The playoff hockey has been good. The playoff basketball is mostly still feeling itself out.
1. Jimmy Butler or Jayson Tatum: Which injury is a bigger deal?
Jayson Tatum missed last night’s Game 2 with a bone bruise on his wrist. Jimmy Butler left last night’s Game 2 with a pelvic contusion—he’ll get an MRI today.
- Tatum is the better player, arguably one of the five best in the league. Butler’s arguably one of the twenty best.
- Butler’s probably the more important player to his team, with less talent on the Warriors to spare.
- The Warriors face tougher immediate obstacles, needing to deal with the Rockets, then hypothetically the Lakers or Timberwolves while the Celtics get to beat up on the Magic then probably the Knicks.
- The nature of the injury is worse for Tatum, who’ll have to manage a limited shooting wrist while Butler mostly has to only manage pain.
- Timelines for the injuries aren’t currently publicly known, but it wouldn’t be a surprise if they’re similar.
Butler’s is probably a bigger deal. It does seem like Tatum’s isn’t getting as much attention as it should, though. Which probably speaks to Jayson Tatum’s ongoing battle against perceptions of Jayson Tatum.
2. Buyouts might solve the transfer portal’s problem…if they’re legal.
A funny pattern in college sports: People suggest a remedy for [insert perceived ill] only for it to turn out that the prescribed remedy already exists. For a long time, the suggestion has been multi-year contracts. Schools have made clear this academic year that in the NIL world, those do exist. Now, there’s a wave of suggestions of a “transfer fee,” an equivalent to soccer’s payments between clubs when one club takes another club’s player. If UCLA wants Madden Iamaleava, the suggestion goes, UCLA should have to pay Arkansas something for him.
Turns out that in the NIL world, that also already exists. On Tuesday, Nico Iamaleava’s little brother entered the transfer portal. In response, Arkansas athletic director Hunter Yurachek announced he’d given Arkansas’s NIL collective the green light to pursue the buyout figure included in Iamaleava’s contract.
Iamaleava is not unusual in ignoring the buyout provision. Reporting across the industry indicates it’d be unusual if not unheard of for a player to take that provision seriously. Why aren’t more collectives taking departing players to court? One school of thought says nobody wants to deter future recruits or damage relationships with agents by trying to enforce a contract. The other says that Arkansas’s collective is going to lose in court—that the buyout provision is unenforceable.
A lawyer at a mid-major out west recently told me they’d begun including buyout provisions in men’s basketball NIL contracts for the first time, but that they weren’t sure those provisions would hold up in court. Interestingly, he specifically mentioned his school’s state’s courts, implying results around this kind of thing could be different in different places.
3. Why does the NHL stagger its playoff schedule?
The Stars and Avalanche finished Game 3 last night in their series. The Panthers and Lightning haven’t finished Game 2 yet.
I looked online for why the NHL does it this way, and I was surprised that there wasn’t a clear and immediate answer. My guess had been that the NHL was layering the series so that if none went long, they’d still have games next Thursday and Friday. That isn’t it. The Panthers and Lightning will catch up by the end of the first round: Every Game 6 is slated to take place next Thursday or Friday. Every Game 7 is scheduled for next Saturday or Sunday.
Some of you are probably saying, “It’s TV, dummy,” and that’s the best answer I’m seeing too. It seems like ESPN and TNT Sports had a slot that would’ve made sense for the Panthers and Lightning Game 2, but that it was too late at night, so it became the Stars/Avs Game 3 last night, which then necessitated flipping FLA/TB Game 1 with DAL/COL Game 2, so that nobody was playing back-to-back days.
I think that’s what happened here.
I’m not positive.
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