If the season ended today, the only NL teams not to have made the playoffs more recently than the Cardinals would be the Marlins, Padres, Pirates, and Reds. Change that wording. Only the Marlins, Padres, and Reds have longer droughts
I Think this is a good deal for both. Toronto isn’t going to tank from the 1 seed last year(nor should they) so they take a shot against a Boston team that should still beat them and hope Kawhi goes Paul George-OKC on Toronto Spurs couldn’t go forward with him and this is certainly better than LAs garbage
I envy that you seemingly missed all of the "is Kobe the next Jordan?/Kobe IS the next Jordan"-talk. Didn’t seem as prominent though I wasn’t AS big into the NBA until LeBron joined the heat Because Kobe wasn’t so clearly better than Jordan
I don't necessarily disagree with you, but MJ was the most competitive and intimidating athlete I've ever seen. Everyone in the building was terrified of him and once he got over the hump nobody was beating him. He was a 35 year old shooting guard and won the 1998 playoffs/finals basically by himself. Pippen was hurt and Rodman was in la la land. Looking past the nonsense about how competitive and intimidating he was, when is the hump defined? Is it conveniently 1991? Then what happened in 1995 when he was punked by Nick Anderson? Oh that doesn't count he just came back from baseball. Where was his competitiveness and imtimidation factor though? And why did none of that transition into baseball? What about the Wizards? Does competitive nature fade with age? Or was he and his team just not that good. Wait strike the and his team part, teammates and context do not matter. And the '98 finals...the one where Jordan shot worse than all but 2 of LBJ's Finals, one of which where Drew Gooden was LBJ's 2nd. Gooden, presumably equaling some sort of Barkley/Malone hybrid at that point in his career.
I know if he doesn’t you’ll be here to breathlessly tell us how Jordan would’ve swept the series and Scottie Pippen is really just Brad Lohaus with better teeth. It’s ok that your idol is 2nd or lower, that doesn’t mean he wasn’t great. It’ll be ok
JR really bailed out George Hill from getting blamed for this. Hill looked terrified to take those free throws. I think Lebron will still single-handedly pull out a game, but he needed this to have a chance to make it a series. I'm not sure what else he can do. Maybe Draymond Green will get hit by a bus and that'll help his chances and make everyone happy all at the same time.