Record of the 100+ win teams in the playoffs: 1-9.
Edit: add in the next two highest-win teams, Rays and Brew Crew, who had 92 and 97 wins respectively.............and it's 1-13. First time in history none of the top 5-wins teams make the Championship Serieses.
** I thought there was an NBA thread out there somewhere, but I can't find it. This will do**
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I have followed the Golden State Warriors with interest over the past decade. They have a highly talented talented, are well coached, and showed amazing resilience on their way the multiple championships.
Right now, Draymond Green has become a liability, and he must go. He cost the Warriors a championship in 2016 by getting ejected and suspended in the NBA Finals against Cleveland. Last season was a mess because he sucker-punched one of their top young players in the pre-season; the chemistry of the team never recovered. He is getting worse. The Warriors are struggling, and he pulls this:
https://www.espn.com/video/clip?id=39102268
Get him out. Trade him. Release him. Cut him. Whatever. What a poisonous clown.
I've also followed the Warriors since the days of Barry. There is a fine line between being an inspiration and being a distraction. He's definitely showing no signs of using that behavior selectively. Being a loose cannon is not really a HOF attribute, but how do you stifle a factor that drives one's purpose? Better yet, how do you harness beast mode, where primal instincts take over. I'm hoping being a dirty player will not be his legacy.
He received an indefinite suspension, not unlike Ja's last season.
Some pretty amazing records and superlatives in this game:
The Pistons lost to the Celtics Thursday night, in OT, their 28th in a row. After leading by 19 at the half. Tonight..............they'll go against the Raptors, trying to avoid the ignominy of equaling the (NFL) Chicago Cardinals' (before they moved to St. Louis) record of 29, as the longest losing stretch of *any* (American) major sports franchise.
Tampa Bay's record still holds a special place in my thoughts. Detroit is giving a new meaning to Bad Boys.
But.................Pistons win:
https://sports.yahoo.com/detroit-pistons-end-historic-28-031425411
Purdue just scored *24* points in the (5-minute) OT period to win over Northwestern.
I'm not so good at math, but wow! That's a pace of 230 for regulation NBA game...even 192 for college...
I learned today, that in the Purdue-Northwestern game I posted above...............Purdue shot 46 FTs vs. only 8 for Northwestern. Northwestern's coach, Chris Collins, got ejected with 1.7 seconds left after going out onto the court to complain. Just reporting; not editorializing.
I watched the game live on the tube, and you are correct in your reporting. The Big Ten is notorious for home cooking by the refs (the game was played in West Lafayette), but this was one of the biggest disparities ever.
The Purdue center, Edy, is massive and dominant. But he cannot shoot free throws very well. All three Northwestern centers fouled out through intentionally pounding him to keep him out of the paint and on the line. When the last of their centers fouled out, Edy went crazy in scoring. That was part of the scoring bonanza in the OT period.
Collins lost his mind with frustration over a non-call on the baseline with seconds left in the game. There was a normal foul on that play (Purdue was in the double bonus), and the two technicals on the coach put the Boilers on the line for six straight foul shots. I recall that they made them all.
Add the technicals to Edy's shots from all the intentional fouls, and the disparity grew.
The Cavs' Dean Wade outscored the Celtics all by himself in the fourth tonight, 20-17, to bring his team from way down to the win.
Pepperdine is up 58-9 (not a typo) on Pacific at HALFTIME in the first round of the WCC tournament.
(Both teams had previously already fired their coaches.)
[Edit/update -- Waves take it 102-43.]
MLB's oldest player 'definitely interested' in returning to Red Sox for fourth stint
Watching Rich Hill get pissed off while pitching is often even more enjoyable than watching that pissy head coach of men's b-ball in IA go ballistic when his team performs poorly (which is regularly).
Memo to young baseballers: NOTE HOW OLD A LHP CAN BE AND *YET* RAKE IN THE LEAGUE MINIMUM ($500K/year).
Iowa St. *crushed* #1 Houston in the Big 12 final today, 69-41. Yowzer. That 41 points is the fewest scored by a current #1 team since 1982. Yowzer. Further............that 28-pt. loss margin is the largest by a #1 team since.................UCLA, led by you-know-who, throttled Houston, led by the *other* you-know-who, in the 1968 national semifinal - in a rematch of their "Game of the Century" a couple of months earlier in the Astrodome. That's some yowzer stuff right there.
It's an interesting and curious result. But, four of the top five contenders for #1 seeds in the NCAA tournament lost in their conference tournaments. Only UConn won. The format of playing three to five basketball games on consecutive days is only seen only in the conference tournaments. I cannot imagine the fatigue of those teams.
Regardless, we've not seen a thrashing like the one Houston took.
