From the Cut archives: 1993 NBA Playoffs

Once in awhile, BabyJ and I like to put on the Rubber Soul, have a few adult beverages, and flip through our archives.

On our most recent journey, we found this amazing post in which Tooch correctly predicted the NBA Playoffs back in 1993.

Enjoy.

What’s up, dudes?

My name is Tooch and I’m a contributor here to the newest development in computer technology, The FynalCut.

I was just hanging out in my pad the other day, blastin’ some Spin Doctors and sippin’ on some Crystal Pepsi when BabyJ and FynalCut dropped me a line to ask if I would preview this year’s NBA Playoffs for you 25 people with PCs.

I was totally floored. Since mostly I just sit around and play “NBA Jam: Arcade Edition” right now, I thought it was only fitting and statistically accurate way to preview this year’s playoffs.

 

For starters, here’s a quick rundown of what teams to look out for in this year’s race. Coming out of the Western Conference, you’ve got the No. 1 seed Phoenix Suns, with Charles Barkley and Dan Majerle.

The Suns will face off against the No. 8 seed Lakers in the first round and the tandem of James Worthy and Vlade Divac. Phoenix should easily cruise through the Western Conference and are my lock for this year’s Finals. A few other teams to keep an eye out for in the West though will be the Spurs (Sean Elliot and David Robinson), the Rockets (Hakeem Olajuwon and Vernon Maxwell) and the surprising Seattle Supersonics, featuring Shawn Kemp and Benoit Benjamin. The Spurs and Rockets should provide the lone competition for the Suns, while the Gary Payton-less Sonics will falter in the end.

Jumping over to the East now, let’s start with the obvious front-runner, the Chicago Bulls. The Bulls, much like the Suns, will be completely untested throughout the playoffs and coast to the NBA Finals. Their lone hint of competition will come from the No. 1 seed New York Knicks and the dynamic duo of Patrick Ewing and Charles Oakley. Also making some noise in the East will be the Cleveland Cavs (Brad Daugherty - is it just me, or does this guy look like a NASCAR announcer - and Mark Price) and the Charlotte Hornets (Kendall Gill and Larry Johnson).

 

In the end, I smell a repeat this year…no wait, a three-peat (I should put that on t-shirts or something). The Bulls are going all the way, baby – and there’s no way that anybody can stop this year’s league MVP. This man can fly through the air, grab a rebound and bound to the other end of the court for the most excellent helicopter dunk you’ll ever see…without even touching the ground. That’s right; Horace Grant is truly a force to be reckoned with.

 

You’ve seen “Jurassic Park” by now, right? I mean, well – shaa – of course you have. Who hasn’t? Think of Horace as that radical little spitting dinosaur that sneaks up on the fat guy and nails him in the face. That’s what Horace can do to you man, no joke. And he won’t lend you his goggles to prevent that shit from blinding you either.

(Hopefully, you’ve realized a couple things by now. The FynalCut, let alone the Internet, was not around in 1993. Tooch was just a young, mustached baby. And Larry Johnson could BOOMSHAKALAKA all day long. Anyway, stay tuned for tomorrow, we drop the preview of this year’s NBA Playoffs.)

 

 

 

Fynally, Four

As anyone with two eyes who’s been outside in the past week knows, a champion will be crowned among UCLA, North Carolina, Memphis and Kansas.

In our Fynal Four Bracket Challenge, things at the top of the pile are a bit more murky.

A human held the early lead as Brittany - an old friend of the Cut - jumped out to a quick start. Despite her dominate first round, Brittany has since been replaced at the top by the Pomeroy Rankings - predictor of six Elite Eight teams.

Along the road, PR’s major slip-ups were picking Davidson to lose in the first round and having confidence (can stats have confidence?) in Duke - enough to justify an Elite Eight run. In the East and South regionals, Pomeroy was wrong just twice.

But although things are tight at the top, each entrant in our top 3 has a different champion. Pomeroy has Kansas winning the whole thing, Brittany (just four points behind) chose UCLA and in a three-way tie for third, ESPN’s Fanation, the Sagarin Rankings and RPI, all have North Carolina.

