Holiday Ball

Holiday season usually mean some combination of family, travel, and sports. I didn't travel to meet family this year and hence my season was more skewed towards watching sports on TV. This time of the year, we have the NFL ramping up, fantasy football peaking or waning depending on how the playoffs treated you, bowl games, and the Christmas Day NBA games. Speaking of Bowl games, there was a great one tonight at Orange Bowl between Michigan and Florida state. Michigan lost by a point. Jim Harbaugh is a great coach. What he has done at Michigan in 2 years is as impressive as what he did in each of his previous stops. But he does seem to suffer a little bit from the bridesmaid syndrome. He takes teams almost to the very top, but falls just a little short in the Super Bowl or the crucial Ohio State game or the Orange Bowl. It doesn't seem like he is screwing things up, but bad luck seems to follow him at the worst of times. However, you can't blame it all on bad luck as some of his failures might be due to his offenses being conservative and not explosive enough to score in the clutch against good defenses. For a former quarterback turned head coach, his teams are pretty defense and run oriented and conservative on offense. In any case, congrats on a good season and let's see where he takes his program. If he stays that is. He is always linked to high profile NFL openings.

In the NBA, the Warriors-Cavs Christmas Day game is still reverberating across the league.  It was great theater and good TV. NBA should have been happy with the show and the TV ratings for that game. It even drew more viewers than the Ravens-Steelers game for the stretch they overlapped. However, NBA did get killed later with the other games going against the NFL. This game in Cleveland was very reminiscent of the thrilling finals these teams played in June in more ways than one. I was very impressed by the intensity of this game from the get-go. It felt like the game 8 of the finals! Unfortunately for the Warriors, the result and the ending felt like the finals too. They came from way ahead to lose a close one. Losing a 14-point lead in the fourth quarter is never a good look, especially for an elite team. Houston Rockets' GM Daryl Morey and the analytics crowd will tell you that it's statistically rare for teams to lose when they are ahead by more points than the number of minutes remaining in the game. Thats true for a normal team, let alone a star-studded championship contender. With all that said, I don't think the dubs have a lot to worry about. They dominated the game even with Curry being MIA. They should be able to handle these Cavs. Unless of course it's an one possession game at the end and the ball in in Kyrie Irving's hands. All bets are off in that case.

In the NFL, the Christmas weekend was great this year with a full slate of games on Saturday plus a couple of games on Sunday and Monday Night Football. This week 17 is going to be weird since it's hard to even figure out which teams have anything to play for. Many stars are going to be resting and the gamblers are going to have a hard time picking winners. Ironically, the best team in the league, the New England Patriots, might still have to play and win since the Raiders are right on their heels and the number 1 seed is still in doubt. The Raiders and Chiefs have a lot to play for as well. The only real contest is the Packers @ Lions Sunday night for the NFC North title. There is still some intrigue on the NFC side, though I won't bore you with all the details including how the TB Bucs can still make the playoffs if 8 things break their way including a tie. The AFC playoff on the other hand is all set and only the seedings are on the line this weekend. The NFL TV ratings since the elections seem to be back on track, but a lot of it seems to be because of the Cowboys. This will continue into the playoffs and we can expect a massive Super Bowl if the Boys make it that far. But the AFC playoffs might have some interesting TV numbers as we have 3 backup QBs among the 6 playoff teams - Matt Moore, Matt McGloin, and Tom Savage.  Whether they throw the ball to their receivers, opposing cornerbacks, or into the dirt, some of us will be watching for sure. But will America watch? Happy New Year to everybody and lets usher in the NFL playoffs and find out.

RIP Sager!

Last week was a sad one in the NBA. America's beloved sideline reporter Craig Sager lost his battle against cancer and the NBA universe paid a great tribute to him. He made sideline reporting fun. He got a lot of attention for his outlandish suits and the reactions to it from the coaches and the stars. Thats probably what made him a star, but he was much more than just his clothes. I liked his demeanor and his casual style of questioning, which he actually leveraged effectively to ask tough questions. We also heard great stories after his passing that we had no idea about. For instance, Dennis Rodman shared with the world how Sager saved his life by talking him out of a potential suicide attempt back in 1993 when he was done in Detroit. No wonder there is genuine affection for him from across the league. I was pleasantly surprised and also happy to see the league going the extra mile to pay tribute to a sideline reporter as if he was a star ex-athlete or a owner. From various eulogies on TNT to Steve Kerr's speech at the Oracle arena to the funky jerseys that several teams sported on the bench, Sager deserved it all. RIP Sager! We will all miss you and your colorful personality.

