2014/15 Golden State Warriors – NBA Champions

It’s what they play their entire careers for, it’s what we fans spend our entire lives in hope of. The Golden State Warriors holding out the Cleveland Cavaliers to take game six and the NBA title with it. Four games to two. A convincing win in the end despite the absolute best efforts of the borderline myth that is LeBron James.

Steph Curry was fantastic, he completely shattered the NBA record for threes in a postseason, and Andre Iguodala came and claimed the Finals MVP award. Every game he was there in the trenches, hitting shots and forcing turnovers. There really isn’t anything more you can reasonably ask from a role player (even one as good as Iguodala, used to being one of the best players on a roster until he moved to California) than to play hard and keep playing hard. He went above and beyond. All three of his season starts came in the Finals series. Iggy stepped up at the most important time and he’s been rewarded. 

Steph vs LeBron

It was the reigning MVP vs the reigning Best Player In The League. Both unarguable titles. But which matters more in the NBA Finals?

• LeBron James – 45.8 mins, 13.3 reb, 8.8 ast, 35.8 pts
• Steph Curry – 42.5 mins, 5.2 reb, 6.3 ast, 24.4 pts

LeBron dominated in terms of pure numbers, but it’s more than that. He outperformed the MVP in effort and influence – no mean feat as Curry was immense himself, just look at the friggin’ numbers! It’s just that Curry had far more help. Zach Lowe posed the question on his podcast this week: If you swapped LeBron for Steph, what happens? Well, Jeff Van Gundy reckoned it’d be a Warriors sweep. The idiots will use LeBron’s finals records as evidence against him but it should be the opposite. This is the second time that he’s dragged a weak Cleveland team to the finals on sheer will, determination and ingenious talent. The East has been weaker than the West for a long while, and that gap is greater than ever now. LeBron’s teams can beat 75% of their Eastern opponents in a series on the back of LeBron alone and that’s not his fault.

So the big question: Is Lebron James a deserving Finals MVP? This is an argument that begs for a more in-depth examination, but on the basis of the surface stats and watching the games (the ol’ eye test), yeah, he does. He’s been the most valuable player in the series. The most important, the most influential and the best performing. In every regard except one he is the MVP. That only problem is that he lost. And the only time an MVP has come from a losing side was way back in 1969, a certain Jerry West.

The things is, either team would have made deserving champions. Golden State has dominated all season, blasting out to a 67 win campaign and destroying teams the whole way. When they had to work for it in the playoffs, they’ve found an answer every time. Meanwhile the Cavaliers seemed destined for glory when LeBron returned, but they took a while and several moves to work things out. Once they did, though, there was hardly a better team.

The feeling is that Cleveland might be the more resilient team in terms of bouncing back from defeat in these finals. Defeat wouldn’t have ruined either team, but it’s the Cavs who lost two of their best three players to injury along the way. With them back (Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love, if he returns) then they could reach even greater heights next time, and they could do it with a chip in their shoulder. The Warriors are built on younger talent too, with so many brilliant role players, but at some point those role players get offered bigger deals to start somewhere else.

You never know how quickly things might change and sometimes that championship window is smaller than you realise.

Shout Out To The Drunkard Harrison Barnes

Somehow the man made it through 23 years of life and basketball without tasting a sip of alcohol. He promised that’d change if the Dubs won the NBA title. They did. It did. He did.

El Presidente

Wield The Lance!

Poor Lance Stephenson, he took a gamble on his contract with the Charlotte Hornets, backing his ability to lead a team and be an influential scorer. He failed. Hard.

Well, the lad’s getting a new chance to be the player he threatened to be on the Pacers a while back. Stephenson has been traded to the LA Clippers for Matt Barnes and Spencer Hawes in a move that on the surface feels fantastic for him.

And it’s great for the Clippers too, who dump the complete whiff of a signing that was Spencer Hawes (who could hardly play in the playoffs he was that bad) along with 35 year old dumbass Matt Barnes. And in return they get a triple-double threat (though doubtful on this team with CP3 & BG) who can be a semi-reliable scorer either off the bench or in Barnes’ starting SF position.

While the Hornets dump an expensive player who clearly didn’t fit their style and was dropped out of the starting five within two months and in turn get a couple of useful veterans – the tasty entrée for every middling struggler.

Just In Case

According to sources, Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson will play the upcoming NFL season with a massive insurance policy on him, to protect him financially of he gets injured along the way. Wilson’s in the final year of his rookie contract (worth $1.5m) and negotiations for a huge extension have been difficult. Salary cap reasons, negotiating reasons, etc. This does seem to suggest the Wilson doesn’t expect a deal before the season begins.

No such issues for Nick Foles and the St Louis Rams. Without having thrown a single pass for the team (he was traded for Sam Bradford from the Eagles, you remember?), they’re already hot on the idea of an extension. New blood brings new luck.

