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***SIGH***
Stop me if you've heard this story before: A Bulls team lacking superstars overachieves in the regular season before coming up short in the playoffs. I won't need to spend too much time harping on this past year for basketball in Chicago, because I basically shared my exact same thoughts following last season. Here we are again, and maybe the only difference now is that we can look forward to Carlos Boozer finally hitting the road.
As is always the case, there's a lot of discussion about a possible big-name free agent (Carmelo Anthony) to team with Derrick Rose when he returns for what is hopefully his first full season in two years. I refuse to get my hopes up about Anthony, instead holding out hope for the far more realistic possibility that the Bulls can get Real Madrid power forward Nikola Mirotić to come across the pond and more than make up for what Boozer lacked. There has also been some concern raised about reports that the Los Angeles Lakers are attempting to woo Tom Thibodeau into coming to California, but I simply don't see what that franchise could offer Chicago that would be attractive enough for them to relinquish control of the coach.
However, there's some very real issues to be taken with Thibs' style now. The man is committed to winning every single possession of every single game, no matter how meaningless. This attitude has largely gone over well among the U.C. faithful, where a regular season victory is still treated as being some sort of indicator of future success. Of course, this is not the case. And one needs look no further than San Antonio (where aging stars are routinely given the night off) or Miami (where the "Big Three" also receive breaks to stay healthy for a playoff run) to realize that if the Bulls are truly to compete in the near future, the team is going to have to be willing to sacrifice a game or two in the regular season.
I fear this would strike Thibs as nonsense, but unless the team adds some genuinely striking offensive talent this off-season, I have little reason to get my hopes up about anything being all that different when the 2015 Playoffs tip off. The Heat are not getting any younger, but the Spurs have continued to be perennial contenders despite years and years of being dismissed as "too old." Chicago continues to be among the best defensive teams in the league year in and year out, but until they can be as strong offensively while still having gas in the tank and a healthy roster come April, it just seems that the ceiling for the Bulls will continue to be as bridesmaids of the Eastern Conference.
It's late at night and all three final Game 7 contests of the first round concluded with me being wrong about every single winner. That was pretty indicative my opening round picks, but the saving grace would of course be that my beloved Blackhawks are still very much alive, very much kicking, and very likely to keep defending their title perhaps well into May. Then again, considering my performance last round, perhaps I should pick against them just to improve their chances.
The NHL postseason is without a doubt my favorite time of year, and each one of these four series in the next round has the potential to be riveting stuff. If the last round taught us nothing else, no upset can be ruled out and no lead is safe. So needless to say, I won't be getting too far ahead of myself and talking about possible Stanley Cup Final picks. Hoping, of course, is another matter.
It was another hard-fought season of Chicago Bulls basketball, with the team holding its own despite losing its marquee player and trading away a longtime contributor as well. Tom Thibodeau once again worked his magic with this seemingly doomed roster, and the Bulls somehow end up having home-court advantage in the first round of the playoffs. Perhaps most astonishingly, it very much seemed that other teams in the Eastern Conference were doing their best to avoid having to play Chicago in the first or second round.
That speaks volumes of the type of opponent that the Bulls can be. Even though the offense is lackluster (to put it kindly), the defense remains the selling point and now win against this team comes without being earned through 48 minutes of grueling work. So does that translate to a championship threat? Of course not.
And there's sort of the rub with being a Bulls fan. We're becoming more and more used to this annual collection of scrappy underdogs overachieving without ever really being realistically in the title conversation. The signings and moves at the end of the year is fueling speculation that GarPax may be maneuvering to acquire Carmelo Anthony during the off-season, which certainly sounds good on paper. The problem it that we've been down this fantasy free agent road before, and the results rarely work out in Chicago's favor.
For now, I'll try to enjoy the prospect of the Bulls giving an Indiana or even a Miami fits, but it remains just about impossible for me to truly build up any real hopes about a Larry O'Brien Trophy being presented to this basketball team in June. They try hard and leave it all on the floor, sure, but it's only fair to admit that there remains a very real ceiling for the squad.
It appears I downloaded a virus or seven in my attempt to watch the NHL Playoffs on my computer, so the usual images, commentary, and whatnot will be added later.