In that same vein...........#10 seed NC St. won the ACC tournament, overcoming 100-1 odds to beat #1 seed UNC (one of those referenced by Buzz above), by winning those 5 games in 5 days - a first ever in the ACC - and the first time any team has done that in any (major, at least) conference since UConn did it in 2011. Curiouser still...............the Wolfpack entered the ACC tournament on a 4-game losing streak!
Ahhhh............the Madness in March!!
5 finishers in this year's Barkley Marathons.
1 of them the first female to ever finish
The story of the female finisher:
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-68643341
A previous (also amazing) accomplishment of hers:
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-46906365
And a bit more background on the latter:
Kim Mulkey, head coach of LSU's women's basketball, took four minutes on Saturday to alert the world that a "hit piece" was being written about her by a "sleazy reporter" from the Washington Post. Mulkey claims that WaPo writer Ken Babb had given her a short deadline to respond to 7 questions before the story goes to press. Mulkey threatened to sue the WaPo if an "untruthful" story was published about her.
After LSU's win on Sunday, a reporter asked Mulkey if her Saturday announcement was a distraction to the team. Mulkey again took off, stating that her team had to learn about the situation "on the internet" (where all the best secrets are kept) and that she would "not allow my team to be distracted by a sleazy reporter."
Mulkey's tone and passing acquaintance with reality is right at home in today's world where angry, public` declarations are filled with sound bites and easily disproved misstatements. In Mulkey's case, she volunteered the 4-minute announcement, so the distractions belong only to her. The "sleazy reporter" has received multiple national awards for his writing. Babb has been requesting an interview with Mulkey for two years; the request to provide answers to a few questions was a last ditch effort to allow Mulkey to provide her side of it.
Putting together a negative tale of Kim Mulkey could be done by simply quoting Mulkey from televised interviews. Not that Mulkey will ever have to worry about achieving some level of self-awareness; she just wants to control the narrative.
Hope somebody does some stats on how remarkable a 30-0 run in the NCAA tournament is. Gotta be something like 5-6+ standard deviations. 🤯🤯🤯. Heck may be beyond that!
The 1936 Olympics are quite noteworthy, as we all know. But do we all know the story of the very first basketball competition therein? I think we do not. Very mild profanity:
https://www.sbnation.com/secret-base/22152562/usa-olympic-basketball-gold-medal-berlin-1936
A retrospective, of sorts, of the female finisher's Barkley:
New discus record. Looks like that body was sculpted to do just what it does:
https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/15/sport/mykolas-alekna-discus-thrower-world-record-spt-intl/index.html
And now a new pole vault record - again:
Armand Duplantis breaks pole vault world record for 8th time (msn.com)
We must be reaching the point where the pole vault record can't go much higher, right? Like, the pole they use isn't going to be changing its length, so I wonder what the theoretical limit is? 🤔
Newer technology may change the flex points, etc., of the poles. And guys are getting stronger and faster (together), so I don't know......... And you know the 'game' - keep setting new records by a cm, so that you can set the record many times. The old Soviet trick.
Oh, I totally get that, and he's just doing what Bubka did before him, I'm just saying that the theoretical limit must be closer than some other disciplines. You could see the throwing events being extended for quite some time due to the aforementioned improvements in athletes' strength, but as the pole stays the same length, there's only so high you can go, regardless of how flexible it might be. Unless humans start increasing their average height to 8 feet tall, or something...
Is there a limit to the length of the pole? I don’t think so.
Well, I'm not really disagreeing with you (Uberman) - but we both know that the theoretical limits of the times in all sorts of races, be they track or swimming, or whatever, have been shown to be illusory. And I'm not sure where the limit could be. Will someone ever run a 2- minute mile? A 3-minute mile? Not anytime soon that can be imagined. But history has shown that supposed limits aren't really that. Can someone ever vault 10m? I'm not gonna say 'never', but it won't be in my lifetime. I guess the bottom line, for me, is "Who knows?".
Beamon and Secretariat have shown that records can not only be broken - but smashed on rare occasions.
Like some mid-21st century pole-vaulter born ~today when ~20yrs old with weight ~60kg height ~205cm vertical leaping skills ~150cm...maybe?
Nickname: *Grasshopper*
New ski jump world record, with a humongous asterisk:
https://m.youtube.com/shorts/AsrP4ji_Dtw
No word yet on mrbuck's distance. Not even sure he participated, as he generally is asterisk-averse.
No asterisk necessary. It doesn't meet standards.
That gootube link was from one of those click bait(-ish) sites, that had a pretty good article detailing why it wasn't a record, so of course I knew that, and didn't realize until I saw your comment that the gootube video didn't 'splain all that. My bad - I guess?... But that further highlights that the lack of a good mansplainer around here is just getting to be more and more of a problem.
Edit/update: