There are no Cinderellas in the NBA Playoffs. I went to Wikipedia to prove my point, and I was shocked by what I found. In this millennium, just one team below a fourth seed has made it to the Conference Finals. In other words, every year for 14 years, the entire lower half of the bracket has failed ...
Before the NBA season began, I made five bold predictions. Well, not that bold, considering they included such nuggets as “A bunch of teams will fall well below expectations,” and “All predictions will be incorrect.” But hidden amidst the rambling was one substantive note: The Eastern Conference ...
In the NBA, like in so much of popular culture, new rules the day. Something bursts onto the scene and sucks up all the air. For a while it is everywhere and everything. Then, one day, it stops being cool. And just like that, its “thing” — whatever made it fresh and exciting, that made people ...
There are few things in sports that truly shock me anymore. When you’re a kid, it’s easy to be amazed: the first time you see a buzzer beater, the ball swishing through the net in the glow of the neon red zeroes. It seems, in the literal sense of the word, unbelievable. The tiniest competitions ...
The NFL, MLB and NHL are crapshoots. We spend hours studying these sports. We watch games and skim box scores. We dissect athletes’ quotes for hidden meaning. We devour statistics, which in any other context would feel like homework. And yet, really, only one thing matters. Are you good enough to ...
Over Thanksgiving break, with no classes to fall asleep in and no projects to worry about, I had time to burn my way through an impressive (or depressing, depending on your perspective) number of movies. Some made more of an impression than others, but I enjoyed aspects of every movie, just like I enjoy ...
“I thank you heavenly father for this food, this great day, these lovely people, in Jesus’s name we pray.” “Oy gevalt.” Let’s start here: “Transparent” is very funny. “Transparent” is a half-hour show about a Jewish family in Los Angeles, but to call it a sitcom would be a horrendous ...
The NBA is back, which sounds weird, because it feels like it never ended. Actually, it kind of feels like it’s ending now, when it’s actually starting, because with all the off-season drama behind us, the only thing that’s left is boring old basketball. This leaves me and the nine other people ...
“Rebounds, with their reliable uncertainty, are part of what makes basketball beautiful. There are general rules that dictate the nature of missed shots. But thanks to the perfect design of the basketball hoop, there will always be randomness.” This quote — at the end of a Kirk Goldsberry article ...
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. Remember when the Washington Capitals were the hot up-and-comers in the NHL? Remember when Ovechkin, Semin, Green and Backstrom were all under 25? Remember when they won the Presidents’ Trophy? Remember when it felt like ...
Solutions by The State News
