Big night in the NBA

The last night of the NBA regular season is usually a drag for most fans. There may be a 8th seed or 2 at stake that a couple of mediocre teams would be fighting for. There could be some jostling for seedings up and down the playoff standings. For the most part, the playoff teams that have nothing to play for are waiting for the playoffs to get here and are happily resting their stars. And then there are the lottery teams and their fans who are typically checked out already and are looking forward to the NFL draft! But the 2015-16 NBA season finale today was unique and special. It was a truly historic night with two landmark events happening in Oakland and LA. The Warriors were going for 73 wins to break an amazing and improbable  record for the all-time regular season wins in Oakland while Kobe Bryant was playing his last game in LA to wrap up a legendary 20-year career.

The Bulls record of 72-10 stood for 20 year, but I really thought it was one of those rare records that will stand forever. After all, it was a Michael Jordan record and probably one of his most impressive at that. It's hard to surpass MJ in anything and for the Warriors to do it this year after a championship season is an amazing story. Their coach Steve Kerr is one lucky dude. He won 72 games with the Bulls as a player and is now a 73-game winner as a coach. The Warriors put the Memphis Grizzlies away in style to end the season 73-9. They played 82 games and did not even lose double digit number of games. First team ever to not lose double digit games through an entire NBA season. I am not a big Warriors fan, but even I can list all their losses off the top of my head - @Milwaukee, @Dallas, @Denver, @Detroit, @Portland, @LA Lakers, @San Antonio, Boston, and Minnesota. Thats because they have lost so few games.

These Warriors are a very likable bunch playing a fun style of ball. Curry is the biggest star in the sport today and is must-see TV. They have had a rock-star like following all season long and when you score a 73-9 season, there are many secondary records and numbers that are equally impressive. They never lost back-to-back games all season long. They never lost to the same team twice. They went 34-7 on the road, which is not too shabby and they started the season 24-0. The only thing more impressive was the other landmark that was reached tonight. Curry ended the season with 400+ made threes. Thats almost 5 made threes a game! That almost sounds normal for Curry, but it's hard to do. Curry had nearly as many threes this season as entire teams like the Milwaukee Bucks! A historic night indeed for the dubs. Now they have to seal the deal in the playoffs to truly enter the "best team ever" discussion. One interesting conversation going around the airwaves this week is, who wins the series if the 72-win Bulls team hook up with the 73-win Warriors? Bulls will probably win since they will matchup real well with this dubs team and are superior defensively.

While the Warriors were beating world records in Oakland, Kobe was wrapping up his career in LA with a vintage Kobe performance! He dropped 60 points on 50 shots with a really dominant 4th quarter. Lakers have been dreadful this year and Kobe has not been much better. But with the whole word watching, Kobe elevated his game to the legendary level one last time. He walks away with a 60-point game. Only Kobe can do that and the oldest ever to score 60. I am not too fond of Kobe and the Phoenix Suns have had many interesting contests against him not to mention some daggers he stuck in us back in the day. But I do feel a special connection to his career because NBA is my favorite league and he was part of my sports experience for 20 long years!  It is indeed an end of an era and when Tim Duncan retires, this era is officially dead and it will be another stark reminder that I am getting old. Love him or hate him, Kobe's talent was undeniable and is a true basketball legend. His final game garnered a lot of attention, especially in LA. Nosebleeds were selling for $700, even more than the $350 in Oakland tonight. Court-side seats at staples were going for 25K. As Kobe got close to 50 points, that game started pulling even more eye balls away from the dubs record-setting game, which was a blowout by then. Folks at Staples center thoroughly enjoyed his 60 point performance and went home poor, but happy.

All in all, two great stories in the NBA tonight. The only nit I would like to pick is, Kobe and LA stole some of the spotlight from the record-setting night in Oakland and vice-versa. It was hard to keep up with both games at times. But it was truly a magical night in the NBA.

Season of Records and Streaks!

