Recapping the Week 4/18-4/24

Owners vs. Players- Unfortunately there was no Easter miracle to report this week in the NFL as the league is still in the midst of a lockout. Other than that there isn’t too much to say about the NFL right now. True story the ESPN.com NFL section has a headline story right now (Sunday afternoon) about how there is going to be professional women's bowling in Cowboys stadium, riveting stuff.

Moving on to commentary about America’s favorite tournament, the Madden cover tournament breakdown! After four long hard weeks of voting America has decided that it should be either Michael Vick or Peyton Hillis that graces the cover of Madden 2012. I’d really love to know what EA Sports is thinking right now because there either going to have one of the most hated players in the NFL or a white running back that nobody knows about who plays on an awful team on the cover of Madden. Yes I think this actually qualifies as an instance where someone (EA Sports) is caught between a rock and a hard place. I guess this answers the question of who would be the Cleveland athlete that would fill the departed LeBron James’ shoes, Peyton Hillis everybody. I think that the only plausible explanation for how Hillis made the title is that Cleveland fans after decades of suffering saw an opportunity for a Cleveland team/athlete to win something and voted like crazy for Hillis. Side note you know who looks really dumb throughout all of this is the Denver Broncos who traded Hillis away last offseason for a third string quarterback (Brady Quinn). There have been some strange cover athletes for video games but if Hillis actually wins the Madden cover he will go down as the strangest of all time. Hillis before last season was an unknown and even though he did breakout last season his stats weren’t even that remarkable. If you asked any NFL fan to name the top ten running backs in the league right now I have no doubt that the vast majority wouldn’t mention Hillis. The funny thing is that there really isn’t anybody else that would make sense as the Browns representative, they were that bad last year. For all NBA fans it would be like trying to pick a Cleveland Cavalier player to be on the Cover of NBA 2K11 there’s no good options. These past two sentences should make all sports fans feel sympathy for Cleveland fans, their teams are horrendous. You know its bad when you have a Seattle fan saying this to you but at least the Seattle teams have Ichiro, King Felix, and our self (the 12th man). Moving on I expect Vick to win but maybe PETA, who asked EA Sports to remove Vick from the tournament bracket, will spend all week protesting Vick by voting for Hillis, you just never know in April Madness. Side note how do they determine who will be on the cover of Madden 2013 if there’s not a season next year? I think the best way of determining the Madden 2013 cover athlete if there were a lockout next year would be letting the last NFL player to stay out of the news for negative reasons be on the cover. I mean at this point at least ten percent of the league, headlined by Brandon Marshall getting stabbed this past week, has already been disqualified using my guidelines. Your 2013 Madden cover athlete: whoever punts for the Baltimore Ravens! Doesn’t this just sound great?

NBA- I would like to start this off by saying that I am a fan of an NBA team that scored 11 points and 14 points in the first and third quarters of a playoff game and still won. I’m not making this up either, your Portland TrailBlazers everybody, the team that scores 49 points through three quarters and still manages to win. If any Portland fan tells you that they thought they were going to come back and win the game against the Mavericks on Saturday they are lying through their teeth, everybody in the state of Oregon and beyond had written the Blazers off. Only a couple weeks after anointing Rory McIlroy as my new standard for choking I have been forced to replace McIlroy with the Dallas Mavericks after their performance on Saturday afternoon. This wasn’t really too tough of a decision either, these next couple of sentences will prove this and why there should never be cross sports comparisons. McIlroy easily grabbed the choking standard from Jay Cutler (Knee-gate which may not have been fair but whatever I hate Cutler) after his performance at the Masters, mainly the part where he went something like plus two hundred (?) in a three hole span that saw him go from first to outside of the top ten. If you look at the Mavericks blowing their 23 point lead in 13 minutes in terms of McIlroy and golf it would be something like McIlroy entering Sunday at the Masters with an eight or nine stroke lead and then blowing it. There you go I successfully proved why cross sports comparisons shouldn’t exist and why the Mavericks choking effort on Saturday was truly legendary. The Blazers were atrocious in the first quarter and then rallied in the second quarter that led to the Mavericks holding a slim two point lead over the Blazers entering the half. Then the Blazers came out in the third quarter and missed their first fifteen shots which led to the Mavericks pushing their lead to twenty three points and all Blazer fans giving up on the season. True story there was actually a point in the third quarter that I hoped the Blazers wouldn’t make a field goal just so they could be the only team in NBA history to go a whole quarter without making a field goal. It was that bad, I was actually rooting against my team so they could hold one of the worst distinctions in NBA history. Then Brandon Roy aka the guy who has no meniscus in his knees subbed in, caught fire, led the Blazers back to victory, and cured cancer. Ok maybe I made the last one up but you get the point. Couple of notes from the game, first I’m actually kind of shocked that my friends and I kept watching the game because; A, the Blazers were down twenty three, and B, it was the first sunny day in Eugene in an estimated 497 days. Second what the hell did Nate McMillan say to the Blazers before the game and at halftime? Whatever it was I hope he never says it again because I don’t think I can handle watching two quarters that were as awful as the Blazers first and third quarters again. Lastly how many Maverick fans do you think stopped watching around the end of the third quarter and then came back and saw that they actually lost the game? There reactions upon learning that the Mavericks pulled a McIlroy times two would have been absolutely priceless.

Just because I started a new paragraph doesn’t mean I’m done talking about the Blazers, do you guys think there’s any truth to the rumor that Mark Cuban’s head exploded after game 4? Just kidding fortunately for you guys I have run out of awesome things to say about the Blazers and terrible things about the Mavericks so in this case a new paragraph does mean moving on. In other NBA news the Celtics swept the Knicks even though they probably should have lost games 1 and 2. Side note, how come no one ever mentions Ray Allen as an elite closer? The guy just doesn’t miss big shots in the postseason further evidenced by his late three that put the Celtics ahead in game one of the series. The Knicks put up a good fight but really didn’t have too much of a chance once Chauncey Billups got injured, it was already hard enough for the Knicks playing 3 vs. 5 against the Celtics so once Billups got injured they had no chance playing 2 vs. 5. Carmelo Anthony did have his “signature moment” in game 2 when he dropped 42 points playing by himself (Stoudemire left due to back spasms) but in the other three games was somewhere between average and below average. I wasn’t too big a fan of the Melo trade from the Knicks angle when it happened and this series showed exactly why; you can’t go very far in the playoffs when you have little or no depth. I fully expect Melo and Stoudemire to get better and make this team more competitive in the future but I just don’t know if they will ever be title contenders unless they are able to get a third star to play with them. The third star that the Knicks are hoping comes to Madison Square Garden is the Hornets Chris Paul who is singlehandedly making the Hornets vs. Lakers series competitive. The other thing that Chris Paul is really good at is making Blazer fans think of what could have been if the Blazers hadn’t selected Martell Webster instead of Paul. Moving on before I start crying, in last weeks post I wrote that I would be absolutely shocked if this series had any other result than a Hornets sweep as I predicted I am absolutely shocked that the Hornets are tied at two games apiece with the Lakers. Just take a look at who Chris Paul is playing with right now; Paul starts alongside Marco Belinelli, Trevor Ariza, Carl Landry, and Emeka Okafor. In addition to that phenomenal starting lineup Paul is aided by the fearsome bench crew of Willie Green, Jarret Jack, DJ Mbenga, Jason Smith, and Aaron Gray (my vote for worst player in the NBA). Explain to me how this roster is tied with the two time defending champion Lakers? Most of it, if not all of it, has to do with the fact that Paul is playing unreal basketball right now (27 points, 15 assists, and 13 rebounds on Sunday). Some of it also has to be because Steve Blake is currently wearing a headband. Some people are just not meant to wear headbands; Steve Blake is one of them. Still the Lakers will win this series, there’s simply no way that Hornets can advance past the Lakers even with Chris Paul going nuts. In a move that everyone predicted, including myself, the Hawks have put the Magic on the brink of elimination after Sundays game four victory. I’m not sure that anyone gave the Hawks much of a chance in this series but that’s why they play the games. Hawks center Jason Collins has received tons of credit for his defense on Dwight Howard but I think this has much more to do with the Magic not having anybody else shooting well besides Howard. The Magic live and die by their perimeter shooting which has led them to the three games to one deficit but I actually think there going to get hot and come back and win this series. You can mark that down as a prediction sure to go wrong.

The Heat and Bulls both find themselves up three games to one over the 76ers and Pacers respectively which doesn’t really mean anything besides the fact that both will be advancing to the next round. I’m still not sure why LeBron gets all of the late game isolation plays but he showed that he still isn’t very good at converting in the clutch in Sunday’s loss to the 76ers. LeBron showed all year that he wasn’t a great in the clutch situations so why don’t they change it up and give Dwayne Wade a couple looks? It’s not like Wade isn’t qualified to be taking these big shots and its supposedly still his team so why does James get all the late game looks? The only thing I have to say about the Pacers vs. Bulls series is how do the Pacers let their home court become flooded with Bulls fans? Watching parts of game three and four made it seem like there were at least as many Bulls fans in Indianapolis as there were Pacer fans. The Oklahoma City Thunder also can be booked for the next round of the playoffs as they hold a commanding three games to zero lead over the Denver Nuggets. With the Lakers struggles so far it doesn’t seem so far-fetched right now to say that the Thunder are the favorites in the West. Quick note on the Nuggets, this series proved why every NBA team for the most part needs a star to go far in the playoffs. The Detroit Pistons are the only exception to this rule but in the NBA today you need a star or stars to make it deep in the playoffs. What I mean by this is you need some “star player” that can get the ball late in the games drive down the lane yell very loudly and get a foul call. It sounds stupid but in the NBA today if you can act like you got fouled or at least yell like you just got your armed chopped off its classified as good offense. The funny thing is that people at the Rec center have caught on to this and actually do the same yelling routine when they take layups, its the stupidest thing ever there’s not even referees to call fouls. Further proving that it never pays to be a conformist is the fact that the Grizzlies hold a two games to one edge over the Spurs, which someone thought could be plausible but decided against it because no one else picked the Grizzlies to advance. This series isn’t close to being over but if the Spurs can’t grab Mondays game four it would seem very likely that the Grizzlies would become only the second eight seeded team to advance out of the first round since the first round format changed into best of seven series format. I’m not quite sure what to expect the rest of the way but whoever wins game four would be the one that I would predict to win the series.

MLB- Baseball is firmly on the backburner with the NBA playoffs in full swing but there still were a couple of things that I feel are worth mentioning. I’ve been proudly rocking my Pirates hat lately because this is the first time in at least ten years that the Pirates aren’t in last place in their division, unfortunately the Astros are only a game back of the Pirates so I might have to put the Pirates hat back in storage. Ok back to MLB news that people actually care about, the Red Sox after a horrendous start are making their way back to the AL East standings, which really shouldn’t surprise anyone. The one thing I will say about the Red Sox their best offseason addition so far this season has been a healthy Josh Beckett. Beckett in the past few weeks has looked like a completely different pitcher than last year, if Beckett can keep pitching like a top flight starter there’s no reason why they shouldn’t making a deep playoff run come October. The Tampa Bay Rays also got off to a tough start in early in the season but after Manny Ramirez’s abrupt retirement have pulled off 10 wins in 13 games. Does anything else scream bad teammate more than a team winning 10 games in 13 tries after you retire? This winning streak has been shocking for many reasons especially when you consider that the Rays as of right now are playing without their best player Evan Longoria who has been sidelined with a hip problem. I don’t really like the Rays chances to make the playoffs because they play in the AL East but they still are a dark horse team to watch if there offense can get it back together once Longoria returns. Another Florida team, the Marlins, have also caught my eye, in particular they’re starting pitching that was dominant this past week. Led by ace Josh Johnson the Marlins have been putting up some spectacular pitching performances including a handful of no-hit bids that have lasted into the late innings of games. Just this past weekend Josh Johnson took a no hit bid into the sixth inning and Annibal Sanchez took a no-hit bid into the ninth inning against the Colorado Rockies. This is impressive stuff considering the Rockies boast arguably the top offense in the National League. If the Marlins rotation can stay healthy you have to at least consider them as a potential National League Wild Card team. The sad thing is that I’m pretty sure our intramural basketball team the Wet Bandits drew more fans than the Marlins do at home games.

The Week Moving Forward

Owners vs. Players- I’m going to go way out on a limb and say that there won’t be an agreement between the owners and players but you never know. The big news of the upcoming week is that the NFL draft starts on Thursday and runs all the way through Saturday. I don’t know about you guys but I find it pretty hard to get excited about this draft when there’s no guarantee of football next season. Continuing with the age-old tradition of saving the best for last, a Madden cover winner will be announced at some point this week, try to hold in your excitement.

NBA- The first round of the playoffs continue throughout the week and the only two things that I hope happen are Dwight Howard shaving his facial hair and Steve Blake not ever wearing a headband again. Besides that I predict the Spurs, Lakers, Blazers, Thunder to advance in the Western Conference and the Bulls, Heat, Celtics, and Magic to advance out of the Eastern conference.

MLB- Would it really hurt to shorten the MLB season by ten or so games? If you shorten the season to 150 games would any problems be created? I don’t think so plus the upside is you take Mariners fans out of their misery a couple weeks earlier than the 162 game schedule.