Thinking out loud…while wondering if a clean house is a sign of a broken computer somewhere…
Get yer naps in kids. Wear shades at the office. The NBA Finals will be a battle on and off the floor, especially for those of us consciously challenged after 8:00 pm Eastern Time every night.
A clash of titans, or a clash of opposites? May not be a better shooting TEAM you'll see all year than Golden State. May not be a better defensive TEAM you'll see all year than Boston.
And there may not be a better quarter of basketball you'll see all year than the 4th quarter Thursday night in San Francisco. At least from a Boston POV. Wow.
40-16? Just the fourth time in team history for the Celtics to hit 40 points in a quarter during the postseason. Win Game One? Won championship 13 of 14 times that's happened in their storied history.
Tweet of the Week I, from @BostonSportsInf: "UPDATE: Celtics – When Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown, Robert Williams, Marcus Smart, Al Horford all play in the same game since January 8th (27-5, .844)." Now 28-5.
Tweet of the Week II, from @ESPNStatsInfo: "The Boston Celtics are the first team in NBA history to win a Finals game by double digits after trailing by double digits entering the 4th quarter."
Health will still win this series. That is, they who stay healthier and can play longer should win. Unless an appendage is hanging off, they'll have the whole off-season to heal. Rub a little dirt on it.
It sez here Jayson Tatum will need to shoot better than 3-for-17 for the Celtics to win this. But his 13 assists in Game One completely flummoxed what the Warriors did defensively.
GS can't stay in a zone and expect to win. But the Celts can't expect to shoot 50% from three every night, either. Defense is the calling card, for both sides.
Beating the Heat was almost a blown deal. Jimmy Butler deserves a ton of credit for his performances. But Jimmy Butler is not Steph Curry. And these Celtics had a hard time stopping Butler.
Stopping Steph should prove hard enough to do for Marcus Smaht, or any one other individual chosen to the task. After his first quarter torching of the Boston D, foul trouble helped, but so did defensive switching. These Warriors won't be one-dimensional, either.
Turnovers need to be limited, or maybe you want guys like Curry and Klay Thompson to get up more shots at the basket? Robert Williams needs to stay on the floor, too, as long as he can move vertically.
The most impressive number for me thus far? Eight. As in road wins during the playoffs. That mark breaks a team postseason record. They'll need nine, more than likely, to hang Banner 18.
They'll also need Jayson Tatum to play (and shoot) like a Top Five NBA player, applying pressure on GS's ability to slow him down…and keep opening opportunities for others.
A word of appreciation for Al Horford. Whoa.
And Ime Udoka, too. Apparently, he knew what he was doing all along, especially back in January when the Celtics were little more than a green pile of goo.
And for Johnston, RI's Joe Mazzulla, the former Hendricken star, who is apparently chirping all the right things in Ime's ears on the bench.
And for Miami's Tyler Herro mostly sitting on the bench in the Eastern Finals. Very heroic of you.
Tweet of the Week III, from @GoodmanHoops: "The biggest difference between college basketball and the NBA? In college, the coaches never stop complaining to the refs. In the NBA, the players never stop complaining to the refs."
And one other thing. On a recent podcast, one-time NBA Finals' MVP and Golden State Warrior Andre Iguodala was very complimentary toward Dallas' Luka Doncic. Or at least I think he was trying to be complimentary.
His quote was: "Luka Doncic, this white boy is a problem, and it's getting to the point where I don't think he's white anymore."
The Washington Examiner picked up on this, too. Believing a particular race is superior or inferior because of their skin color – isn't there a word for that? Just sayin'.
It didn't take long for the Red Sox to show their true colors, did it?
That first month of the season? Hey, they'll start hitting. And they did. The starting pitching also has come around to the point of respectability, at the least. Except for Nathan Eovaldi giving us all a case of whiplash.
But lose three of five to last place Baltimore…the last one a horrifying 10-0 home defeat…followed up by a 2-1 loss to the then-worst-record-in-baseball Cincinnati Reds at Fenway?
They're still closer to bad than they'll ever be to good this year. Which doesn't bode well for hanging onto your bonafide, certifiable crowd-attracting ball players.
Stunning…that as of midweek, the Red Sox actually led the American League in runs per game, over the Yankees.
Nice little tidbit from MLB – in the Wild Card era, six out of ten division winners were in first place on the 1st of June. That bodes well for the Yankees, who lead the Blue Jays and Rays by 5-5 ½ games heading into this weekend.
Aaron Judge – best player on the team with the best record in baseball? Sounds like an MVP candidate to me.