It's just Thursday and it's been a tremendous sports week already. Monday featured a buzzer-beating victory by Villanova in the NCAA championship game against the storied North Carolina Tar Heels. It was a high level game with a perfect ending, at least for Villanova. No cigar for Roy Williams this year.  Jay Wright finally wins one as a head coach after 15 solid years at Villanova. Nothing succeeds like success and when you win the championship at the highest level, you are looked and treated completely different. Wright probably got himself another 15 years of job security with that win. This week also saw the Major League Baseball kick off their season. Being an even year, all eyes are on the SF Giants and they are looking good at 3-1. Both my teams, the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Oakland Athletics, are not distinguishing themselves in any meaningful way yet. But this is a marathon and not a sprint. Hope they string some victories together soon.

Amidst all of this, the NBA regular season is winding down in style as there are quite a few streaks, records, and associated stories in play. The Warriors went from comfortably heading towards 74 or even 75 wins to now making the pursuit of the Bulls 72-game win record a nail-biting affair. They have to win out their last 3 games to get the record and this is only because they lost to the lowly Minnesota Timberwolves after leading by 15. It's one thing to lose to a well-coached, playoff-bound Boston Celtics team, but quite another to lose to the TWolves at home. That gave the dubs 2 losses out of 3 home games after starting the season 36-0 at home. Never has a late season loss with no playoff consequence made so much news, but when you are chasing one of the most difficult records in all of sports, such a loss rightfully becomes the main topic in the sports world. Talking heads blamed the Warriors' problems on tired legs and wondered if the pressure of this pursuit is taking a toll on their season.

Whatever the reason is, head scratching turnovers are this Warrior teams' Achilles' heel. They are in the midst of a real bad turnover stretch the last few weeks and their execution is not what it was when they were blowing everybody out by 30. Their offensive efficiency and 3-pointing shooting may still be good, but if they turn the ball over 12 extra times and give up 15 points off of those, you are looking at a 25+ point swing if you factor in all the shots the dubs missed taking because of them turnovers. Thats how they end up in a tight ball game in the 4th quarter these days. May be they are physically tired and mentally exhausted, but they need to stop this live-ball donation program if they want to win the championship. They won a big one today against a near full-strength Spurs team. There were a few ugly turnovers again, but they overcame those and dominated the Spurs. They have 2 more against the Grizzles, but the road game against the Spurs on Sunday is going to be the main event. Spurs themselves have a shot at a 41-0 home record, which is pretty sweet, and it's hard to predict what Pop will do with that game. If he doesn't rest his stars, Dubs will be in a fist-fight and may have to settle for a loss and a 72-win season.

Winning 72 NBA games in a season is a massive achievement, but after all this, it will feel like a failure for this Warriors team. They are so close and we will know in just 3 games if they wrap it up.

Sheriff of Omaha

The Sheriff is done. Peyton Manning has made it official. He has retired as expected after a brilliant career. His best move today might have been ending the retirement presser with "Omaha." He made that word synonymous with quarterbacking with his crazy audibles and that Nebraska town should thank him for the strange connection he created. They should nominate him as a honorary sheriff if not their mayor for one day. I will miss him. We will all miss him. He was one of the most prolific passers in the history of the game and kept us company on Sundays for 18 years! Between him and Kobe retiring next month, it truly is an end of an era for us sports fans. These 2 guys have been entertaining us for almost 2 decades and they were a huge part of my youth and life as a sports fan. Kobe was more a thorn on my side and I was never a fan, but I always liked Peyton. I loved his play as well as his Colts teams. In his games against the Pats and Brady, I was almost alway rooting for Peyton. Speaking of the Manning-Brady rivalry, we should all be happy we were part of it. It was an historic rivalry between 2 true legends and we will be talking about it for decades. It's the NFL's version of Bird V Magic and we are going to miss it starting 2016.

As a pure QB, Peyton is definitely top 3 in the history of the game anyway you look at it.  I am a huge Dan Marino fan and I still think he is one of the best QBs ever. Marino owned every single passing record in the books for several years before the game changed. Brett Favre then erased Marino from the record books for half of those records and now, Peyton has surpassed both Marino and Favre to own almost all of the passing numbers that matter. Peyton is this generation's Marino with a couple of rings to boot. He was a passing savant much like Marino and it was pure joy to watch their mastery of the position. We can count the rings all we want, but football is a team sport and the best passer doesn't and cannot win the ultimate price every year. Make no mistake about it, Marino was the best passer and Peyton is his successor who may have taken the craft a step further. Marino never won the big one and Peyton's playoff record is also considered shaky. But Peyton does go out on top with a ring, his second, and with a resume that is rich and complete. Two championships are better than one, though this last year might have come with a huge cost for Peyton.