The other big news from the NBA last week thats on my mind is the Cavs stars staying back home for the road game in Memphis. They were all rested as the Cavs are real good and don't need all the weapons all the time. Plus they can afford to lose a game or two and might actually be better off giving their stars some rest since they know they are going to have a long and fruitful playoff run extending the already marathon NBA season well into June. This is really a tough one for me since there are valid arguments to be made on either side. First off, resting players randomly mid-season is a trend popularized by Greg Popovich and right there you know there is a legitimate reason to do it. Pop is no fool! This, among other kinds of rests that he forced on Tim Duncan is probably what extended the hall of famer's career by another 2 or 3 years. Coincidentally, the Spurs retired Duncan's jersey today. There are not many stars in today's sports more synonymous with their team as Duncan is with the Spurs. Congrats to Timmy and the Spurs. But coming back to the topic of rest and why Pop and others do it, teams benefit from it and they are free to do whatever they want. The coach is paid to win a championship for their team. If he decides resting LeBron in mid-December helps that cause, he should totally be able to do it.

But NBA is also entertainment and fans are the customers. There was a guy in Memphis holding a sign that read "I paid $800 and drove 4 hours to see this game." Therein lies the problem. NBA owes it's fans a great entertainment product. This is especially true now since the greedy sports world has moved to "dynamic pricing" the last few years where the already crazy prices are even higher for the Cavs game or the Yankees game or the Patriots game. At least, this was not the case back in the day when sticker prices stayed the same for all the regular season games of a team and only the scalpers charged you more for the sexier matchup. Now that the league itself is doing legalized scalping, they have to make sure the stars show up to justify those prices. I don't know if the Grizzlies charged a premium for LeBron, but I would guess they did. It's in the league's best interest to ensure LeBron plays if he can except when he is injured. Stars like Jordan and Kobe always played and honestly, you are a professional athlete paid millions to play basketball. Is it too much to ask that you show up and play? I understand the season is long and rest does the body some good come playoff time, but the league must start enforcing some rules and make some changes to make sure this random resting doesn't happen.

The other thing that gives me pause aside from the "team should do whats good for them" argument is that, we have traditionally accepted stars and starters resting the last game or 2 of the season in preparation for the playoffs. In fact, this is so common that most fantasy football leagues wrap the season up in week 16 week and don't even play week 17. This end of season resting happens in all sports. So how and why is resting in the middle of the season different or worse? I don't have a great or a legally enforceable answer to that, but it is worse because fans do expect some uncertainty at the end of the season. If Cavs were playing the Grizzlies on the last day of the season, fans probably might expect LeBron and even some of the Memphis stars to be possibly rested. So they may not plunk down 800 bucks for those tickets. It is a lot harder to predict mid-season which game or when these stars can or will be rested. NBA can't run it's business like this. Though I have to agree I don't know how they can legislate against this either. They can't tell the coaches how to do their job. They can't say resting is allowed in game 81 and 82, but not games 15 or 36. They also can't differentiate between coaches not playing a bench warmer versus not playing LeBron James. Even if they make these rules, what happens if the team cooks up some fake injuries to rest the stars or start LeBron and bench him after 3 mins?

