Friday, November 27, 2015

Who's Going to Stop Them Now?

The Golden State Warriors have won 16 in a row to start the season. Breaking the record of 15 straight wins with their laugher win against the Los Angeles Lakers when they won by 34. The best chances for the Warriors to lose came when they were losing against the Clippers by as much as 21 and when the Bulls went toe to toe against the Warriors in a hard nose fought game which came down to the last few minutes. Looking at the schedule I don't see a challenge to their streak, but on any given night in the Association anything can happen, and considering the Warriors are mostly a jump shooting team they can have off nights which shooting teams tend to have. Not every team can shoot as well as the Warriors have been on a consistent basis.

In the game against the Los Angeles Clippers that 21 point deficit felt like it was really single digits. In a quick run the Warriors had the deficit down to 10 and next thing you know the Clippers lost the lead and the game. This Warriors team plays as hungry as a team that hasn't won a title which is strange considering they are the defending champs. I don't think they'll get the 72 wins the Bulls had, but if there's a team that can threaten that it would be these Warriors who look more complete and confident than any other team in the Association.

Wednesday, November 4, 2015

What to do With Kobe?

The Lakers are in an interesting situation. They have a young core of players who they can build around, but they also have number 24 hoping to get to another championship ring and taking as many shots as he wants. These are conflicting interests. In the perfect world you would either want the young kids to get used to playing with the ball in their hands or you want veterans all around to make the push for a championship. The thing is I can't even imagine Kobe being in another jersey. Kobe's legend is the biggest with the purple and gold. Also what other team at this point is ready to trade off pieces for a veteran who's going to demand the ball as much as Kobe will in his march to a championship?

What veteran team has a hole in their roster that Kobe would fill? The Knicks already have a ball hog on their team and adding another one wouldn't make the Knicks an absolute contender to win a championship. The Miami Heat has a solid roster with a solid balance of veterans and young players, but they would have to trade away a lot of that youth (and future draft picks) to add Kobe to Wade and Bosh and I'm still not sure if that's good enough to beat any of the powerhouses out of the Western Conference and at this point that's what teams in the Eastern Conference should be concerned with. So the best solution would be for the Lakers to just let the sunset on Kobe's career in the purple and gold and move on with their young core.  

Monday, November 2, 2015

The Kansas City Royals.. not the Champion MLB Wanted, but the One MLB Needed..

The Kansas City Royals beat the New York Mets in the World Series 4 games to 1. The way the Royals have accomplished this feat is much different than the way some MLB teams have been building teams recently. With home runs, and the swings and miss, that come along with having power-centric teams the Kansas City Royals have put together a championship team with a bunch of contact hitters and a lights out bullpen that the Royals have been able to use to keep late games close until their offense gets the chance to grind out the runs they need to get the win. That's how the Royals were able to knock out the Mets. It didn't help that the Mets didn't have the offense necessary to beat the Royals. Their offense was heavily reliant on one hitter or so every round of the playoffs. Whether it was David Murphy in the League Championship Series or Michael Conforto in the World Series. That is no way to win a championship.

So the team from Missouri beat the team from New York. The big payroll and big names lost to the medium payroll and to a bunch of no names to the regular fan. The team that relied more on the long ball against the team with an old school approach to the game by putting the ball in play and putting pressure on the opposing teams when they don't expect it. The Royals were taking extra bases and forcing defenses to make throws that they may not have been ready to make. MLB might have wanted the big revenue team to win, but the better built team with the valuable experience they earned in last year's run to the World Series where the Royals fell one game short of winning it all came out on top. The Mets shouldn't feel bad about the way they lost this World Series they were just defeated by royalty.