To three-peat or not to three-peat? The Miami Heat's regular season has been very reminiscent of the two three-peats I saw the Chicago Bulls accomplish in the 1990s, as the defending champions spared themselves of pushing too hard in the regular season in order to make sure everyone would be healthy for what would be a fourth consecutive trip to the NBA Finals. While the Eastern Conference was something of a joke for much of the year, the way the pairings ended up no longer means the Heat will just coast to another title. Chances are good Miami will have two fairly difficult series before they even get to deal with whomever comes out of the West.
If nothing else, we've at least got some reason to pay a little more attention before June now.
My first attempt at guessing the final spots of all 30 teams in the new four division format did not go particularly well, having only placed a mere six teams correctly. I correctly identified 11 of the 16 teams that will be participating in the playoffs, but needless to say, there were some disappointments (Ottawa, Edmonton) and surprises (most notably Colorado, winners of the same Central I had the Avs finishing last in). My fairly poor track record thus far doesn't exactly make me feel particularly confident about how I'll fare in predicting the outcome of this year's Stanley Cup Playoffs.
The new playoff format certainly seems likely to take a solid first step toward building the intense, bitter division rivalries that the league is hoping for. There's bound to be some very competitive contests over the next couple of weeks, and there's reason to believe that nearly every one of the 16 teams has a chance of moving on to the next round. Of course, there's also the reality that a number of teams that seemed like possible Cup contenders will be gone after this first round (San Jose-Los Angeles, St. Louis-Chicago).
Still, there's going to be a compelling story or two develop somewhere in these playoffs, and I'm giddy at the thought of getting off work tomorrow evening to feast on playoff hockey all night. And the night after that. And the ... well, the wife's probably going to be home after more than a week out of town, so that'll be a little more tricky justifying any series not involving the Blackhawks. While I was initially thrilled to think that our daughter was due a couple weeks after the Final likely concludes, I was reminded today that all four of the children her mother delivered arrived two to four weeks early. So whereas I once joked that my wife would go into labor as soon as Chicago went into overtime in a deciding Stanley Cup game, that now seems even more likely. For now though, I'll just try to enjoy as much of the opening round as I can.
For every one of the previous three quarterly updates, the Blackhawks had been holding off the St. Louis Blues for first place in the Central Division. The largest lead at any quarter's conclusion was a mere four points and the leads at the time were always somewhat misleading because St. Louis always had at least a couple games still in hand. It was shortly after that last update when the Blues boasted the biggest of all trade deadline acquisitions in star Sabres goalie Ryan Miller that St. Louis finally overtook the 'Hawks for the top spot in the Central and appeared well on their way to contending for the Presidents' Trophy. However, the month of April was not kind to the Blues, concluding the season by losing six in a row and, in the process, conceding the division title to a plucky Colorado Avalanche squad that I had originally forecast to finish in the cellar (so, you know, "oops").
With Detroit now a member of the Eastern Conference, St. Louis has certainly felt like the new regional rival for Chicago. In that sense, it's only appropriate that they meet in the first round of the NHL's newly revamped playoff system that wants to hype up division rivalries. The Blackhawks finished the year with the team's two biggest stars, Toews and Kane, sidelined by injuries. The Blues have also been dealing with their share of health woes, as Derek Roy, Vladimir Sobotka, T.J. Oshie, Brenden Morrow, David Backes, and Barret Jackman were all listed as "day-to-day" in the final two weeks.
Of course, paralysis, amputation, or decapitation are the only types of injuries that would cause a player to miss the playoffs in the NHL. Everybody's going to be banged up when the race for the Cup kicks off Wednesday night, but I don't see how 'Hawks fans cannot feel great about the team they drew. Whereas the last few weeks were fret with concern about how Chicago was ever going to be able to score on Colorado netminder Semyon Varlamov (boasting a stunning .960 save percentage against the Blackhawks this year), the Blues suddenly look like a complete mess and an ideal opponent for last year's Stanley Cup Champions to begin their title defense against. I might not be so optimistic a couple weeks from now, but for the time being, I'm pretty damn happy.
Last season's picks were a fine reminder that there may be no more difficult sport to predict a final outcome for than Major League Baseball. Again, out of 63 experts from ESPN, Sports Illustrated, CBS, Yahoo, and Fox last year, NOT ONE had Boston or St. Louis in the World Series. And while I specifically noted that I was going against the conventional wisdom at the time that had either the Washington Nationals (28 picks) or the Detroit Tigers (23 picks) winning it all, neither the Texas Rangers nor the San Diego Padres lived up to my preseason prognostication. So to be fair, I'm certainly no better than any of the so-called experts. Hell, I'm probably a lot worse.
