Round Two NBA Playoffs Predictions: Timing is everything

Whatever I write here, I'll probably just strike through anyway later when, you know, the first round is actually over. And when those other sites have all their picks up. And I've tabulated the leaderboard. Anyway, for the time being ...

UPDATE: First round still not complete ... another conference semifinal series starts tomorrow ... Vinny Del Negro still head coach of Chicago Bulls ...  

ANOTHER UPDATE: I should've remembered how the NBA post-season scheduling never makes this transition between rounds very easy for little collections of predictions like what I try to do here. And alas, just like last year, even with every second round series now having gotten underway, Yahoo is still missing predictions for a series and I never saw any at all for this round from the boys at Ball Don't Lie—which would really be unfortunate if I don't come across future picks of theirs since two from their trio went eight for eight. 

From the Department of the Inevitable, the axe that started coming down in, oh, December, finally fell on the proverbial neck of Vinny Del Negro yesterday, so final thoughts on the Bulls coming soon. As I'm sure we all know, many of us (no just in Chicago, me does think) seem to be actually more interested in the coming off-season's free agency period and how that affects next season rather than whether it's Kobe or LeBron hoisting the championship at the end of this year.

Somebody's bound to pick an upset eventually, but here's how things went to start with the first round of picks (in case you're new here, the number in parentheses denotes the number of series correctly predicted that also had the exact number of games correct):

My 2010 Oscar Ballot: Nicolas Chartier wouldn't complain (too much)

After my initial snobbery at the idea of now having 10 films nominated for Best Picture, this past year actually is the first time I can say I've seen all the nominated films since the last time Sandra Bullock's embracing of minorities won Oscar gold. So really, who was I crapping by pretending that doubling the nominees would make it less likely I'd see every film? Actually, I'll attribute it to having spent more time with a gay friend interested in such movies than a girlfriend who only wants to drag me to see things like this. So what I lacked in getting laid this Oscar season, I figure I made up with being enlightened.

Additionally, I think my biggest surprise has to be that I had favorable opinions of nine out of the 10 films—although I would say that really just three earned the sort of enthusiastic endorsements from me that I feel will still hold up many years down the road.

Anyway, even though the Oscars were handed out nearly two months ago and I'm not an actual voting member of the Academy, here for the sake of posterity is how I would have filled out my ballot had I been given one and some brief final thoughts until I hopefully do this again next year:

Movie Review: The Blind Side

THREE THINGS I LIKED:

1. THE "TRUE" PART OF THE "TRUE STORY" IT'S BASED UPON — The Blind Side gets to use that time-tested five-word phrase by being based upon the Michael Lewis book about the evolution of football strategy over the past three decades (loosely touched on in the film's opening look at the career-ending injury to Joe Theismann) and the remarkable true story of Michael Oher. Indeed, the young man's rise from the streets to the NFL's Baltimore Ravens will probably make for a pretty good movie one day, but for now I guess this film about Erin Brockovich Leigh Ann Touhy will have to do. 
   
2. OF 2009 RELEASES ABOUT LARGE BLACK TEENAGERS OVERCOMING OBSTACLES, THIS GOES DOWN A LOT EASIER THAN PRECIOUS — Polar opposites, really. Whereas Precious seemingly wanted to do nothing but beat you down, there's never a moment that The Blind Side isn't trying to lift you up. It was a different sort of wanting to kill myself, I guess.
3. THE ONE SCENE THAT GLORIOUSLY SURPRISED ME — At least Young MC's still getting royalties, I suppose. Up in the Air actually got the guy to perform "Bust a Move," a song I used to like most because of how my buddy nailed it every time at karaoke. But now it manages to induce groans and cringes from me for how often it's utilized for scenes just like the one it pops up in here, a grating shared sing-along session involving Oher (Quinton Aaron) and the profoundly irritating 10-year-old S.J. (Jae Head, exhibiting sheer mastery if the goal was to dissuade me from ever wanting to father children). That said, I won't deny that I bursted out in laughter with that scene's ultimate twist.