Peyton's play in 2015 finally slipped to the point where he was nothing more than a game manager. There was the HGH allegation from Al Jazeera and last but not the least, somehow his Super Bowl victory brought the "mooning of the personal trainer" incident at University of Tennessee back to the front pages. The fact that our media didn't care about it for 20 years and brought it back in time for his retirement as soon as he won the Super Bowl tells us all we need to know about our corrupt media.  What Peyton allegedly did was reprehensible and I wish he had paid for it 20 years back. I guess better late than never. In any case, his play on the field through those 20 years was mostly amazing. He was a true professional and a perfectionist and we can learn a lot about how we should run our careers by watching and reading about these high achievers. He is a football junkie and the game will definitely miss him. Hope we see him back as a QB coach or may be even a head coach down the road. Most legends can't coach, but I think Peyton can. But he will have a lot of money making opportunities in his retirement and let's see what route he picks. We don't know any of these guys personally and we sure can't tell if he was a good or a bad guy, but he was a truly great QB. I still rank him higher than Tom Brady. As a pure passer, it's either him or Dan Marino at number 1. Thanks for the football memories, Peyton!

Speaking of number ones, the Golden Sate Warriors laid an egg yesterday in LA against the Lakers, one of the worst teams in the league. But they did win at home today to score the all-time home winning streak record with 45 straight. Thats more games than an entire NBA season and it's one more mind-boggling record for these dubs. This was another one of those records held by MJ's Bulls. Losing road games unexpectedly to bad teams seems to be the Warrior's thing, though they are undefeated against the good teams. Curry is still putting up ridiculous numbers and despite the turnover problems of the last two games, they are in a good spot. They are still on track to break the Bulls' 72 win record. They are now 56-6 and amazingly, they are still only 3.5 games above the Spurs. Thats how good the Spurs have been, but nobody cares thanks to all the attention on the Warriors. The Spurs won't win 72 games, but they may win 68 to 70 games. That would be something if two teams win 70 games. We should all watch and enjoy this unique season.

Will the 20-year old record survive the next 30 games?

The most amazing and crazy thing about the Bulls all-time record of 72-10 that MJ and the boys engineered back in 1995-1996 is that a team like this year's Warriors could be at a ridiculous 48-4 and we still can't be 100% sure that they will break the Bulls' record. That's how special that season was. It is probably one of the most underrated record in all of sports. Playing .878 ball over a 82 game season is near impossible. The Warriors are currently ahead of that pace and are winning at a blistering .923 pace. They have to go 25-5 rest of the way to break the record or 24-6 to tie it. It would have to be a robust .833 or .800 ball respectively in case you are scoring at home. Thats what it's going to take even after playing .923 ball for the first 50+ games. These are just ungodly numbers. Will the Warriors break the record this season? I think they will and it's a tribute to how good this team is that it doesn't even sound like I am going out on a limb to say this. Some folks may actually be surprised if they don't make it happen because, suddenly, the Bulls record doesn't even sound that difficult to these fans given the dubs impressive run so far.

But there are a couple of potential roadblocks for the dubs. Key injures are of course the obvious one. Also, their schedule has some tough stretches like the 6 game roadie they are starting this week post all-star break. Nothing fazes this team, but @Clippers, @Hawks, @Heat, and @Thunder can be a challenging stretch even for them. Their schedule is back-loaded and more than half of their remaining games are against the 7 teams right behind them in the brutal Western conference playoffs standings today. Of course more than half of those teams are no match for the dubs, but they also play the Thunder and Spurs 5 times rest of the way. You can't put anything past a team that's 48-4 and they are definitely not scared of anybody. With all that said, nobody will be shocked if they miss the 72-10 mark. It's easier to win a championship than going 72-10. That was definitely true at the beginning of the season and even today, I will still give the record a slight edge over winning the championship on the difficulty scale.