Oh, but Dez Bryant isn’t so flush. The Dallas Cowboys wide receiving superstar has been franchise tagged for the season (which means he’s playing for a one year contract the value of the average of the top guys in his position), but naturally he wants a long term deal. And the Cowboys wanna give him one, they just haven’t found that middle ground yet. Dez has been skipping voluntary team workouts as a results, and is now threatening to skip the first game of the season even. Would he actually do that? Probably get to wait and find out coz it’s unlikely that deal gets done before then.

Scherzenator

This was too good to simply mention in the Good Week/Bad Week stuff at the bottom. We’ll save that for home run hitters and no-hit pitchers. Max Scherzer flirted with a perfect game the other day in a 4-0 win over the Brewers… but instead came up with something arguably even rarer.

This from Yahoo Sports:

In the modern history of MLB there have been 23 perfect games and 245 no-hitters. There have only been 12 pitchers to record a Game Score of 100 or better in a nine inning game and Scherzer's dominant outing hit 100 on the dot.

Game Score is a stat based on a fairly simple formula used to judge starting pitchers. Start at a score of 50, add points for every innings and strikeout pitched, take ‘em away for hits, runs and walks. Nothing too definitive but a very good indication of a pitcher’s game-day prowess. And Scherzer, whose perfect game was dissipated by a blooping single in the seventh, joins an exclusive group:

Sparkle, Sparkle

Get a load of the New England Patriots’ Super Bowl Rings. Very shiny.

Vince

I’ll Be there For Yoooooou…

MLB Leaders in Home Runs Through Today:

1. 24 – Giancarlo Stanton (MIA)
2. 22 – Bryce Harper (WAS)
3. 20 – Todd Frazier (CIN)
4. 18 – Albert Pujols (LAA), Paul Goldschmidt (ARI), Nelson Cruz (SEA) & Mike Trout (LAA)

Quote of the Week:

'I feel confident because I'm the best player in the world' – LeBron James

Like, he’s got a point there, regardless of how it turned out.

Good Week:

Salvador Perez (KC Royals) – The Kansas City catcher is currently leading all players in All Star voting, which is a bit surprising (Royals fans are absolutely crashing the polls, they have all eight positional starters as of this week!) but not entirely undeserved. Perez has 12 hits in his last 8 games, with 4 homers, 5 runs and 4 RBI. Plus he’s about as durable a catcher as there is in baseball, having played 58 of his team’s 60 games.

Toronto Blue Jays – Storming back into contention with an 11 game win streak, including three-game sweeps of the Red Sox, Marlins and Astros. Jose Bautista and Josh Donaldson are crushing it, Mark Buerle is pitching gems in his sleep and the team’s playing some fine defence. But they did hit a road block against the New YorK Mets, ending their streak with a couple losses.

Chris Heston (San Francisco Giants) – Shout out to this bloke, a 27 year old with one total MLB start prior to 2015. But after taking Matt Cain’s spot in the Giants rotation, he’s done a decent job of filling in. He also went and threw 2015’s first no-hitter this week, going the distance against the Mets. 9 innings, 0 earned runs, 0 hits, 3 hit by pitch, 11 strikeouts & 0 walks.

Andre Iguodala (Golden State Warriors) – Who’d have picked it, aye? Not a start to his name in the regular season, next thing… Finals MVP.

Bad Week:

St Louis Cardinals – But they’re one of the best (if not THE best) teams in baseball right now! How are they having a bad week!? Well, any week when you’re the subject of an FBI investigation for hacking into an opponent’s computer databases (the Houston Astros, allegedly) is a bad week.

Evan Mathis (Free Agent) – Cut by the Philadelphia Eagles, coach Chip Kelly says he repeatedly requested it, Mathis says he didn’t and was prepared to play. Either way, it does sound like the 2-time Pro Bowler wasn’t happy, so maybe he oughta be in the Good Week stakes. According to his agent, there’s “a lot of interest” in signing Mathis from other teams.

Philadelphia Phillies – 8 consecutive losses and 14 games out of first place in the NL East. We can probably safely write this one off as another clunker of a season for the Phillies. They just gave up 18 runs to the Orioles today.

Player of the Week:

It’s a tie between every one of these men:

• Leandro Barbosa
• Harrison Barnes
• Andrew Bogut
• Stephen Curry
• Festus Ezeli
• Draymond Green
• Justin Holiday
• Andre Iguodala
• Ognjen Kuzmic
• David Lee
• Shaun Livingston
• James McAdoo
• Brandon Rush
• Marreese Speights
• Klay Thompson

Not all of them played, not all of them were great. But most of them did and plenty of them were. What ties them together is that every one of them gets a ring.