You may have noticed, it’s pretty machine dominated among the heavy hitters.

Other than all the binary code flying about, CBS’s Stewart Mandel and our very own BabyJ round out the top seven.

Everything is set for a fantastic finish. Can the humans take back the lead? After all, these computers haven’t even SEEN a college basketball game this season.

Stay tuned, it could get interesting…

Birds of a feather

Not that it’s a rule or anything, but typically you won’t see much NBA coverage around these parts.

Yours truly should probably be the focus of some pre-pubescent sports/sociology experiment, but somewhere between late summer nights cursing Karl Malone and highlowlights of Ricky Davis purposefully missing a bunny to ensure a triple-double, interest was lost.

A former Indiana Pacers fan, I’ve felt abandoned by the pro game for years. I don’t give two shits if Joakim Noah fits in well in Chicago. Shaq traded to the Suns? Wake me when the playoffs start (and the Suns are ousted in round 2nd).

One recurring NBA issue has captured my attention of late though - the ire that Isaiah Thomas has drawn.

It’s not that I disagree with the criticism Thomas receives, he seems most certainly to be a sub-par coach and an even worse head of basketball operations. It’s just that I’ve come accustomed to such travesty over the past 5 years - but in my own backyard.

Here in the heartland, we have Indiana’s own Larry Bird to do a much more spectacular job of running the hometown franchise into the ground.

In the honeymoon period, when all Hoosiers were googley-eyed just to see Larry Legend back in the public eye, he had a pretty successful run as head coach of the team. Bird was even named Clipboard Holder of the Year at the end of the 1998 season.

But the buttery kernels soon popped. When he was named GM in 2003, Larry took over a team that was in its prime. Fresh off an NBA Finals appearance in 2000 and a couple of Eastern Conference runner-ups, the team took a nosedive. And despite all the struggles, throughout it all, one turtle-necked man keeps lurking in the empty seats of Conseco Fieldhouse.

A recap of the last half-decade of disaster:

2003: After signing Jermaine O’Neal to an NBA-maximum contract (great idea, in retrospect), the Pacers trade All-Star center Brad Miller to Sacramento for Scot Pollard - who hides any ability under a ridiculously flamboyant exterior and a name spelled with just one “t”.

2004-05: Small forward Al Harrington, tired of observing scenery in central Indiana, demands to start or be traded. Bird makes the wise (and community-oriented) decision to trade Harrington to Golden State for upstanding citizen Stephen Jackson. Note: This season also contained somewhat of a skirmish this season in Detroit. Perhaps Larry knew what a great right hook Jackson had. Also of note, after the brawl, the team plummeted out of contention.

Early results…Girls rule

We’re pretty well into our Fynal Four Bracket Challenge, and results are starting to take shape.

So far, one of our female contestants - Brittney - is firmly in the lead.

With 24 games complete, she picked an astounding 23 correctly…only San Diego’s upset of UConn threw her off.

BabyJ is in second with 20 games picked correctly, but after that it gets murky.

When the picks of FanNation are tied for third, you know it’s still early.

Anyway folks, I’ll be live-blogging the Indiana-Arkansas game over at si.com tonight, so come harrass me if you’ve got the time.

More results to come…

Like Christmas Eve

It’s almost here.

The best four-day weekend since BabyJ faked that STD to get out of his job at Subway and we hitch-hiked to that poncho festival in Montana.

But that’s another story for another time.

We’ve got exciting things brewing in these parts. Our Fynal Four Bracket Challenge is filling up.

Over the next few days, after each round, we’re going to hit you fine folks up with breakdowns of how our test subjects fared.

And boy do we have test subjects.

We’ve got brackets from bloggers representing Web favorites such as Awful Announcing and Storming the Floor.

We’ve got one from former Indiana Hoosier and current NBA-D League player Rod Wilmont.

We’ve also got former Georgetown Hoya, NBA Champion and current D-League coach Jaren Jackson.

We have brackets picked by Sagarin, Pomeroy and RPI rankings, brackets picked by girls (you heard that right) and even some from the casual fans. Not to mention your classic “mascots” and “Places I’ve been or where I know people” methods.