And if the Red Sox could solve their bullpen woes, Rafael Devers could have an outside shot here…even if the Sox won't/don't re-sign him.
So, former Sox player and current Giants' manager Gabe Kapler's protest of not coming out of the dugout for the National Anthem took a one-day pause for Memorial Day this week. He came out of the dugout for that one, then retreated back to the bench for subsequent games.
Kapler sez he'll stand again when he feels better about the direction of our country following the tragedy in Uvalde, TX last week. Understood, but this is more than a little tiring in several ways.
One, his grandstanding won't change a thing in this country until we find real leadership, and real compromise. Two, he's only focused attention on himself, taking attention away from his team. Three, too many people feel the anthem and our flag are non-starters when it comes to protesting.
Or did we learn nothing from Colin Kaepernick's kneeling during the anthem?
Patriots OTA's. Much ado about nothing, really. But the media continues to flock toward them, and fans seemingly crave information of any kind from them.
Take it with a grain of salt, really. But two observations/notes from the past week: 1) Tyquan Thornton is smoothfast. I'm making that a new word. 2) There might not be a shutdown corner (right now), but there is a surprising amount of depth in the defensive backfield.
Optimists might say that bodes well for the season. Pessimists might say piles of poop are still piles of poop, no matter how many you have.
You just have more of them.
17 NFL seasons, with nine different teams, but not New England. He did face the Patriots plenty. 35K yards, 223 TD's, 147 games started. That's Harvard-grad Ryan Fitzpatrick's story. It's a pretty good one, his making chicken salad out of, um, what some might think was chicken (bleep).
It may have been a late start for URI's Archie Miller, but the Rams' first-year head coach got a kick at the finish to Rhody's recruiting this week. North Carolina transfer Anthony Harris is headed to Kingston – a former Top 100 player who played in only 35 games over three seasons at UNC largely due to ACL injuries.
URI also picks up 6-7 KC Nwafor from New Zealand, who also plays internationally for Nigeria. He could join the team as early as next spring or wait until 2023.
Richmond's Tyler Burton, the son of former Friar Quinton Burton who played against PC in this year's NCAA second round, has withdrawn from the NBA Draft and will return to school. Burton is a likely Player of the Year candidate in the Atlantic-10.
Bryant will test itself early next season as new members of America East. The Bulldogs will again travel to Syracuse, where they almost pulled off a stunner in 2020, and play the Orange at the newly named JMA Wireless (nee Carrier) Dome on November 26th.
Speaking of names…is the Dunk still going to be the Dunk next season? The current naming rights agreement with Dunkin Donuts expired April 20th, and an extension was reached with the Convention Center Authority to keep the name in place through the end of this month.
Dunk or no Dunk, CBSSports.com reports the Friars added another piece to the non-conference schedule this week, with Merrimack coming to Providence for November 12th.
Seton Hall adds a piece to its frontcourt for next season with the addition of 6-9 Illinois State transfer Abdou Ndiaye. With a reported 7-3 wingspan, Ndiaye was second in the Missouri Valley in blocks last season. The Pirates have also kept St. Peter's transfer KC Ndefo, who has withdrawn from the NBA Draft.
DePaul gets three players back from the potential clutches of the pro game as Nick Ongenda, Caleb Murphy and Umoja Gibson will all return to the Blue Demons next season. Murphy is a transfer from South Florida.
Big "L" for Marquette however, as potential Big East Player of the Year candidate and all-Big East first-teamer Justin Lewis decided to stay in the NBA Draft. It's less surprising, but same for Georgetown as super soph-to-be Aminu Mohammed has also decided to go pro.
The chase for greener grass: More than 1900 FBS student-athletes entered the transfer portal over the past 10 months. 1100 more from the FCS, and another 1700+ in Division I men's basketball. Not everyone will escape that black hole and land safely on the other side.
The popularity for lacrosse – both men's and women's – continues to grow. Boston College's women's team just missed on back-to-back natty's, falling in this year's final to unbeaten North Carolina.
The men's national champ, Maryland, also finished the year undefeated. Five of the top 10 teams were Ivy League programs (Brown finished 10th), and Georgetown ended ranked #2 in RPI.
Big East baseball champ UConn is the New England NCAA rep this weekend, playing at Maryland. While Jim Penders' program has had solid success over the past decade (this is their 6th regional appearance since 2013), the Huskies haven't advanced to a Super Regional since 2011.
But they've got 26 road wins (out of 46 total wins) this season. Road wins are found gold.
One-time PC Associate AD, UMaine and Miami Athletic Director Blake James was announced this week as the new AD at Boston College, replacing Pat Kraft. Kraft bolted BC for Penn State after just two years in Chestnut Hill.
It's hard to imagine any "Football 5" job in the country to be as challenging as BC's…and the one James now has ranks right up there. Hard to compete against apathy, which usually doesn't exist in cities or towns where Football 5 programs exist.
My buddy "Big E" sez he always tries to give 100%. Unless he's donating blood.
Before you condemn former World Number One Dustin Johnson and the other guys for joining the Saudi-backed LIV Golf Tour, consider this – if it weren't for football players deciding to play in the AFL back in the '60's, we might not have the New England Patriots today.
Then again, Gino Cappelletti, Babe Parilli and Jim Nance weren't going to play for obscenely rich, unaccountable ownership with no apparent regard for human rights abuses.
Bottom line: Golf is a business. Sports is a business. Money talks. This tour was designed to compete with the PGA, despite the founders and their alleged 'shortcomings.' And apparently, the Saudis have doled out enough cash for a few guys to choke on it.
The PGA isn't perfect, either. What employer do you know that makes its' employees pay their own expenses? Golf does.
The interesting part comes now – what will the PGA do to these defectors? Will you miss Sergio Garcia, Graeme McDowell, and Louis Oosthuizen? Probably not.
But if the PGA doesn't make some kind of a move here, and they've announced there will be disciplinary action taken against players participating in unauthorized events, it could significantly alter the pro golf landscape and open the door for other defectors. Quickly.
Remember, this is business first. Business is competitive. All is fair in love, war, and sport.
Not for nuthin', but Dustin Johnson this week lost RBC (Royal Bank of Canada) as a sponsor. And so the competition, and the choosing of sides, begins.
Oh, and The Match? Who played? The Athletic called it "Four Rich Guys Golfed." Meh.
Wallet Hub sez Boston is the Number One U.S. city for hockey fans in the country. New York is #5 but is charging down the backstretch. Have you seen the Rangers play lately?
The Athletic has reported the Professional Women's Hockey Players Association appears ready to start its' own league, rather than join forces with the current Premier Hockey Federation. Six to eight teams, average starting salary at $55K and a 32-game season beginning next year.
Among the cities suggested to be in the mix for a team – is Providence. The PHF, which includes the Boston Pride, is currently the only option for pro women's hockey in North America.
What pandemic? The Indy 500 welcomed 350K fans back to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway last weekend, the largest crowd in 20 years.
On the other side of the pond, English Premier League soccer teams – more than half of them, actually, are raising ticket prices due to losses of matchday revenue throughout the pandemic.
Mighty Man U, owned by the Glazer Family (Tampa Bay Bucs, too), experienced a net loss of $35 million in Q3 of 2022, compared to a $21 million loss during Q3 a year ago.
Read in the ProJo this week that taxpayers will likely be on the hook to cover rising costs of the new stadium complex in Pawtucket. Wait, wut?
Didn't we go through this a few years ago, and lose the Pawsox to Worcester because Rhode Island politicians slammed the door on potentially increasing taxpayer costs? The project developers are suddenly silent on questions asked of them about overall rising costs.
They've asked for a $30 million increase from the state. Getcha' popcorn ready. The 2022 version of "Truth or Consequences" is around the corner.
Hey cable cord-cutters? Direct to consumer is here – NESN is launching the "NESN 360" streaming app for 29.99 per month, which includes Sox and Bruins' games, original content, archived games and more. An annual plan also comes with eight Red Sox tickets.
If you already have NESN from your provider, it won't cost extra. They're the first Regional Sports Network (RSN) to offer MLB and NHL games and in-market streaming, and others will follow this trend.
Eighty percent of NESN is owned by the Fenway Sports Group – which also owns the Red Sox. I don't know about you – but giving them $30 a month to NOT sign Bogaerts and Devers? Stupid is as…
And hey, how about some good news? For the first time in three years, the Special Olympics Rhode Island State Summer Games are back at Meade Stadium in Kingston Saturday, following two years of Covid postponements.
Interested in having your questions on local Rhode Island sports (and yes, that includes the Patriots, Red Sox, Bruins and Celtics) answered in a somewhat timely fashion? It's your chance to "think out loud," so send your questions, comments, and local stories to jrbroadcaster@gmail.com. We'll share mailbag comments/Facebook posts/Tweets right here! Would appreciate the follow on Twitter, @JRbroadcaster…and join in on Facebook, www.facebook.com/john.rooke ...
Don't forget to tune into Providence's 103.7 FM, every Saturday from 7:00-9:00 am for Cordischi and Coit! Call in at 401-737-1287 or text at 37937.
