A combination of travel plans, a family event and a visit from old friends – from back in grad school days – assures that there will be no more rants this month.
My best guess is that I will be back on the air sometime between 1 June and 3 June.
Please come back then.
Stay well, all.
Some really dirty stuff going on with Billy Walters, Las Vegas gamblin’ man and golf course huckster, and one Phil Mickelson. When the Curmudgeon’s away, the rats will play….
It is dirty but also very circumstantial, and since Lefty is very popular it will take serious smoking guns to force the PGA to do something substantial. Walters looks like a guy who would make Barry Bonds’ protector seem like a teenager with an unlimited twitter account. This is also not particularly recent stuff, but like other similar scandals it can take a while for the dots to be connected.
Plus, weird things happen. The Dubs beat OKC in all three games during the regular season and have looked bad in their three losses in the current round. Whispers of Curry being hurt are circulating but not confirmed by official team sources.
So, what’s going on here? First, OKC is a good team (won 2/3 of their RS games) that is hot. The Warriors’ master plan to make Roberson beat them is backfiring (calling someone out like that in the papers will only make them want to beat you more). The Flagrant 2 foul by Green also is something that will keep OKC focused until the Dubs are done.
The other thing typically not discussed is that playoffs allow detailed focus on matchups and strategy where the regular season does not. If a team plays another team only one time in 30 some-odd games (even though near back to backs are there too) it doesn’t make as much sense to seriously implement some wrinkle to take out Curry, for example, if the next ten teams would beat you if you did it. In the playoffs, however, the whole idea is to take stuff away. OKC at the moment is bigger and faster and hitting their shots and getting their rebounds, as well as making adjustments from Games 1 and 2 to address what GS did to them while they were successful. The Ws are probably the only team that could dig out of this hole (and I hope they do as a W’s fan), but I do not see OKC relaxing due to the sideshow stuff noted before and it will probably not go past six games.
And, speaking of weird, whatever happened to “home ice advantage”? The Sharks went 3-0, 0-3 and currently 2-1 on the road for their series, vs. 1-1, 4-0 and currently 1-1 at home. the Eastern finals have both teams at 1-2 at home. I recall this being the normal state of things in hockey, where the home advantage is not typically definitive.