For those who might need to hear this: The results from a small sample of hockey series, hammered into your eyeballs, don’t make Game 1 matter more or less.
1. Rockets vs. Warriors VS. Lakers vs. Timberwolves
How fun is the Western Conference first round? Nuggets vs. Clippers almost became an afterthought. How fun is the Western Conference first round? The Thunder won by fifty, and they might do it three more times, and we’d still call the Western Conference first round good.
Each first round series, NBA-wide, ranked by intrigue:
- #1: Lakers vs. Timberwolves – Two potentially title-capable teams. Three huge stars. A big wide range of believable outcomes, from Minnesota making neat work of L.A. to the Lakers asserting alpha status.
- #2: Nuggets vs. Clippers – It wasn’t top of mind this morning, but it will be tonight. Russell Westbrook alone is a playoff series unto himself. Add in our annual-ish reminder that Kawhi Leonard is great at basketball, couple it with an interim head coach in Denver, and add the best basketball player in the world? Good stuff.
- #3: Rockets vs. Warriors – For a lot of last night, the Warriors looked superior to the Rockets, and it’s worth remembering that Steve Kerr has some coaching chops of his own, even if Ime Udoka’s of Coach of the Year caliber. (Coach of the Year is a weird award, yada yada, this has been well-covered by others.) Maybe this postseason will be a shock to the Rockets which shows how far they have to go. More likely, they get back in the series, or at least make Game 2 a serious battle.
- #4: Pacers vs. Bucks – Are the Bucks going to go out like that?
- #5: Thunder vs. Grizzlies – I know this isn’t like the others, but: Can the Thunder win every game by forty or more? This is intriguing for the same reasons I’d like to go back and watch Cooper Flagg’s youth games in Maine.
- #6: Knicks vs. Pistons – The Knicks showed a little flash of dominance in Game 1. I know they’re playing the Pistons, but if they’re capable of that, we’ll at least be able to ask the question when they play the Celtics in the conference semi’s.
- #7: Cavaliers vs. Heat – How will the Heat make this interesting? We do believe they will.
- #8: Celtics vs. Magic – Are Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown both going to hold up physically for a whole postseason? We’ve been reaching for six through eight. Not bad for a first round, though.
2. Are the Braves done?
Jarred Kelenic didn’t hustle out of the box on Saturday, his would-be home run hit the wall, he got thrown out at second, and Brian Snitker didn’t bench him. Ronald Acuña Jr., watching from the injured list, was unhappy.
On Twitter/X:
Mark Bowman (Braves beat writer): “(Snitker) protected Kelenic by replying ‘Was I supposed to’ when asked if he had said anything to Kelenic. He certainly could have said something, seeing how Kelenic’s home run trot put him on the dugout side of the first base coach’s box when the ball hit the wall.”
Ronald Acuña Jr., in response: “If it were me, they would take me out of the game”
In 2019, Snitker benched and publicly criticized Acuña for turning a double into a single with a slow exit from the box. That was six years ago.
There are two possibilities: The first is that Acuña didn’t mean anything by the tweet, that he was joking or expressing surprise or maybe annoyed but not to the degree where it’s a problem. The second is that the benching six years ago wasn’t isolated, and that there’s a little bad blood between Acuña and the Braves.
No Acuña/Braves rift could be big enough to declare the Braves “done.” The roster is too good for that. Acuña is too good for that. Off-field stuff with one player doesn’t matter to that extent. But the team which looked so dominant on the field in 2022, on the field in 2023, and on paper entering 2024 hasn’t won a playoff series since their underdog 2021 World Series run. They’re in last place in the NL East. Their best player is still on the IL. That best player is chirping his manager on Twitter.
We and others did warn that the Braves could corner themselves with so many pre-arbitration extensions. Flexibility’s big in a sport where success is hard to replicate and decreases dramatically after the age of thirty. (Especially in the post-steroid era.) And while the “too much rest” excuse the franchise loved two years ago was always ridiculous, it’s true that there’s a lot of luck involved in winning in the playoffs. Those 2022 and 2023 teams got unlucky in October. The 2024 team got unlucky when Acuña and Spencer Strider and others got hurt. This year’s team? They might turn things around imminently, sitting only five games under .500. But if they don’t, it’s hard to only call it luck. If this era ends and the Braves’ only playoff series wins came behind Jorge Soler and Eddie Rosario, they’ll have wasted just as good an opportunity as the one they wasted in the 90’s.
3. The Leicester City story might be better this way.
Leicester City clinched relegation from the Premier League again yesterday, the second time in three years that’s happened. Since winning the EPL in 2016, the Foxes have averaged a twelfth-place finish in the English soccer pyramid. That isn’t bad, but the question of whether Leicester could break into the Big Six has been answered.
On the one hand, this is sad. The potential for upward mobility is part of what makes the European soccer system so cool. A team in Montenegro’s Third League could technically play their way to the UEFA Champions League title over a four-year stretch. It’s disappointing to see Leicester pull off something so stunning and fail to turn it into long-term success.
On the other hand, it makes the story cooler. If Hoosiers ended with an epilogue saying elite middle school basketball talents started moving to Hickory to play high school ball under Norman Dale, transforming the little school into a basketball powerhouse, it would remove some charm. Leicester’s 2015–16 run was the kind of underdog story normally reserved for movies. Now that it’s firmly over, firmly something that happened in the past, it’s as mystical again as it was at the time. The fact it could happen in the mid-2010’s was always shocking. The fact it could happen and not through efforts which led to a new powerhouse makes it all the more so.
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