All kinds of things have been happening—playoffs in two of the types of professional sport that are the most fun to watch on television—right in the middle of sweeps—and there’s almost not enough time for it all.
It might be a little late to this, but Time had its most influential people at the end of April, and having just found it, there are three athletes on the list. (I won’t bore you with the political mentions by said magazine that infuriate me—Marco Rubio—or celebrity—Chelsea Handler—for we don’t have that kind of time.)
Jeremy Lin, Tim Tebow and Lionel Messi. Those are the big three athletes of the last year.
Secretary of Education Arnie Duncan wrote on Lin, and both being Harvard basketballers shows up in a form of bias easily distinguishable. But for a guy to come out and say, “[Lin] achieved success the old-fashioned way: he earned it” isn’t biased in the least—it might be the one bit of truth in the piece, and one of the few lines of thought not blowing the whole thing out of proportion.
Lin, then, wrote on Tebow, yet that’s nothing of import. The greatest thing happened is the way Time decided to format the page in which the Lin writing on Tebow blurb resides: It shares a page with a mention of E. L. James, and for those of you who don’t know who she is, or why that would be funny, I’ll just relay the title to you and you’ll chuckle hopefully not as hard as I did, for it hurt: “Erotica’s new heroine.” That’s funny.
The Messi thing is even weirder, because he’s in the “Icons” section (Lin and Tebow were in the “Breakouts” portion and that makes a little more sense), and Mia Hamm writes on Messi on a page shared by the Prime Minister of Germany and Tilda Swinton—talk about a mishmash. Anyway, Hamm mentioned how amazing an athlete Messi truly is, something most futball, I mean soccer, fans already know, but I really give her points for bringing up his five goal game in the Champions League; it was probably one of the better feats from an athlete over the last twelve months.
Where has this lead gone…I thought maybe I’d talk about the LA Kings, or maybe even something remotely clever like Kobe messing with Steve Kerr during Game Seven, but, you pick up one Time magazine, and you’re utterly distracted. Time to right the ship. Indeed.
Game Ones to Come
The Lake Show kicks off their series tonight in OKC, as well as the Clippers in a night from now, except they do so in San Antonio. Neither of these looks good for the teams of Los Angeles. (See, here’s where I would’ve brought out the Kings, because they’ll be alive longer than both b-ball teams, but no…)
The Lakers will make the Thunder beat them in six games, yet I wouldn’t put it past them to go down in five. If Ty Lawson ran wild on them, Russell Westbrook might lead the Thunder in scoring. Plus, James Harden will be a nightmare for whomever the Lakers put on him—even MWP. And I didn’t even mention Kevin Durant yet, or how Kendrick Perkins and Serge Ibaka always play against LAL.
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Sure Kobe’s going to be fine, but the Nuggets series showed me something: Sometimes he just can’t get enough help. When you drop 43 points in 43 minutes, followed by 31 in 37, I doubt the losses are your fault. Just saying…
The first quarter’s over in Boston: PHI 21 BOS 25
The Clips are going home in five, plain and simple. The Spurs want to out-score people to win ballgames, it’s been their MO all year, and it plays right into the hands of what LAC wants to do, yet San Antonio’s better at it.
Look at what happened in the Memphis series: Eventually the Clippers played the Grizzlies’ game, to a point, just enough to emerge victorious. They’re chameleons, because they have no real game plan on offense, they just rob the one from the other team. It’s weird to watch, but I’ve seen it happen all too many times to deny it.
Game Ones That’ve Happened
Both contests proved something. During the Pacers/Heat Game One it showed that Indiana can play near perfect for almost the entire game—over three quarters of it—and still lose. Miami has LeBron and Wade to close games, and Indiana has who? Danny Granger? No dice. I said five, but we’ll see.
Philly/Boston Game One was good to the end, yet Kevin Garnett has had a little bit of a revival in these playoffs—29&11&3 blks in Game One—so that can’t be good. And Rajon Rondo with another triple-double—13-12-17!—looks bad for the Sixers.
All that being said, Philly held Paul Pierce to 14 points, and if they can continue to do that they have a chance to keep these games at least close, giving them an equal chance to win.
The Future
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Next year’s most influential people will include Tom Brady and LeBron James, mark my words…the LA Kings are going to play the New Jersey Devils in the NHL Finals…and the Kevin Na collapse will be the trend-setting event for the next Major in golf. Translation: This won’t be the last time we watch the wheels fall off a leader on the PGA Tour on Sunday of a Major…congrats to Matt Kuchar though…
Halftime in Boston: PHI 36 BOS 38 in ugly Eastern Conference basketball
And they’re about to drop the puck for the first time in the New Jersey/New York series, so get to a TV pronto!
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