Finals Week Begins

The National Basketball Association's Finals and the National Hockey League's Stanley Cup Championship Series begin tonight. 

The NBA Finals begin tomorrow night, and it is a match-up that has to have the league office and its television partners simply ecstatic.  The New York Knicks who sit in the nation's largest television market will face the San Antonio Spurs and their star player, Victor Wembanyama. At the age of 23 and in only his third year in the league,  he has become the Face of the NBA, if not the Face of the Sport of Basketball itself.

As I alluded in this post few days ago, I found myself really getting into the NBA Playoffs this year, and found myself cheering for both the Knicks and the Spurs as they made their way through the East and West playoffs.  I find myself very excited at watching this Finals series play itself out, and I honestly can't say for which team I will root.  

The Knicks are a fun team to watch and Jalen Brunson is just a terrific player.  The Spurs have Wemby, and what more is left to be said on that front?

The Knicks have won eleven straight Playoff games, many of them by large margins.  The Spurs have come off of a grueling seven game series against the defending champion OKC Thunder.

The Spurs are a slight betting favorite (-190) over the Knicks (+160), but the Knicks look to be on one of those unstoppable rolls upon which teams sometimes find themselves.

The Knicks have Spike Lee, Ben Stiller, Timothee Chamalet, and Christopher and Bobby from The Sopranos.  The Spurs have the "Spurs Nuns" and those two young ladies with the low cut tops who sit in the second row right behind HC Mitch Johnson.

I hope it goes seven games.

The NHL's Stanley Cup Finals begin tonight between the Las Vegas Golden Knights and the Carolina Hurricanes.  As you know, my interest in hockey wanes when the Penguins are not involved, so I turned to Linda, my Hockey Fanatic wife (her vanity license plate is HOCKEE) for advice on this one.

Prior to the season, she had me place bets on both the Hurricanes and the Avalanche to win the Stanley Cup.  She was astonished that the Knights dispatched Colorado in four games, but not surprised at the Canes being in the Finals.  She is calling for Carolina to hoist the Cup when all is said and done. Our rooting interest will be with the Hurricanes, not only because of her preseason wager, but because her sons  Jeffrey and Justin and their families reside in Raleigh now and are Hurricanes fans, and because she wants to see ex-Penguin Jordan Stahl win another Cup.

Those are good enough reasons for me to root for the Canes.  That, and the chance to see numerous shots of Rod Brind'Amour and his smooshed up nose behind the bench.

How many times do you figure that proboscis got busted up 

over the course of a 21 year NHL career?

Enjoy these two Championship Series, folks!

Shirt Pocket Notes - Memorial Day and NBA Edition

Let's kick off this edition of The Grandstander with this picture that I took at the American Cemetery in Normandy, France when we visited there in 2018.

It was a group of French school children taking a tour of this remarkable place.  It was wonderful to see that the French continue to teach what happened there to younger generations of their citizens.  

This was perhaps the most moving visit to anywhere that I have ever taken, and it is a perfect representation of what Memorial Day is all about.

Now, on to less serious matters.....

I have gotten completely involved and immersed in the NBA Playoffs this year, especially so as the Eastern and Western Conference Finals commenced.  It is interesting that whenever I make a comment on social media about the NBA, I usually get hit with a bunch of "I-can't-stand-pro-basketball-the-college-game-is-better" or "If-the-NBA-Playoffs-were-being-played-in-my-back-yard-I'd-pull-down-the-blinds" type of comments.  Well, if that's the way you feel, all I can say is that (a) I don't agree, and (b) if you can't appreciate basketball as it is played at its highest level, then I just would tell you to do one thing:

Watch the San Antonio Spurs over an extended period of time, not just highlights, but entire games, and if you don't marvel over the play of Victor Wembanyama, then I don't know what to tell you.

On PTI the other day, Kendrick Perkins made the statement that 25 or 30 years from now, when the debate takes place as to who was the greatest basketball player ever, the debate will include only three names: Michael Jordan, LeBron James, and Victor Wembanyama.  He's that great.  Only injuries can stop him.

Game One of the WCF between the Spurs and the defending champion Oklahoma City Thunder was an epic.  It was a double overtime victory for the Spurs, and Wembanyama scored 41 points and had 20 rebounds.  It was one of those games that was the perfect example of why we all follow sports.  The fact that it was the first game what is, essentially, a semi-final series will mean that it might not be remembered.  A game like that should have been Game 7 of a Finals series.  It was that great.

In the East, I have found myself taking a liking to the New York Knicks. 

Led by Jalen Brunson and Carl Anthony Towns, they put out a starting line-up of five really good players.  I'm rooting for them.  Plus, it's fun seeing all the celebs at court side at the World's Most Famous Arena.  I mean, how can you not like seeing what Walt "Clyde" Frazier and Spike Lee will be wearing on any given night?

As it stands right now, the Knicks have a 3-0 lead over the Cavaliers, and the result of this series is a forgone conclusion.  Maybe Cleveland will snag a win at home tonight, but they are not going to beat the Knicks four straight games, so we can expect to see New York in the Finals.