THREE THINGS I DIDN'T:

1. SANDRA BULLOCK IS PATRONIZING, NOT A PATRON SAINT — If you're not going to bother making Oher much of a character, I suppose you might as well design the script such that every scene for your lead actress gives her the best possible shot at winning an Oscar. The Blind Side makes sure to let Bullock get the better of every single crowd-pleasing scenario necessary, be it with the drug dealers in a dimly lit parking lot or the racist snobby bitches of upper-class lunch settings. She's all charitable, all the time. Too bad the thing she isn't is believable.
   
2. "DON'T ACT, JUST LOOK REALLY BLACK" — Quinton Aaron wasn't given a tremendous amount of dialogue to remember, as director John Lee Hancock seems to prefer just utilizing the actor as a mascot or family pet for the Touhy family at the film's center. As best as I can tell, his only role in this film is just to make every white person that sees him—and then, you know, feels visibly sorry for him for, you know, being black—be that much more self-congratulatory.
3. THIS IS ISN'T HELPING MY HAIR LOSS — What dialogue the film does have had me tugging at the ends of what I've got left. I lost count of the number of lines that made me want to scream as though I had just had my sack clipped, but perhaps no exchange better exemplified how riddled with sports clichés than one of the pre-packaged racists saying to the saintly Leigh Ann, "You've changed his life." Even before that big dramatic pause following the "No" that begins Bullock's corrective response and some swelling music, you know exactly what's coming next. There's never a deviation from formula here, and the entire movie's like that.

25 WORDS OR LESS:

Do I sound cheap for thinking the buck I paid to get this from the Redbox felt like a dollar too much?

Round Two NHL Stanley Cup Playoff Predictions: Guess there won't be no Caps in anybody's asses

Alas, we've once again immediately lost the hope of anybody achieving that prized Triple-P (Perfect Playoff Prognostication—and, yes, of course I just made that up ... not to mention that the additional adjective thus makes it a quadruple-P), but damned if I wasn't close with how the first seven series played out. I guess all I can say right now is I'm done thinking so highly of Mike Green—or at least trying to convince people that they should know who he is, Geico commercial or not.

Indeed, in an ironic twist to conclude the opening round (conference quarterfinals, if you so choose), instead of the Washington Capitals going on to win the Stanley Cup as I predicted at the beginning of the season, they instead were ousted by an eighth-seeded Montreal team that absolutely nobody had predicted heading into this matchup.

I know, I know—"What's so fucking ironic about that, honky?" 

Oh, just that an eight-seeded Montreal team advancing to the conference semifinals is also something I predicted at the beginning of the season. Of course, I mentioned that in my picks from the last round and knowingly ignored it anyway. Still, all other things considered, I did aight in my mind:

The BMC Vault: Bob Verdi's love letter to playoff hockey and smackdown of the NHL's contrived regular season tiebreakers

Welcome to The BMC Vault, yet another tag recently created that will hopefully provide future excuses to post. Since so many online publications decide to be dicks and not leave some of their really great older stuff available for the sake of our posterity, I'm trying to lend a helping hand in the name of humanity. Requests for future installments can be sent here.

Last night was the first multiple overtime game of this year's Stanley Cup Playoffs, and as Puck Daddy noted today, we haven't seen as many of those as we had in years past. We've still had nine OT games in these playoffs—and it's only the first round

Of course, to the casual fan, maybe this multiple-overtime thing doesn't sound like such a big deal. But for anybody who just endured the 82-game regular season, there aren't enough words of gratitude for the fact that we're now going to have ties settled the right way. (OK, occasional exception aside.)

Sweet, Sweet Fantasy, Baby: It's Good To Be King

You'll have to go here if you want to see the Tom Petty video, because I need to allocate my space properly in this post where I inevitably gloat about my recent dominance in these fantasy endeavors that I probably swore I'd never take too seriously. And believe me, what follows is about as thorough a recap as I can offer for my recent accumulation of small victories. (I know, I know: I can't believe I'm having this much difficulty getting laid either.)

