Posts Tagged ‘celtics’

Sports Under the Fedora: A Must win for Who, Who lets the Goalies Out?, Loaded DL No problem, Who was that 6th Round QB the Pats Pickup up and the Good times are rolling for my 1972 & 1997 Dynasty teams & 2023 looks promising too

Posted: April 29, 2024 by datechguy in baseball, gaming, nba, nfl, nhl, online gaming, Sable Baseball, Sports
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Tonight is game three of the series between the Boston Celtics and the Miami Heat which is a rematch of the Eastern Conference Final.

The Celtics were widely expected to sweep but after an embarrassing loss at home in game 2 they shut down the depleted heat in a defensive clinic that was a sight to behold. One might thing this would make tonight’s game a must win for Miami but I’m thinking it’s a must win for Boston.

On paper these two teams aren’t on the same planet but the Heat are one of the best coached teams in the game and have a never say die attitude. If they manage to steal game 4 at home all those old questions about the Celtics heart will return and it will mean that the Celtics will need to win at least one more at home where the Heat dominated them last year in the playoffs.

As they say, that’s why they play the games.

Speaking of playing the game the Boston Bruins are in almost every measurable sense worse than last year. Last year they set a record for regular season points, this year they finished 2nd in their division two Bruins greats retired.

Yet they now have a 3-1 advantage going into game 5 on Tuesday.

It would be quite an irony if their lesser team made the greater run this season. The real question however is will they return to their rotation at Goalie or will Swayman who has played in all of Boston’s wins get the call and Ullmark who lost game 2 remain on bench?

The media have a whole day to discuss it.

To say this young Boston Red Sox team has been a surprise is a understatement and a half

Despite trouble vs a good Cleveland team they managed to not only sweep a decent Pirates team in Pittsburgh but take two of three from a first place Cubs team even going so far as to put a 17-0 drubbing on them.

And this from a team whose disabled list is a who’s who of their opening day roster.

The young kids have delivered and now sit in 3rd place just 3 out of first and a 1/2 game behind in the wild card. All without spending tens of millions on free agents

Off in St. Louis I suspect Chaim Bloom is watching the team he built win and smiling.

There is a ton of talk about the Patriots drafting Drake May with the 3rd pick of the draft, and a lot will be written about him, but did you know the Pats picked up a second QB in round 6?

New England picked up QB Joe Milton III from Tennessee with the 193rd pick of the draft which they picked up from the Jaguars.

Jordan Schultz says this about the pick:

Milton checks in at an impressive 6-5, 235 pounds with an incredibly strong arm. Big time sleeper for me in this draft.

It may be insurance with their current crop of QB (except May) all free agents after this year, he may be converted to another position by the time he hits the field but historically New England has had a lot of luck with 6th round quarterbacks who had six or more QB’s picked ahead of him.

Finally my Dynasty face to face league opens up this weekend.

I should be more excited by this team. I have both Othani & Acuna Jr and more importantly an infield of Christian Walker, Jose Altuve, Francisco Lindor and Jose Ramirez not only all returning from last season but all with A ratings for durability meaning that none can be injured for more than 3 games at a shot.

Yet for some reason I’m ambivalent about them.

I have no such qualms about my online squads. My 1997 Reds who just missed a playoff spot last year are running wild on the bases, which is to be expected on a team with Rickey Henderson and Lance Johnson in the outfield and despite Wade Boggs spending three series on the DL are tied for 1st place.

Meanwhile in 1972 my judicious trades for both draft picks and prospects has paid off big. Doug Rader my 1st pick in round one may have been my third choice to fill my 3B slot but he leads the team in HR & RBI and is fielding up a storm. Much to my shock my late first round picks turned into last year’s Cy Young winner Don Wilson (15th pick) and Blue Moon Odem (18th pick) and together with Ken Holtzman, Al Downing and Mike Torrez who retuned from last year have been putting up numbers to be proud of. Meanwhile Ken Berry is catching anything near him in center with 2nd year man Caesar Geronimo doing the same in right while Pete Rose is hitting anything that comes near him and old friend Ron Fairly his playing like there is someone out to take his job (Mike Jorgenson). All that adds up to first place.

A seven game lead with 123 games to go doesn’t mean a lot but it beats trailing the pack.

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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