To top it all off, we’ve thrown in the sheets from the good folks at si.com, a few folks from CBS (including Greg Doyel’s chin fuzz) and the only ESPN personalities with enough brass to reveal their picks before the tourney starts: Joe Lunardi, Bill Simmons and Bill Simmon’s wife.

So, it could be said, we have a lot of brackets.

Will the girls outpick the guys? Will the player outpick the coach? Will the bloggers outpick the mainstream media?

You’ll have to stay tuned, your first round recap will be here shortly.

Is that a bracket in your pants or are just excited for March?

Like the good people at Sports Illustrated said, “Let the Madness Begin.”

Here at the Cut, we’re going to have some excellent coverage coming up this week:

Yours truly will be live-blogging a few of the first- and second-round games over at the aforementioned si.com, we’ve got a massive bracket experiment going down (see below) and if you behave, BabyJ might even drop some printable bracket knowledge on yas.

It’s going to be a fun week, so stay tuned.

In the meantime, if you want to be a part of FynalCut lore (BabyJ and I will probably remember your name), follow the link below and fill out a bracket.

The results are going to be part of quite the in-depth investigation we’ll have throughout the tournament as to who knows their shit, and who is full of it.

Let the best week in sports…begin!

Head here to fill out a bracket. The password is “tourneytime”.

And the blogger is…

You may have noticed, it’s been pretty popular lately for bloggers to “come out of the closet,” if you will.

Not to declare their homosexuality (usually), but rather, just to reveal their “real world” identities.

This started when the hilarious and, come to find out, hilariously successful fellas behind firejoemorgan.com revealed themselves as accomplished television writers for hit shows.

Today, SI.com’s Richard Deitsch broke the story of the man behind thebiglead.com. And you’ll never guess who he is!!

Well, he’s a 30-year-old freelancer who lives in Brooklyn. Maybe you could have guessed that one.

But besides keeping Deitsch employed with once-a-month columns, what is the purpose of these revelations?

In the first example, I can see none. You are already rich, famous writers who party with beautiful women. You probably even type on Macs. Why don’t you leave some of the glory for the rest of us, FJM?

The second case is a little more understandable. If I was a struggling freelancer (wait a minute…), I would probably want my name all over the Web. It would probably bring a greater chance of getting hired. No shame in that. In fact, if I were behind The Big Lead, I would probably celebrate the good work I had done openly.

But the question is, as a reader of these sites, why do I care who’s behind them?

Access denied!

The woman furthest to the right in this photo is Sarah Pavan.

She plays volleyball for the University of Nebraska. Well, she did. And was ridiculously good.

So good in fact, she was is the most decorated female athlete in the school’s history. And she had a 4.0 in biochemistry. In other words, your typical jock.

Long story short, Pavan gave an interview with a local Nebraska magazine in which some revealing personal feelings were brought to light:

They judge only what they see from the stands. They don’t understand I don’t like the phony smiles and the phony hugs and the phony high-fives after every point. Four years now and my teammates, the people I thought knew me, don’t understand that I despise the constant attention. And the coaches – they don’t understand what it takes to nail a 4.0 in biochemistry, let alone how much it means to me. Really, it doesn’t seem to matter what I say or what I do anymore because no one truly understands me.

Wow. That’s a hell of an interview. Kudos to the reporter, right?

The coach - and some of Pavan’s teammates - didn’t think so, and started complaining publicly. Eventually, Pavan was banned from practice (even though her career was already done). After some public outcry, the all-wise coach said Pavan could return to practice if she apologized. No go.

As you can imagine, this issue garnered a lot of press - especially for Husker volleyball. The coach didn’t handle it so well:

If you don’t stop doing it(reporting), Cook said, I’m going to call over to the journalism college and get this straightened out.

Watch out, journalism college, he will call and get this straightened out! Oh no he didunt!

The media relations department had even more threats for college reporters:

Shamus McKnight, NU’s volleyball sports information director, asked to know if there would be another story, what it would be about and who would be contacted.

Usually I know ahead of time who is going to be interviewed, so I can prepare them, McKnight said.

And anyone who’s ever written a college newspaper story about volleyball (check), or softball (check) or lacrosse (thank God no check) knows that college athletes already have so much to say.