Anyway, to complete the update on how those three seasons finished from that last fantasy update of mine, you might notice that I've got two nice little trophies there from first place finishes in both the fantasy hockey leagues. Again, one was scored using an overall points total (six different offensive categories and four goaltending) while the other was head-to-head throughout the season with a tournament to determine the champion.

Round One NBA Playoffs Predictions: The song remains the same

By comparison to the NHL predictions I just looked back on earlier this week, the NBA picks for this year were far more successful for a similarly formatted league. I had 16 of the 30 NBA team's final spots correct this year, and this being the first time at guessing how divisions would turn out, I had five of the six winners correct. (None of this, by the way, sounds really bragging-worthy to me.)

Now heading into the NBA playoffs, once again my originally predicted matchup for the Finals is indeed still technically possible—although it's not entirely likely nor is it at all basically desirable. As a matter of fact, the mantra here at BMC remains a hearty "ANYBODY BUT L.A." which will we be repeated each and every round—both boldfaced and italicized for richly derved emphasis.

From my original predictions, I had six of the eight playoff teams in the East right and seven of eight in the West. We'll get to how off I was on their seeds in each prediction that follows here, with the same sites' experts I compared my awful showing last year to. Like the NHL, there's only but a couple series with difference of opinion here but here's the others' picks first:

The Bulls' Fourth Quarter: I don't want to be like Candy

This spoof is the conclusion to the original scene I posted over on my Tumblr, and now that the Bulls went and made the playoffs, the exaggerated death seems like an even more appropriate parable for this season. We could have slunk out of this NBA season quietly just having missed the playoffs, but NO SIR! Why stop there when you could be that very first stone to be absolutely stomped on in what appears to be King James' imminent coronation as an NBA Champion (or at least that appears to be the early majority assumption—my picks will be up tomorrow, honestly).

Truth be told, the Bulls struggled through this final quarter of the season, and things finally seemed to explode in a perfect shitstorm, what with TNT's Craig Sager getting attention for something other than his ridiculous suits and calling attention to the severe lack of good beat reporting we've been missing in this city all season long. I'm sure I'll have further thoughts on the whole Paxon-Del Negro shoving incident and all of its fallout when Bulls season officially concludes in, oh, probably about a week. 

Round One NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs Predictions: NO MORE SHOOTOUTS!!!

The more upbeat way of looking at it is that I doubled the number of correctly predicted division winners with my NHL predictions this year. The fact that I only had nine of the 30 teams in the right spots last year doesn't sound all that hot to me, but obviously the blame lies more in how things played out in the Western Conference (four of eight playoff teams right) than out East (seven of eight playoff teams right).

Heading into last year's playoffs, my Stanley Cup Final I'd predicted at the beginning of that season was never even close to materializing, although I did reasonably well by comparison to the experts at Yahoo and ESPN once the actual playoffs concluded. This year, my predicted Final is very much alive, although then again, so is a rematch of last year. But from here on out we go by round. I'll be adding the CBSSports.com experts to the mix this year now that they've actually got the number of games included with their picks this year and here's what the experts from Yahoo and ESPN have got for the first eight series after the jump:

The Blackhawks' Fourth Quarter: Sorry for the lack of new coin graphics

I need to get my playoff predictions up in a few hours, but we're still two whole days away from the Blackhawks season finally kicking into its real gear. I've been thinking over some smaller regular features for the quarterly thoughts I offer on one of the other teams that constitutes My Four Bs, which will probably be unveiled some time after the Braves play their 40th game. Until then, you're going to have to be satisfied with this latest reason as to why it's effing glorious to be a Blackhawks fan right now.

