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When I made my NBA predictions a year ago, the Miami Heat were more or less already presumed 2013 NBA Champions. They were wire-to-wire frontrunners, and despite a couple close calls in the playoffs, they inevitably emerged as repeat champions. It makes perfect sense that they would begin this year again as the intital favorite to possible threepeat.
I was initially going to subtitle this year's picks, "Who Will The Heat Beat This Year?" But truth be told, there's just so many things yet to be determined this year. Any number of rosters could look completely different by year's end. In addition to the fact that LeBron James is set to once again become a free agent once the season concludes, there will also be an NBA Draft class that is sure to make teams outside the playoff picture consider trading away assets to stockpile more picks. And while a threpeat isn't unheard of in the NBA, four consecutive Finals appearances is rather rare.
In addition to the usual plethora of new faces in new places, there's questions about whether Pau Gasol ends the year as a Laker. What about Rajon Rondo? DeMarcus Cousins? A whole number of players could be likely to be moved, and a whole number of teams thinking they're only one piece away from contending—especially in the Western Conference—means that whatever I type now, I'm incredibly likely to have a completely different feeling come April about which team hoists the Larry O'Brien in June.
I could really go balls out and predict who's going to end up where based on trades that haven't happened, but for now, this year's predictions represent my opinion based on the rosters as presently constructed. Which is to say that I'm nowhere near as confident as I might've been, say, last year.
Aside from one series and a couple of games, my postseason picks this year have been fairly right on. Of course, seeing as we've wound up with the two best teams in baseball in this year's Fall Classic, it's not as though I really took any tremendous risks along the way. Additionally, I'm sure to note in my year-end Final Thoughts post that this year's conclusion is pretty far off from my original predictions before this season began. Then again, it looks like this was a series that absolutely no pundit saw coming at that point either.
As this season draws to a close, we're also left with a World Series that many fans simply have zero rooting interest in. As Will Leitch put it, many fans will be "cheering for the meteor." As Leitch also noted, the winner of this series will also be the first team to win three championships this century. Furthermore, it will also mean that these two teams have won half of the World Series titles over the past decade. So a lot of people can be forgiven for being tired of seeing either one of these stadiums of red-clad fans.
While I was tempted to create a graphic using some of the most egregious examples of obnoxious fandom from the Red Sox or the Cardinals, the truth is that we have been treated to some really good baseball in this year's playoffs and I'm looking forward to what should probably be a thrilling conclusion.
My strategy of picking against my rooting interest proved to be fairly accurate, as I nailed not only the winners of three of the four series in the last round but the exact number of games too. My only miss was Oakland, a team that by now appears to be jockeying with my beloved Braves for postseason infutility. The final thoughts on this once again disappointing Atlanta season are forthcoming down the line, probably after I return from the vacation next weekend.
The downside to having as many teams I'm by no means a fan of advance last round means that, of course, my wife may finally have a point when breaking out the annual "You don't even like these teams" argument when I have any sports playoffs on TV. Still, I'm not about to tell her that and I'm more than likely still going to make playoff baseball appointment viewing since we are still given two fairly good matchups.
As you can tell by another vanilla graphic for this post, I still don't have the time to construct a more creative image to accompany this post—not that I've necessarily got any particularly compelling ideas dreamed up anyway. Unfortunately for me, these "final four" remaining teams are all quite familiar faces—well, logos, at least. Still, only one's going to be called champions this year, and damned if I'm not still interested to find out which club that will be. Perhaps I'll have developed a more passionate rooting interest by the time I'm posting my World Series picks.
For as long as I've been a Bears fan, the team's identity came largely from its defense. From fans to coaches, the football team has long lived in the enormous shadow cast by the 1985 World Champion defense. Ever since then, there's been constant whining about the improvements that need to be made to various components of the offense, but fans could always seem to take comfort in the quality of the team's defense.
Of course, it seems like I've been saying for the past few years that the defense is aging. The window was closing. And now this past off-season, iconic linebacker Brian Urlacher retired after the Bears supposedly "low-balled" him by giving him a modest offer. The amount is kind of trivial since in his previous season, the man did not really play like he did a decade ago in his youth. Oh, and no other team wanted him.
Meanwhile, the defensive-minded Lovie Smith didn't get an offer from anybody after being let go, and his replacement Marc Trestman has been referred to as a "quarterback whisperer" for the success he's had working with numerous top QBs around the NFL. This once again gave some Bears fans reason for optimism about the offensive prospects, for once. And now four games into Trestman's first season, it's still taking a little getting used to. The defense most certainly isn't as good as it has been in years past, but the offense may be more potent than its ever been. In today's NFL, that could make this team a real contender.
But it's not that easy, of course. Nothing ever is.
With very few of my piss-poor initial predictions about this season still being possible outcomes, I suppose this is a round to finally change course and start expressing supposed confidence in a new outcome. That said, for this round at least, I'm invoking a strategy of going against what I want to see (depite being two for two in picking personally preferred teams thus far). Seeing as I usually pull for and find reasons to predict underdogs, I suppose that might make these picks on the safer side.
While I will certainly be pulling for these series to have outcomes that allow me to continue to have real, genuine rooting interests, I fully expect my favorite teams to be promptly eliminated. In truth, this might be a good thing since the wife and I will be in New England in a second attempt to have our honeymoon right around the time of our one-year anniversary. And also around the time of possible Game 7s of the ALCS and NLCS.
So yeah, at worst, I'm right on all counts and won't miss any games I care about. At best, the teams I like (namely a certain ball club from Atlanta) advance and my efforts to watch possible games in the next round while camped out in Maine could make for additional blogging material—when I have more time, of course (the transcribing needs to be done before we leave, so there).
There really can't be much to complain about when a Braves team that was widely expected to finish second to the Washington Nationals this year and settle for a Wild Card berth at best instead dominates pretty much from wire to wire in winning the team's first division title since 2005. Yeah, that's nowhere near the agony that, say, Pirates fans finally overcame this year, but it was certainly a pleasant surprise to see how successful Atlanta ended up being this year.
So what does it mean? Well, it means that there won't have to be a silly one-game playoff this year for the Bravos. However, because the team sort of limped across the finish line, the St. Louis Cardinals strode in and swiped home-field advantage, now setting up a less than desirable first round date with the Los Angeles Dodgers. While it's been a few years since the Braves got into the playoffs for an actual, you know, series, it's suddenly all coming back: the doubt, the worries, and the predominant sense of skepticism.
I'll dwell on that more in my Divisional Series picks tomorrow, but for now, I should really take a moment to appreciate how well this year turned out. Putting aside the disappointing (and expensively lackluster) performances of B.J. Upton and Dan Uggla, there was plenty to be happy about this year after all. I imagine whenever the Final Thoughts for this year's team go up, there will be much more praise for the pitching and other positional players as well as manager Fredi Gonzalez once the year concludes.
This has certainly been a very encouraging campaign that has restored a lot of faith about the long-term future of this team. Whether the team will prove to be strong enough for the immediate future is something we'll begin getting a better idea of tomorrow night. I'll certainly be hoping for the best.
As I said in my NHL predictions last night, I'm a little pressed for time right now. So my apologies for not customizing the little accompanying graphic a bit, but it's not like I had any great ideas at the moment anyway. Still, I can never pass up the opportunity for postseason picks, and after last night's tiebreaker game sent Tampa into the playoffs, the next two nights will see two more do-or-die games for four teams. It certainly should be fun, maybe even infuriating if there's another infield fly rule call.