This is an awful precedent. Reporting on college athletics is tough enough as it is. Stories are becoming increasingly hard to find because of privacy policies and limited access to the players.

The story about Pavan was well-written, it was insightful, and it uncovered a potential problem in college sports.

And as soon as there is a hint of controversy or negative coverage reflected on the team, the SIDs decide to cut back the already limited access they provide.

You could argue that this is the job of the SIDs, to protect the players. But it’s seriously getting out of control.

If I ran a publication around Lincoln, and the SIDs insisted on “prepping” players before any interviews (especially reviewing the questions), I would simply not have a reporter cover that sport.

One thing is for sure - Nebraska women’s volleyball needs the media a lot more than the media needs them.

Oh, and Pavan? She signed a contract to play professionally in Italy. Looks like someone got the last laugh.

The Big Ten isn’t as bad as you think

There’s been a lot of talk this season about what a “down” year the Big Ten is having.

Despite not having any idea what criteria possibly come together to form a “down” season, I can assure you the tag is ridiculous.

The first point that should be raised in such an argument is that the Big Ten is rebuilding this year. Although not “powers” in the conference, Michigan, Iowa and Minnesota all have new coaches.

And, all things considered, that trio has been fairly competitive this season. (The Golden Gophers are 7-7 in conference play, Michigan and Iowa each have 5 Big Ten wins)

Secondly, there are four teams from the Big Ten in the top 20. Four locks for the NCAA tournament. None of which will be seeded lower than about a 5-seed.

Name another conference that has four locks. Big XII? Nope. ACC? Nada. SEC? You get the point. Only the 1,403-team Big East will have at least four schools in the Dance.

You may argue that some of the other conferences are tougher top to bottom, but does any conference have as good of a shot at being as well represented in the Sweet Sixteen as the Big Ten?

(No, was the word you were looking for.)

It would seem the main reason the media has been down on the Te(leven)n is that Purdue is having quite the year and Ohio State is mediocre. Besides that, has anything really changed in ‘08?

Iowa has always been a semi-serious contender (We still hate you, Luke Recker).

Penn State has always had a couple good conference wins a year.

Northwestern has always sucked (whew, by the way).

So, what is different this year? The way I look at it, the four teams atop the conference standings are each as tough as the other.

It’s true some of the power teams in other conferences have endured tougher non-conference schedules than the top teams in the Big Ten, but that’s what the tournament is for.

All I’m sayin’ is, don’t be surprised if come March, the Big Ten tournament could be a hell of a lot more fun to watch than any of the others.

Meet and greet etiquette

So the other night, while laying in bed half-dying from this lung flu the devil spawned, a friend texted to say Joakim Noah was standing in front of him at the Miami airport, ordering a sandwich.

My first thought, besides “that would make a great t-shirt” was of course, “did you talk to him?”

yeah, actually. he stuffed a bunch of money — like $10 — in a jar for some kids charity. then i said ‘whoa’ he laughed a bit, then he dropped his sunglasses, and i picked them up and he said thanks.

When I (half-jokingly) said, “too bad you didn’t get a picture,” my friend’s response semi surprised me.

“Meh,” he said.

Despite his muppet dialect, the indifference in my pal’s voice font was clear. Meeting an athlete/celebrity ain’t what it used to be.  And unless you’re 8, you probably don’t want to ask for an autograph.

So how should you handle running into someone who could probably pay you to go away? (Other than picking up their sunglasses)

No. 1 - There are only a few reasons you should request (or just take) a photo. One, you witness this married celebrity touching a co-ed inappropriately and/or doing something outrageous/stupid/hilarious (cough, Mark Cuban, cough). EXCEPTION: If this happens more than three times a week, it is not unique, and no one cares (cough, Mark Cuban, cough). Two, you lie constantly, and your friends will never believe that you saw Keith Hernandez at Red Lobster.

No. 2 - Do not, under any circumstances, ask for an autograph UNLESS a.) it will be worth more than $1,000 USD on eBay, b.) the celebrity is your all-time favorite player, or c.) you have your child or a small person you could pretend to care for in your possession at the time.