The Noise Factor: Bragging Rights
The moment your team is eliminated from the playoffs or from playoff contention is the time you keep quiet from any smack talk towards another team that has faired better than you during the year. That should be the unwritten code for sports fans everywhere. Why crack on someone’s team when your team was brutal? That’s pure hypocrisy. If us fans can show some humility and sportsmanship then all is good. But all the baseball fans can talk junk all they want over the next 4 months. But let’s start this blog…
Basketball
- No matter how you looked at this matchup, a great team was going to be eliminated and it was going to leave a bad taste in people’s mouths. The Phoenix Suns happened to be the fall team in the matchup and as playoff observers without any bias, people probably would prefer to see the Suns over the San Antonio Spurs for entertainment value. However, I am in the opinion that this matchup should have went down one round later. Yes, Utah could have upset the Spurs and even Golden State could have bumped Phoenix. However, basketball fans would have much rather have taken their chances to see a Phoenix/San Antonio conference final. No matter how good Utah is, the West final has lost it’s lustre and that is unfortunate. Least I can say that 3 of the top 6 NBA teams made the final four and Utah is part of that 6.
- Also part of the 6 are the Detroit Pistons who finally found a way to beat Chicago. Despite P.J. Brown’s first half of his basketball life, the Bulls could not capitalize as they were up 5 heading into halftime. This matchup showed us the vulnerability of Detroit who should have squashed Chicago much easier than they did. As for Cleveland, they have yet to face a quality playoff opponent yet and we’ll finally get to see them play a real team in Detroit (Thank god their series with New Jersey is over - that was was trainwreck). Expect this series to be in Detroit’s favour but don’t ask how many games it will take because that will be decided by Detroit. It is their series to lose.
Hockey
- Heading into the Buffalo/Ottawa Eastern Final we knew one team would have a serious heartbreak when they’d get eliminated. For Ottawa it would have been a deeper cut to an already severe wound of past playoff failures. But they FINALLY prevailed and it’s Buffalo that has to wonder ‘what if’. This is a Sabres team that dominated the East for the entire regular season. They came up just short last season when they thought they had the Stanley Cup finals appearance within their grasp. Now they will lose at least one top star, potentially two. They will walk into next season with a talented team but certainly not as deep as this year’s squad. Needless to say it was going to be hard to see one of these teams not make it as both franchises have skeleton’s in their playoff closets. One more point about Buffalo: They remind me of the Toronto Maple Leafs from 1992-94. They nearly made the Stanley Cup final in 1993 only to be an uncalled penalty and a Wayne Gretzkey performance of the ages away from getting the Toronto/Montreal hockey superpowers matchup. Then, like Buffalo did this season, the Leafs began the 1993-94 season with 10 wins in a row. Toronto then lost to a team who use to fall short and dissapoint in the playoffs despite having great talent: The Vancouver Canucks. Like Ottawa, they were the class of their division back in the early 1990’s and won the Campbell Conference despite not winning the division that year like they did in year’s past.
Football
- You won’t go to mini-camp and now you will? Dear Brett Favre: Make up your mind and stick with it. This reminds me of his play on the field - questionable decisions.
Baseball
- Is there something up commissioner Bud Selig’s sleeve? I did not understand ignoring the homerun record by Barry Bonds - until now. There could be one thing he wants to acheive by failing to show up for it and that’s to send a message to fans and baseball that this record is worth nothing to him (I would understand it, but it’s not the right move). The other thing could be that he’s sitting on evidence that could clearly cream (pun intended) Bonds’ career for good.
Currently I am near the end of the book "Game of Shadows". I am about 260 pages into it and the book has blown me away thus far. If Victor Conte had played his cards close to the vest perhaps he would still be supplying to this day. Though we have no evidence of other people designing undetectable performance enhancers as we speak, you know there are people out there producing and handing them to current athletes. We don’t know the extent of how far or how bad this has gotten out of hand in all sports, much less baseball or the Olympics. And even more importantly, you want syringes and pills taken away from the high school kids who are looking for a pick-me-up to get into Division 1 Colleges or to get drafted as soon as possible - depending on the sport.
OTHER
- It’s Victoria Day weekend and the fireworks are blasting off so loud outside my house that I keep thinking Jeff Weaver is giving up bombs to 12 year old kids at the local ballpark. This will go on all night so I hope you guys sleep well for me tonight because I certainly won’t. Especially if Brad Lidge comes in to relieve Weaver.