The league can't do much, but it can remove back-to-back games and make the season a little less stressful for the players. That will also improve the quality of the regular-season games as the league today loses a lot of good matchups to the dreaded tired legs from back-to-backs. Aside from that, I don't know how the league can control this, but I do know they have to. NBA is a business and all the owners have a collective responsibility to make it work. May be they just get them all in a room and ask them to cut it out. May be outlaw resting through an agreed convention rather than bargained regulations. I love coach Pop, but this is one ugly contribution of his to the game. Customer is king and NBA better internalize this notion. Stars drive this league and their game is the product. People pick up the schedule as soon as it's released and check when LeBron is coming to town. When the Warriors are playing the Spurs etc. If the league can't deliver on that schedule, we have a problem. Commish Adam Silver has been good with a lot of things including the Sager celebrations. Hope he steps in and gets this fixed too. If you need rest against a bad team, play hard for 20 mins, blow them out, and rest the second half. This is exactly what Jordan did when he came to my town back in the day. He played, he dominated, and he rested, all in one night.  I paid a premium, saw him play, and went home happy. Everybody won. It's not that complicated. Just play!

Captain Obvious here: Klay can play!

I have had a busy few weeks and missed blogging. When you take a break like that, you would like to come back with a big bang sports story. I can't believe I missed even the Cubs' championship (more on that later). Or the NBA season, the Warriors, and Russell Westbrook. And then there are the great NFL games that I have missed blogging about the last few weeks. But today, Klay Thompson gave us all a great story on a drab late-fall, early-winter Monday night that featured a horrible 41-10 MNF game between the mediocre Colts with a great quarterback and the horrible Jets with a quarterback who can be mediocre at his best. Klay Thompson dropped 60 points in 29 minutes. His average points per minute in this game was almost as high as Wilt Chamberlain's in his 100-point game.

The Warriors are playing great right now and their offense is so fluid and effortless with the addition of Durant to the already lethal shooting combo of Klay and Curry. Things have come together real well, especially on the offensive side and the most surprising thing so far has been how the big 3 have had to sacrifice very little in terms of their shots and points. The big 3 have been close to their average number of shots from last year and that has to be good news for the team's chemistry. But tonight, they all deferred to Klay as he was in one of his zones. It reminded me of the game 6 in the Western Conference Finals last year against Durant's OKC or the regular season game couple of years back when he scored 37 in the third quarter against the Kings. He is as combustible as the other 2 MVPs in his team and I am glad his offense can still shine brightly under the new regime.

The early returns suggest the dubs have absolutely nailed the Durant addition and the offense is working just as they drew it up. This team can only get better, though none of this matters until they get to June. They are the presumptive Western Conference champions and the same goes for the Cavs in the East. The Cavs are playing great to justify such expectations as well. The Clippers and the Spurs are the other impressive teams and as always, the Western conference playoffs are going to be off the chains as kids used to say 15 years back. As for the NBA regular season, the dubs will keep us entertained. There are two other noteworthy individual performances to keep a close eye on. Russell Westbrook just got his 6th straight triple double and he could very well average a triple double for the entire season. That would be amazing to say the least.

The other surprising NBA stat of the young season is James Harden leading the league in assists. Mike D'Antoni has converted him into a point guard and it seems to be working wonderfully so far with Harden scoring a tonne as usual, but also dropping dimes in addition. I am curious to see if Harden can keep the assists going. NBA is going to give us a lot to talk about this winter and spring. Tonight belonged to Klay. Even the 10-2 Raiders who were at the game had to take a picture with Klay after his 60 point performance. East Bay right now has a lot of good sports going on. The Raiders somehow found the time to take in a Warriors game despite their short week leading into the huge Thursday night game in Kansas City. But who can blame them. The Warriors have been must-see TV for a couple of years and are now graduating to can't-miss TV.  The Warriors game at Clippers on Wednesday and the Raiders game against the Chiefs on Thursday are both can't-miss events this week.

I did miss blogging about several events in the last several weeks and can't possibly touch them all to catchup. But I do want to give a shutout to the Chicago Cubs for winning an amazing World Series in 7 games and destroying the curse of the billy goat. There is so much to write about the World Series, but the story for me is the Cubs President of baseball operations, Theo Epstein. It's time to put this guy in the Hall of Fame already. For him to cure almost 100-year curses in 2 major baseball cities and deliver championships to both Boston and Chicago is unbelievable. He did what he was hired to do in Chicago and he did it in exactly 5 years. The dude never has to pay for a drink in both Chicago and Boston ever and deservedly so. How does he top this? May be switch sports and win a championship for the Clippers or Knicks or the Cleveland Browns! And he might just do it.