The Weekend of and before Memorial day weekend are prime weekends for sports in America. Here is this week’s weekend recap.
NBA Weekend Recap
The ratings sickos are dying. Oh no, how will we ever survive a Denver Miami series? How can the NBA be at all profitable with one of the West’s largest largest television markets and one of the most historically successful Eastern conference teams? How?
Why these people exist doesn’t compute with my brain. Who cares about what TV ratings say? Are you going to enjoy the sport you watch less because the ratings are slightly worse? Really? Makes no sense whatsoever.
I’m looking forward to this set of NBA finals. The best team in the league in the Nuggets against the best player in these playoffs in Jimmy Butler.
The Heat have also stepped up as a collective group in the Celtics series as well. Gabe Vincent has played absolutely tremendous basketball as a second fiddle. The Heat just have 6-7 players that can contribute 15 plus points a night and that’s really all you need if you want to compete for a championship.
If you’re asking yourself, Eric, why are you talking about these series as if they are already over? Well no team in NBA history has ever come back from a 3-0 series deficit. So at this point it feels like a foregone conclusion that the Lakers and Celtics are in fact done.
Where the Celtics go from here is fascinating, Jaylen Brown could potentially want out according to multiple reports, you probably move on from Joe Mizzoula, a long and turbulent off-season lies ahead for the team that should have been Finals contenders out of Boston.
NHL Weekend Recap
For personal reasons, which I will keep to myself at the moment but that I will blog about in detail if things fall my way, I need the Dallas Stars to respond.
Two grueling OT games in which Jake Oettinger has stood on his head both times have lead to a 2-0 series lead for the Golden Knights.
The Stars are young, we will see if they have championship DNA on Tuesday night. Roope Hintz needs to step up, Jason Robertson has come through, as has Jake Oettinger, the third member of the Star’s young core needs to get contributing and quickly if the Stars want to survive the series.
The Golden Knights are being carried by Jack Eichel, again it’s just nice at this point that Eichel has his day in the sun. After a brutal start to his career in Buffalo he seems truly built to be a Vegas Golden Knights star, and he knows how to play the villain perfectly on a villainous franchise.
The East has been the story of Sergei Bobrovsky, a goalie who I would argue is top ten in this generation. With a Stanley Cup, hall of fame arguments are hard for goalies, but I think you would have to make the case for Bob.
Carolina meanwhile looks to run out of steam after 60 minutes. They just don’t quite have the same fight the Panthers do. It will be interesting to see if the series shifts as it heads to Florida. Both these series do feel like even though they consist of two game leads that no one should fear a sweep. This has been one of the more entertaining conference finals in the NHL in recent years.