no other team is playing great so the Indians have a shot.

The Week Moving Forward

Owners vs. Players- For the first time in months there is legitimate hope that the lockout could be over, even better is the hope that it could be by the end of the week. There are of course no guarantees but it seems like it might be time for me to start thinking of fantasy football names for next year. It’s never too early to start right? I can guarantee that I will not follow along with last years disastrous name of M-Dubs Club. Looking back on it I was bound to fail from the get go with a name like that.

NBA- If you didn’t know there’s a thing called the PLAYOFFS going on, besides that not much.

MLB- The Mariners after winning five in a row last week are almost guaranteed to lose at least five in a row this week. Fearless prediction sure to go wrong, there will be a no hitter this week.