This Warriors chase will actually keep us entertained and carry the second half of the season. It is a big deal. We will hear about it a lot and rightfully so. Some people have blamed the Warriors' excellence for taking some of the drama out of this NBA season. That may be true in some NBA towns, but the chasing of the record will put the Warriors and the NBA increasingly under the spotlight come March 10th or so. Should be a fun second half after a great All-star weekend. I meant All-star Saturday because the actual game on Sunday was garbage. Something has to be done to make the All-star game watchable.  As stupid as the MLB's idea to award home field in the World Series to the winning side of the All-star game was, it is looking better and better with every inane Pro Bowl and All-star game in other leagues. The 3-point contest and the dunk contest on Saturday night were both great. Thanks to the star power of the splash brothers, the 3-point contest seemed like the headliner the last couple of years. But Aaron Gordon and Zach LaVine walked in right after and put on a dunk show for the ages. They brought back the dunk contest to relevancy. It was real fun and good luck to those 2 youngsters in their careers.

Suns' own Devin Booker made it to the final round of the 3-point contest with the splash brothers. This kid is special and hope he keeps getting better and saves the franchise. Protect the shield, Devin!

New Boyz

The NBA playoffs look and feel different right now. Except for Dallas, the other 3 surviving teams are new and young outfits. Seeing LeBron there seems very familiar, but he is now wearing a new jersey. Thunder and the Bulls are young and these 3 teams are all going to be around for a while. They might have replaced the likes of Spurs, Lakers and the Celtics. It would be great to see a Thunder-Bulls finals signaling a new beginning in the NBA. I am not sure about the TV ratings of such a series, but these 2 teams aint bad at all. I am definitely in the anti-Heat camp and am pulling for the Bulls all the way. I want them to win and I think they will win. They took care of game 1 rather easily, but their maturity will be tested in game 2. The Heat are still a collection of 2 superstars and one star whereas the Bulls are a real team. Whatever it is, I want the Heat to lose. I have always been a Laker-hater and this was the year I thought I would rather have them win instead of the Heat. But just when I needed them, the Lakers let me down and got eliminated a round or 2 earlier than expected.

Phil Jackson and the LA Lakers were swept in shocking fashion by the Dallas Mavericks of all teams. I don’t know how many people picked this upset, but if somebody claims they called this, the odds are, they are probably lying. The Mavericks are perennial softies who do a lot of great things during the NBA regular season, but are usually guaranteed to under-achieve when it matters the most. The Lakers on the other hand are the 2 time defending champions with a lot of skill, size and playoff moxie. They under-achieve during the fall months and are usually unstoppable in the playoffs. They turn on the proverbial switch when they want to and then they turn the lights off on their playoff opponents. This looked like a mismatch on paper, but little did we know it was mismatch going the other way!

These 2 teams have been perennial contenders and playoff regulars, but for some reason, they have never met in the playoffs after 25 long years. The Mavericks slept through the entire 90’s, but I find it hard to believe that they never ran into the Lakers during the Nowitzki era. That’s some strange luck of the draw. The Western conference has featured some heated and stable rivalries over the last 10+ years in this whole Kobe, Duncan, Nash, Nowitzki era – Suns-Spurs, Suns-Lakers, Spurs-Lakers, Spurs-Mavs, Suns-Mavs and even Utah-Lakers. For some reason, the Mavs had never met the Lakers in this era and now I wish they had met them every year. The Mavs ripped the Lakers’ hearts out and stomped on it. The Lakers have way too much talent for then to let this happen to them. You had to wonder sometimes where was Kobe?

Kobe is on the downward slope of the career and this is the year the slide officially starts. He is still awesome, but you can feel a slip. The first stage of the slip manifests itself as follows. The athlete will still dominate with all the talent in the World, but he or she can’t do it as consistently as they used to. Kobe is exactly there now. It’s hard to see him play and pinpoint exactly what he is lacking or what is it that he used to do that he can’t anymore. But he just can’t do all the things he used to (and still can) for 48 minutes on a day-to-day basis. He is Kobe for stretches of the game and Latrell Sprewell for the rest. I was shocked when Steve Kerr casually mentioned in an interview that Kobe is not a superstar anymore, but he is still a star. That’s what a sweep will do to you.

In any case, the playoffs are not about the Lakers anymore. I can only hope the Thunder and the Bulls prevent the Mavs and the Heat from winning