All of that said, I debated what I wanted to do with this annual blog post again this year. Based upon the odds I heard about yesterday, the Cardinals and the Los Angeles Dodgers are the two favorites to wind up as champions. Judging by some of the predictions posted elsewhere, the only other teams coming close to the number of people going with either one of those two clubs would be individuals choosing ... Washington or Detroit. Tampa Bay also has scattered support.
Where does that leave me then? In some divisions, I find myself concocting reasons to pick an underdog. In other races, it seems all but impossible to go against the majority. In the end, I figure I'm going to go with the outcome I'd least likely want to see happen—since I'm probably going to be wrong anyway.
As has been the case pretty much all year long, the Miami Heat and the Indiana Pacers remain far and away the only two elite teams in the Eastern Conference. And while the Bulls were essentially written off as soon as Derrick Rose went down only a few games in to the season, and while shipping Luol Deng off to Cleveland at about the midway point seemed to further cement the reality that this wasn't going to be Chicago's year, the Bulls just continue to grind away and keep winning games. If the playoffs were to start today, the Bulls would have home court advantage in the first round. But again, this is all simply delaying the inevitable. Do you want to be eliminated by Miami or Indiana?
For as much of a lost cause as this year is for Chicago, the team still has maintained a lot more interest among fans than I would have suspected. A big part of it has to do with the remarkable play of Joakim Noah, who became the first center to record three triple-doubles involving assists (as opposed to the blocks that are typically the third double digit for big men) in a single season since David Robinson in 1993-94. He was also the first center to record 14 assists since 1986.
As eye-popping as those statistical notes are, a lot of the talk naturally drifts to what the team will be able to do in the off-season. And the biggest headlines Noah has made in recent weeks has had to do with him reportedly urging Carmelo Anthony during All-Star Weekend to come to Chicago next year. This, as always, is a very entertaining concept to imagine, but probably has no realistic chance of actually happening. That won't stop many of the die-hards who still believe the crack in the championship window can be yanked wide open with one move.
This is the first time I've posted a quarterly update for the Blackhawks in 2014, thanks to what many of use are hoping was the final interruption for the Olympics. While the 'Hawks were fortunate to have their 10 players return without injuries (teams like the Red Wings and the Islanders were not so lucky), Marián Hossa of course left last night's game early on with an upper-body injury a few nights after returning from Sochi. I won't waste too much time bitching and whining about the Olympics though, seeing as there's a little thing called the Trade Deadline approaching on Wednesday. While it basically goes unnoticed here in the States, it's essentially a national holiday in Canada. This year, there might be reason for Chicago to be active on that market if the team's serious about repeating as Stanley Cup winners.
Sure, the Blackhawks got a couple forwards from the Isles about a month ago in exchange for a fourth round pick. But I don't blame you for not being overly excited about either Pierre-Marc Bouchard or Peter Regin, seeing as I had to look up who they were when the trade was announced. It's a low-risk move, but probably low on rewards too. And so the refrain remains, as it has seemingly almost every year around this time, for the team to find a stronger second line center. This news isn't going to make that chorus much quieter, and neither will the recent move by the chief rivals in the Central to acquire Buffalo's star goalie, Ryan Miller. The playoffs indeed seem like a safe bet for Chicago, but there's good reason to have concern about how far this team's going to be able to go.
If there was ever a year to play it safe with Oscar picks, it might as well be this one. Besides the fact that a majority of observers all have the same winners anyway, I'm looking to reverse a continuing downward trend in my own accuracy. In any other year, I might have a couple categories in which I go with an underdog that I'm rooting for and believe has a realistic chance at an upset. This year? Not so much.
So when you consider how I've been calculating points here in my Oscar predictions (ranking them in descending order of confidence, 24 points for my top pick, 23 for my second-most confident pick, and so on), the ranking is about the only thing that might make my own picks any different from every other set you'll find elsewhere on the internet.
As always, the Best Picture race boils down to a longtime assumed front-runner attempting to hold off a late charging challenger—although this year, that challenger actually appears to be the big studio hit that might ordinarily be a heavy favorite in any other year. Still, the acting races and most technical categories appear to be all but sewn up. If nothing else, I'm sure Ellen Degeneres will be an improvement over last year's occasionally cringe-worthy host, Seth MacFarlane. I forgot that Ellen's done this before in 2007, the year that I did not post picks here and fell asleep before the final award was presented. I'm pretty confident I'll be able to stay awake throughout the broadcast this time around.
