NBA's heat-map

The long NBA regular season is now over and the playoffs are starting tomorrow. I just realized I had blogged just five times about the NBA this entire season. Thats what happens when you are busy and your favorite team is 25-57. So I will blame my lack of focus on the NBA on the Phoenix Suns and their horrible season. But the playoffs are always fun and deserve our collective attention. As much as I hate the Lakers and Kobe, we will miss him in the playoffs. You don't want to see anybody get hurt, let alone a superstar like Kobe just before the playoffs. The Lakers are not even the same team to hate without him. They finally made it in as the 7-Th seed surprising everybody. They get the Spurs instead of the Thunder, which is supposed to be a friendlier matchup. I don't think it matters anyways. They will be bounced early. But do we really even care with no Kobe to love or hate? Thats the power of a NBA superstar. Kobe is Kobe, plus he had a phenomenal season. It was hard to see him go out so close to the playoffs.

The other problem with an injury so close to the playoffs is that it also means you are relatively close to the beginning of next NBA season, as crazy as that may sound. Derrick Rose is still not back from the injury late last season, but thats a topic for another day. So Kobe may not be back until mid-way into next season. He has vowed to come back and I believe him 100%, but it might be 2014/2015 before he is completely back and he might be too old by then. Thats why there are legitimate concerns about his career being over. I think it might be over for all practical purposes, but not officially yet. He will be back. The Lakers are still a story, but Dwight Howard and Pau Gasol don't move the needle and Steve Nash has not been effective this year either. I remember talking to a scalper back when Charles Barkley was a superstar in Phoenix. He said the toughest part of his job was when Barkley was out injured. He just could not move any tickets. Lakers tickets lost a whole bunch of value with Kobe's injury.

On the schedule this weekend are a couple of interesting match-ups. Boston-NY is always interesting regardless of the sport. Golden State at Denver is another fun series. Stephen Curry is the next big star on the horizon and the Warriors look like a genius for locking him up at the beginning of the season at what will now be considered a bargain basement price for Curry. James Harden leading the upstart Rockets into Oklahoma city is intriguing too, but they don't have a realistic shot at doing anything significant. At the end of the day, the entire playoffs looks like a distraction while the Heat map out their way through the playoff maze to lock up their second championship. LeBron had such a phenomenal season that even thinking about alternate names for the NBA MVP honors sounds ridiculous. The biggest lock of this season might be the two awards - LeBron for MVP and Damian Lillard for rookie of the year. And of course Heat for the championship, though I am still holding hope that the Pacers or Spurs or Thunder will bother them just a little bit.

Final Four Homecoming

The NCAA tournament so far has been mediocre at best. It is always interesting and worth watching, but some years are better than others and this year is not one of them. It took a turn for the bizarre last Sunday during the elite eight when Louisville's Kevin Ware suffered the most horrific injury I have ever seen. CBS didn't really have it's act together and ended up showing two replays of the injury before realizing this was not fit for TV. I had the misfortune of witnessing both the replays and was in shock much like his teammates. The instantaneous look of disgust and tears on his teammates' faces showed you how bad the injury was and how disturbing it was for them to see one of their brothers suffer through that. Even coach Rick Pitino couldn't control his tears. I can't imagine how much pain Kevin was with his broken legs, but he still mustered enough courage to implore his teammates to go, win the game, and get to the final four. Duke's fate was sealed right there. Louisville is now going to Atlanta for the final four and Kevin Ware will be there on the bench in his hometown. I can't wait to see this guy there. It will be good to see him there after what happened last Sunday.

Wichita State crashed the final four party meant for the big boys to join Michigan, Syracuse and Louisville.  For all the excitement about the upsets and the madness, it's incredibly hard for lower seeds to go all the way to the final four. We love the tournament because there are upsets, though we just don't know who gets upset. For every major program that makes it to the final four, couple of them lose along the way to lower seeds. Secondly, there is way more madness through the elite eight and  there is at least one Wichita State or Butler sneaking into the final four every year. Upsets are fun, but the mainstream programs are not bad either for business. This year's tournament has gotten good TV ratings despite mediocre games because of the bigger programs from larger states like Ohio State, Duke, North Carolina, Michigan, Syracuse, and Indiana making relatively deep runs. Florida Gulf Coast was the story of the first couple of weeks, but the bigger programs seem to move the needle better. Speaking of FGCU, their head coach will take his coaching skills and his super model wife to USC. His salary just went from 157 K a year to more than million a year. What a tournament for this guy! Our tournament will never be as good as his, but a Louisville-Michigan classic can make it better.

Rutgers head coach Mike Rice has been relieved of his duty after a disturbing video surfaced showing him pushing, kicking, and throwing the basketball at his players during practice. I have no idea how he assumed he was going to get away with that in this day and age. He proved that some people are not just bad, they are also stupid. I am surprised the players let him pull this garbage. Goes to show that these players are still kids and the coaches need to be teachers first and foremost. The corrupt NCAA system often obscures this fact, but we should at least pretend to maintain a semblance of teacher-student relationships between these coaches and players. Rutgers is a state school too, which necessitated a comment from the popular New Jersey Governor Chris Christie on the topic. I don't have a problem with Mike Rice getting fired, but what if he was really working on changing and improving his behavior? There is always another side to punishment. As Mike Rice lost his job, Rick Pitino's kid got one. Richard Pitino is now the head coach at Minnesota at the ripe old age of 30. Never hurts to have a recognizable last name.