The sports landscape has two significant events on tap for this week. The Stanley Cup Finals begin tomorrow night in Edmonton where the Oilers host the defending champs – – Florida Panthers – – in a rematch of last year’s Stanley Cup Finals. Both teams finished third in their division during the regular season.
- The Oilers eliminated the two teams that finished above them in the Pacific Division; the Panthers did the same in the Atlantic Division.
- The Oilers won 48 games in the regular season; the Panthers won 47 games in the regular season.
- Last year, these teams took 7 games to award the Stanley Cup to the Panthers.
You can find these games on TNT and/or truTV here in the US; if you need time to go looking for either network on your cable system, those are the same ones that do March Madness games in the early rounds.
And then, on Thursday night, the NBA Finals begin. It will be the Pacers and the Thunder in this matchup. The Pacers eliminated the Knicks in Indy over the weekend. The Knicks were done in by a lack of defense; the Knicks have a very good offensive team but 50% of a basketball game is played on defense and the Knicks’ defense can only be labeled “inadequate”.
Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns are quality offensive players; they are not always the most compatible assets on the court at the same time, but they present the opposing defense with plenty of agita. I would say that Brunson is “average-at-best” as a defender; Towns is only one small step above AWOL in that category. So, when the Knicks are threatening on offense with both players out there, they are also ripe for the picking on defense.
One other observation about the Knicks’ defense … I wonder if Mikal Bridges has some sort of nagging injury that has not been trumpeted. The reason I say that is that Bridges was a top-shelf defensive player just a couple of years ago and he was no more than an ordinary defensive presence when I saw him in this Eastern Conference Final series.
No sooner had the final whistle blown in Madison Square Garden but speculation started about the future of Head Coach Tom Thibideau in NY. It seems that the NBA has taken up the chant of “What have you done for me lately?” The Knicks went to the Conference Finals and some folks want Thibideeau axed; recall that the Nuggets fired Mike Malone just before the playoffs and all Malone did was win the NBA Championship with the Nuggets in 2023.
Much has been made of the “small town” nature of these NBA Finals. Forget about stats on how many TV households there are in either Indy or OKC or both, here is a datum to ponder:
- I checked Expedia.com – – a wide-ranging website for finding plane tickets worldwide – – wanting to see how much a fan in either city would need to pay in order to fly to the site of their team’s “away games”.
- More interesting than the cost information, I found that Expedia.com could not find a direct flight between the two cities. A fan of either team would have his/her choice of places to experience a layover, but for a non-stop experience, someone would have to invent Uber-Air Service between now and Thursday night.
- Oh, and in case you care, the one-way airfare from Indy to OKC with the layovers starts at $419 …
Switching gears … The Houston Astros have a new culinary option available at the stadium this year; it is called The Daddy Mac Dog. Here is what it contains:
- A footlong hot dog garnished with:
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- BBQ beef brisket
- Mac-and-cheese
- Fried pickles
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And for dessert, a roll of Tums …
Finally, an observation by comedian, Mitch Hedberg:
“My fake plants died because I did not pretend to water them.”
But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………