Oh sure, that fourth quarter of the season was pretty rough. After beating Vancouver a couple days following the gimme against Edmonton immediately after the Olympics, the 'Hawks struggled through most all of March and were unable to put together consecutive victories until once again getting white-hot in April—losing only in the finale to the Red Wings. That loss cost the team a chance to grab the Western Conference title, but really, I'm not all that bothered by it. If anything, the 'Hawks ended up precisely where I had expected them to be—but I will get back to further thoughts on that in the Round One Predictions later today.

Until then, I can only say that I'm even more antsy about these playoffs getting started than I was last year and about the only time I can recall being this similarly enthused about a post-season getting started may have been when the Bears entered the playoffs as the top seed for their Super Bowl run a few years ago. But more importantly right now, this fourth quarter of the Blackhawks season is not a conclusion, but merely a bridge. I'm hoping there are many more rounds of additional thoughts as the playoffs unfold, and then we can start worrying about putting a different type of bling on this page.

Just a thought (or two): On, like, why I've been quiet and shit

Holy shit! Are we really halfway through April all ready? Is it "all ready" or "already" that's grammatically correct? And why have I only now started to wonder about that?

I blame it all on what I just told another friend has been a "severe case of writer's block"—which is, of course, total and utter horse shit. It usually is. I am physically capable of writing something, I'm just not particularly as passionate about any of my ideas at the moment to put the time into any sort of creative project like, say, a screenplay or (if you're one of three married women I know) a book.

No, especially not as of late when baseball season's started back up and between radio broadcasts of that or hockey, I've actually been far more satisfied—artistically speaking—spending time at the sketch pad instead of the keyboard. I sent out a couple of well-received projects for birthday gifts this month and am currently working on a somewhat more ambitious piece that I ... well, I don't know what I'll do with it quite yet.
 
Originally I intended to make it another gift for more of an IRL acquaintance I only met recently that has a personal anniversary date coming up, but I ... am just so confused, I guess. I've been spending too much time in recent weeks waiting for the phone to ring. That's not just with hopes that one of the four places I've got applications in at and are supposedly hiring will finally bring me on and get me out of this unemployment rut, but I also found myself taken aback by meeting one girl who actually asked for my number, asked if she could call me one weekend ... and still hasn't.

And so, like I've been putting it most of the week when I'm trying to downplay how much it actually bothers me, the girl I want to call me isn't and the girl I don't want to call me (READ: The ex—that one, for the record) is.

I suppose that might make for some interesting developments as we head into the summer, but there'll be posts aplenty coming before this month closes out—what with the NBA and NHL post-seasons kicking off. Last year, I deliberately posted nothing but my predictions during those months when the playoffs were going on, such that by the time they were over, the entire front page of my blog was the four rounds of predictions and the final thoughts for both seasons. But this year, I'll make the mistake of announcing my intentions to make sure that there's something between those rounds of predictions.

It'll be something hopefully more, you know, "inspired." I know, I know. I can hardly wait to get on that already/all ready.

2010 MLB Predictions: This will be our year, took a long time to come

While the definite anticipation for the Stanley Cup Playoffs is once again destined to be my defining interest for the next couple months, Major League Baseball's 2010 season does have to get started at some point—seeing as each team plays as many regular-season games as an NHL team and an NBA team combined (oh, unless there's a rainout that doesn't get made up, I suppose).

And my appetite was somewhat whetted by my entering the same Fantasy Baseball league sis and bro-in-law are in, so I'll obviously have to be paying some attention—which is more than usual, since it typically takes me a good month or two to really start caring.

I didn't do all that hot last year, getting a mere two of the six division winners right and only eight of the 30 teams' final standing correct. So any sort of improvement shouldn't be too difficult—especially since (judging by most other outlets' predictions) a Yankees-Phillies rematch in the World Series is all but guaranteed. Even Joe Morgan's picking that, so if there was ever a sign ...

All I know is that I'm not picking the Indians again—which almost certainly means they'll win the whole thing. Still, let's see if I can improve upon my .267 average from last year: