Archive for the ‘nba’ Category

Under the Fedora: Goals, No Debate on this, Protesting the Geek Prom, Barr None, Redsox vs Miami Heat advantage Sox

Posted: April 27, 2024 by datechguy in baseball, culture, education, elections, media, nba, politics, Sports, under the fedora
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Other than the Professional activists who are being paid to upend universities I would be real money that the girls at the “Free Palestine” protests are there for status and self esteem and the guys are there in the hopes of getting laid.

In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if more than one guy at these “camps” are taking liberties that they shouldn’t and the ladies who are being taken advantage of are told not to talk about it, complain about it or report it for the sake of the cause.

I don’t care what Radio host he said it to does anyone really believe Joe Biden circa 2024 is going to take a stage opposite of Donald Trump?

Cripes they don’t even let him walk to the airplane or helicopter without being surrounded for fear of people seeing how fragile he is and you’re going to put him in front of Trump who will ask Biden before millions of eyes how heavily did they have to drug you up to get you to this podium?

If they thought Biden could stand up to Trump they wouldn’t have spent the last year trying to jail him.

The White House Correspondents dinner is going on as I type. The folks at the Lincoln Project are suggesting it’s going to be a big win for Biden. Given the hundreds of protestors outside making trouble, all leftists btw, I think this is another example of redefining words.

The real irony is just about all the journalists in their spend most of their time whitewashing the crimes both of Hamas and the protestors themselves, but every revolution eventually eats their own allies.

As you might have heard Bill Barr who did his level best to ignore and enable the steal of 2020 by inaction endorsed Donald Trump for 2024 on the grounds that whatever he might think of Trump, Joe Biden and the Democrats are an actual threat to freedom.

Trump being Trump accepted the endorsement listing all the names that he has called Barr and stated from now on the label “lethargic” will be removed from the list.

CNN hoped to pounce on this but Barr just laughed and when pressed listed all the ways that freedoms are being threatened by the Biden Administration rules that were not being done under Trump.

That’s how bad this administration has been, they’ve got Bill Barr doubling down on an endorsement of Trump.

Finally I was out with a devout young friend of mine who was once my boss. He was part of the layoff at my place but because he is a hard worker and very talented he quickly found another job at a better pay and has by that hard work advanced himself admirably.

We went to Buffalo Wild wins and caught the Celtics vs Heat game and the end of the Red Sox Cubs game while we were at it. As I watched the finish of the Redsox game which carried into the 2nd quarter of the Celtics playoff game I saw something I had never seen before.

The Celtics have a spectacular defense and put on a show during the first quarter of the game. How much of a show? It took the NBA’s Miami heat until 2-3 minutes into the 2nd quarter before they managed to outscore the Boston Red Sox who put up 17 against the Cubs today.

If the Celtics play this kind of defense during the rest of this playoff run I don’t see how any team beat them. Bill Russell would have been proud of them.

Five More Sports Thoughts Under the Fedora: Pete Rose must be Laughing his Ass off, The Best team that’s not ready for Prime Time, It’s why you actually play the games, NE who?, How DARE you be so White Straight & Good Ms Clark!

Posted: March 26, 2024 by datechguy in baseball, nba, nfl, nhl, Sports, under the fedora
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I’m sorry but I can’t be the only person in the world who can’t handle the irony of watching and listing to the folks of sports radio and talk all beating their breasts over the Ohtani story just before they reveal their bets sponsored by the official sports book of whatever sport they’re covering at the moment.

I think Pete Rose nailed it

I wonder if draft kings is the official site for Baseball fans to place a bet on how all this ends?

The coach of the Bruins has come out hard against his team’s laxity after a loss against Philly saying bluntly that they aren’t ready for the playoffs.

Mind you this is a Bruins team that is tied for the most points in the NHL, then again last year they had a record setting regular season only to lose their first round series in seven.

I must confess that it has reached the point that if they have a one goal lead or are tied with under two minutes to go I expect them to give up a goal.

I find it one of the oddest things I’ve ever seen in sports

Yesterday the Celtics put their 10 game winning streak on the line against an Atlanta Hawks team that had a dozen players injured and quickly built up a 30 point lead on the Hawk’s home court.

Then managed to squander that lead by the 4th quarter and lose a game that they were favored to win by 12. It’s why you actually play the games.

Now in fairness games like this are going to happen occasionally particularly after a long winning streak and when facing a team with absolutely nothing to lose, but it highlights the problem with sports gambling because ask yourself how many people who lost what seemed a really safe bet are asking themselves if the fix was in?

Am I the only person in the world who appreciates the irony of after letting Brady go and dumping Belichick the first move for the Pats at QB is to sign a guy who was drafted by Bill and Backed up Brady?

In fairness nobody seems to be talking about the Jacoby Brissette signing because they’ve been too busy commenting on a documentary that seems to be all about hitting Belichick.

It’s as if 2001-2018 never happened and the Krafts want to blame Bill for all that’s ever been wrong in the world even though he was the guy who drafted Brady, who kept four QB’s to keep him on the roster, who designated him as the backup and decided to go with him when Bledsoe had healed up. No Bill, no Brady.

But I understand the sports boys wanted to talk about the old stuff, because the new product is likely not going to be all that interesting to watch.

Finally there seems to be a lot of fuss coming about the impending coming of Caitlin Clark to the WNBA. Clark has been filling arenas all over the country and give the possibility that the WNBA team that has he and their opponents might actually draw enough fans to create a team that could be solvent without NBA subsidies.

It appears however that Clark might not be all that welcome as she is guilty of the twin crimes of being both white and straight in a league that is “98% gay” and the idea that she might draw a bunch straight white fans who might swamp the microscopic numbers that the league currently draws seems to horrify the league as well.

It will be interesting to see what she does to the TV numbers because if they shoot up enough the powers that be might decide to lay down the law to the league that currently only exists on the charity and guilt of others.

Finally off to a 7-2 start for my 1972 league. There is a long way to go but as long as Al Downing (0-2) doesn’t pitch ever day for me it’s looking good.

End of the Year Thoughts Under the Fedora: I’m Old Enough to Remember… Election Shenanigans, What If’s, Days gone by, I SWAT you SWAT they SWAT and two Ghosts of Basketball past

Posted: December 30, 2023 by datechguy in Always look at the bright side of Trump, Blame Trump, election 2020, election 2024, elections, nba, politics, Sports, Uncomfortable Truths
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I’m old enough to remember when, just a few years ago, our friends in the left absolutely and positively insisted that anyone like me who claims the last election was stolen was some kind of conspiracy theorist? And yet now we have not only the story of Colorado by legal decision and Maine by practically a Royal Fiat banning Trump from the ballot.

At the same time and with none of the fanfare of those events we have the republican AG of Georgia who was vital in the cases against Trump suddenly appealing a ruling that he has to testify under oath about the Dominion voting systems that he apparently is going to have an updated security patch install for AFTER the next presidential election.

If things are clean wouldn’t you want to make it a point to note under oath just how clean they are?

I still can’t get over the idea of how much would have been different if the left/democrats simply treated Donald Trump as a normal Presidential candidate and as a normal president and had not bothered all that was done in 2020.

He would be in the final year of his second term and riding off into the sunset. Russia would not be in Ukraine, Hamas would have been kept in check, the US economy would have been booming, the border secure and our strategic petroleum reserve still full

I strongly suspect those who did all they could to steal the last election consider those things as bugs rather than features, less opportunity for graft you see.

Older and wiser heads alas didn’t prevail

Speaking of being old enough to remember I was going through an old backup hard drive I found which had all sorts of goodies from 2015 from me guest hosing Conservatively speaking on WCRN to old podcasts and coverage of all kinds of stuff from all over the country.

One thing I noticed was from a GOP event in NH that included Donald Trump before he had announced. He was leaving the hotel where the potential candidates were and I filmed his departure in passing thinking nothing of it.

Not a single person had a clue what was coming at the time.

I’m also old enough to remember when Swatting was confined to folks like Stacy McCain and the like. 

You might forget that during the Kimberlin years Stacy and others involved in exposing that crowd were swatted. At the time I even went to my local police to warn them of that tactic since I was writing on the subject at the time. People didn’t seem to take it all that seriously.

But now we have members of congress and prominent folks like Johnathan Turley now targets

It would have been nice if this stuff was nipped in the bud early but like the banning of conservatives on twitter and youtube it wasn’t considered important enough to tackle so thus you get more of it

Finally yesterday my wife was working and my sons were engaged elsewhere so I went to my local Longhorn restaurant, sat at the bar, order the Spicy Bites (the single best appetizer value/taste combo that exists at any national chain) opened up Volume 3 of Shelby Foote’s epic Civil War trilogy to Hood defeat at Nashville by Thomas and watched the Boston Celtics play the Toronto Raptors at home.

It was the 2nd day of a back to back and stars Jason Tatum and Kristas Porzingis were not dressed and vet Al Horford were all unavailable so we saw a lot of reserves getting serious playing time. It was an exciting game with an odd finish where the Celtics blew a 20 point lead and had to eek out a win that wasn’t decided till the final second of the game, but two things jumped out at me that I hadn’t seen much of if at all in years

At one point in the 2nd quarter when the Celtics lead was seemingly comfortable I looked up at the screen and was shocked to see an NBA team with practically an all white team on the floor, technically you could call it an all “white” five because the only player of color on the floor was ironically Derrick White (who has really come into his own this season) who frankly is light enough to as they used to say in the old days “pass”.

I suspect it’s been more than half a century since that has been the case but there was something that was even more shocking to me that NBA fans haven’t seen much of these days and that was the play of Center Luke Kornet who instead of launching 3 point shots from the outside was actually hustling to be under the basket to retrieve rebounds and be in a position to be fed for easy layups by a charging White or Brown.

Just a decade or two ago a center playing, well like a Center would not be much of a story but in today’s game it’s practically headline news. I’d like to see more of it because in the end, that tends to pay off.

Note: Our days of Christmas fundraiser is in progress although in fairness it’s been a bit of a bust as we’re still at $2900 & 10 subscribers to go. If you’d like to help change that read more here or donate below:

Under the Fedora: Mysterious Ways, Mea Culpa (but not maximum), Cost Benefit, Rotate, Rotate Rotate, Too Little Too Late (at least for me)

Posted: November 4, 2023 by datechguy in baseball, dynasty baseball, gaming, nba, nfl, nhl, online gaming, Sports, under the fedora
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I apologize, I had previously stated that I’d give you the lyrics of my parody song “Don’t Mess With God” (sung to the tune of “Don’t Bring Me Down”) if the Catholic Hating Dodgers got bounced from the playoffs quickly but I think the time has passed.

I will however note that the Texas Rangers who won their first ever world series against a gritty Arizona Diamondbacks team four games to one were not just the only MLB team not to have a “Pride Night” (meaning gay pride) in their stadium, but did not lose a game in the playoffs in any MLB park that hosted one.

The only sad thing, the great Frank Howard didn’t live to see them win.

You might recall I hit the Celtics hard for their trade of Marcus Smart noting that on a team devoid of balls he had the most.

Well the Celtics who got rid of Smart and both Williams and Brogdon and replaced them with Kristaps Porzingas and Jrue Holiday have yet to lose a game in four tries while the teams involved in these trades are a combined 4-13 with the Memphis Grizzlies who got Smart yet to win one in six tries.

So I guess a mea culpa is in order but I’ll hold off the mea maxima culpa for now because Porzingas has a long history of injuries and we’re just under 5% into the season.

If he plays in 95% of the games then we’ll go to the max.

The Patriots made no moves at the trade deadline and while that doesn’t sit well with a lot of the Boston media I’m fine with it for a few reasons:

  1. There was not going to be a lot of interest in middling players beyond a 7th rounder at best
  2. There is no point in trading people who are good enough to build around for draft picks that may or may not produce an NFL player. The cost benefit just isn’t there.
  3. While everyone is drooling over the chance to get the top pick in the draft in the end since a full 20% of super bowls were won by QB’s taken in the first round it’s also true that a full 20% of Superbowls have been won by players picked at 199 (Tom Brady) or later (Bart Starr pick 200) (Brad Johnson 227)

The bottom line is that while a stud is a grand thing to have you still have to develop a QB. I think it’s better to get a team to win some games, even against bad competition than to tank for a first round pick. After all most teams who play the tank game are still losing big.

Instead of insisting on the return of the Brady era which isn’t happening lets remember and celebrate that we had that abnormal time to win and let Bill develop players as best he can.

The Boston Bruins have yet to lose in their first 10 games this season and seem even better than last year (19 out of a possible 20 points so far) despite the two major retirements in the off season. The difference seems to be the defense that has allowed only a single power play goal against them and of course the excellent goaltending of their pair of Ullmark and Swayman.

Many have suggested they should have traded one I disagree. Having both of them is the best insurance policy that a team can have against a single injury derailing a season as both are #1 goalies on any team in the league.

I would however suggest that whatever rotation you are using in the regular season be applied to the playoffs. The failure to do so last year after a record breaking regular season in my opinion contributed to their 1st round playoff defeat.

Finally in my two primary Dynasty Leagues the disappointment continues. While I was able to play spoiler to the White Sox playoff hopes in the final series of the year I tanked against Florida finishing 2 games out in a league that has no wild cards.

Meanwhile in the 1971 league my team that has traded off most of it’s stars for draft picks and prospects have won 5 of their last 6 but with only 35 games to go 9 games is just too much to make up in the race for the final wild card, even if I didn’t have two teams ahead of me to pass.

However there is movement in the NL as the Phillies who had a ten game lead for the final wildcard spot have gone 1-9 in their last ten letting the Cards pick up 4 games while playing .500 ball at the same time.

St. Louis is now only 6 games out with nobody to pass and still has three games against the Phillies coming up before the end.

On the down side the Cardinals next 12 games are against teams with winning percentages of .654, ,604 .535 and .708.

If they are going to come back they’ll have to earn it.

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