The West Finals now stand at 2-2 after San Antonio's big win last night (33 points from Wemby), but OKC aren't the defending champs for nothing.  Two time MVP Shea Gilgeous-Alexander is a superstar who can win games all by himself.  I can see this series going seven games.  The winner will be favored in the Finals, but the Knicks are on one of those rolls that teams get on some times.  Whomever the Knicks end up playing, it's going to be a great Finals series.

Selected Sports Subjects

A quick whirl around the wide, wide world of sports.....

Time to weigh in on the subject of the nickname of the NFL's Washington DC franchise.  How anyone, Daniels Snyder and son-of-a-US-Senator Roger Goodell especially, can defend a name as pejorative as "Redskins" as an honorable tribute to the heritage of American Indians is at best a joke, and is in actuality an embarrassment and a disgrace.  Many of you have probably received the supposed-to-be-funny email circulating that defends the "Redskins" name by attacking the entire concept of political correctness, but, really, do the folks sending that out REALLY think it is okay to bandy about a terms like "Redskins"?  In the year of Our Lord 2014? Wow.

The sad irony is that Snyder and the NFL will inevitably give in and change the nickname, not because it is the right thing to do, but because they will realize how much money can be made from merchandise sales when a new nickname is put in place.

I am not so certain where names such as "Braves", "Warriors", "Chiefs", and "Indians" fall in this discussion.  They seem less offensive, if not inoffensive, to me, but, then again I am not a Native American, so perhaps I'm not qualified to judge. That said, even if the name is okay, the Indian-head logo of the Cleveland Indians really has to go. 

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The Steelers, in the person of Heinz Field Operations Manager and mouthpiece Jimmy Sacco, have weighed in on the pigsty that Luke Bryan concert attendees turned the Heinz Field parking lots into last Saturday.  In case you missed it....

The word coming down from on high is that it wasn't so bad, not nearly as bad as last year's Kenny Chesney concert (now THERE'S a great argument!), and anyway, look how much in tax revenue was collected by the City.  The Mayor's Office responded with words to the effect that a just because one pays taxes, it doesn't give you the right to turn city property into a waste dump and an open public toilet.

I think this is one instance where the Steelers should have just kept their mouths shut.

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Belated congratulations to the San Antonio Spurs for their thoroughly dominating beat down of the Miami Heat in the recently concluded NBA Finals.  Winning four games out of five with each win having a greater than 15 point margin of victory, the Spurs left no doubt as to who the best team was in the NBA Playoffs.  

This was the Spurs fifth NBA title in the last fifteen seasons (and they were so close to winning it last year, too).  The term "dynasty" is not undeserved when discussing the Spurs of the Greg Popovich Era.  And is not Tim Duncan the most underated, unappreciated "great" player of his generation, if not of all time?  And you could ask the same question about Greg Popovich as well.

The Spurs seem to be getting a bit long in the tooth, so who knows how long this run will continue, but it sure has been a great one.

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Speaking of the NBA, the playoffs really brought the LeBron James haters out in full force.  Not sure I understand the enmity that is out there towards James (other than in the City of Cleveland, of course), but it is only going to get worse now that he has elected to opt out of his contract in Miami - which, I remind you, he has every right to do (as he did when he left Cleveland in 2010) - and become a free agent.  The pursuit and eventual landing spot of LeBron James will no doubt completely dominate off-season basketball news.

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Barring any rain outs, the Pirates will reach the literal half-way mark of the 2014 season at the conclusion of Saturday's game.  They currently sit at 39-39, and there is some stat out there that tells you that they have had the best or second best record in the National League since May 1.  They are not the team we saw last season, to be sure, but neither are they the team of the twenty seasons previous to last year.  There are areas of concern, but it really isn't a sinking ship or a lost cause at PNC Park, either.

They are going to make it interesting for fans in the second half.  Making the Post-Season will not be easy, but it is far from a lost cause at this point.  

The NBA Finals

The National Basketball Association has just completed an 82 game season and six rounds of playoff series, only to produce a duplication of last season's Finals match-up - the Miami Heat versus the San Antonio Spurs.  Couldn't they have just played a seven game series last October and saved everyone a lot of time?

I kid, of course, but like many of you out there, with no strong rooting interest in any particular team, I don't pay a lot of attention to the NBA until Playoffs time, but I am looking forward to following these Finals.

Surely, the Spurs, looking for their fifth championship in this era are one of the most under-regarded dynastic-type teams in any sport.  And they feature one of the least known, and certainly least hyped great players of all time in Tim Duncan.

The Heat, of course, are two-time defending NBA Champs looking to make it three in a row, and when you watch them, you are privileged to see this guy

in action.  Seriously, LeBron James is so good that I can't even come up with words to describe him.  If you can't appreciate that, then you just don't like basketball, won't watch the playoffs, anyway, and probably skipped reading this post when you saw the headline.

The teams staged a terrific seven game series for the Championship last year, and there's no reason to think it won't happen again this year.

Let's tip it off!