So it would be very frustrating to lose this series given the Cavs injuries, but damn if this isn't a great series between probably the 2 best teams in the East. The only reason this isn't an ECF matchup is because the Hawks had an incredible regular season somehow. These are the two best teams in the East, so for me it takes a little of the sting knowing we lost to the other top team with the best player in basketball. It's better than if we got the 4 seed and lost to the stupid wizards in the first round.
Looks like ESPN had Bryant with 21 hits coming into this game while fangraphs had 22. He may have had a hit taken away in a previous game by an official scorer that fangraphs didn't catch. he did. len and JD talked about it today. from brewers series. Yeah that bloop RBI double was changed to an error. He lost a hit and an RBI
Chris Mannix from SI is really animated on Twitter about the whole Taj ejection. I don't think he's a Bulls fan either. That flagrant 2 (instead of double technical) and that ridiculous LeBron continuation had a big impact on the result of the game. So frustrating. I really hate to complain about officiating but it's been noticeably bad this series and not just against the Bulls (although my biased eyes see more against the Bulls than Cavs)
Nah I don't think so. It will be difficult no doubt but more Mirotic will eat up some of the loss from Gasol's absence and half the Cavs are banged up. The Bulls have also shot poorly the last 3 games and are due for a better shooting night.
Probably difficult for them to commit to play a game on Thursday with only one day notice. They could just tell both teams on Sunday night 'hey if Tampa wins on Tuesday you guys are playing Thursday' I wish they scheduled like the NBA, where sometimes the last Game 7 of a previous round and the first game 1 of the next round are played on the same day. One game is on the east coast and another west coast so you could easily have Tampa-Montreal start at 6 CT and Hawks-Ducks at 8:30 or 9.
Apparently Boudreau let it slip that the series is starting on Sunday, or at least he believes that. Which would suck as its more time for Perry to get healthy and of course it means 10 freaking days between games. Has any team ever had 10 days between playoff series? Seems like if that's not the record, its close to it. Edit: [tweet]
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Not enough Vines/Youtubes of Bryant and Rizzo going back to back. You people are not utilizing the new board features properly. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiXCyJRulXk
Aren't there a lot of moving pieces going into 17 minutes over 4 games such to make that number damn near worthless? Oh, no doubt. That's an incredibly sample size (over the course of a small sample size of four games) with a lot of mitigating factors there. That said, it does feed two into two popular thinking that seem reasonable: Gibson is playing far better than Noah right now and Mirotić does wonders to space the floor when he's in at the 4. What is the best site to get +/- info? I want to see how all the big combos have fared in +/- this postseason. I feel like any combo with Mirotic is going to be a +.
Why does it seem like umps have been terrible calling balls and strikes this year in particular? We have the freaking technology, why can't we just [expletive] implement it? Why do we have to let human error factor into it when we don't have to?
The only thing I can think of is a challenge based system like MLB and NFL How do you mean? Reviews aren't automatic. If you want to challenge a play or whatever you are risking losing a TO. If you don't have a TO you can't challenge a play