The Belichick-Brady New England Patriots won six titles over an eighteen-year stretch. The Kerr-Curry Golden State Warriors have, so far, won four titles over an eight-year stretch. After last night’s stomping of the Lakers (before it, too, but we really saw it spelled out last night), it seems a fifth is at least a reasonable possibility.
I’ll confess that the Warriors’ “window” is unclear. Klay Thompson and Draymond Green are currently set to be unrestricted free agents in the summer of 2024, Steph Curry’s contract runs for four more seasons (including this one), the franchise has done some heavy retooling but a lot can change in a couple of years and the competition will have its say. It’s possible four will be the final number, or that the Warriors will get their fifth but LeBron James will get one last one himself and his personal superiority as a player will keep him remembered as the greatest of this era. But if the Warriors can get a couple more…if the Warriors can stretch this to six…if Steph Curry can get a ring or two on the back of some Jordan Poole-led mid-2020’s team…
There’s been a collective forgetting of where Tom Brady’s reputation stood when he and Belichick broke up. The prevalent opinion was that while Brady was certainly a good quarterback, he’d benefited immensely from Belichick’s running of the franchise, and Belichick was the real figure behind the rings. The debate was open, but our indicators leaned towards Belichick. Then, Brady went to Tampa Bay and won a title, and many of us waved our white flags. Sure. Why not. Who else? Call him the greatest of all time. This was easier because of the sheer number of rings. If the Falcons had effectively held off the Pats, or if the Tuck Rule Game had gone differently, or if Pete Carroll had called a run on the goal line, etc. etc. etc. In a large number of instances, small things went right for Tom Brady, and they’ve so far gone wrong for the primary competition of his era. Patrick Mahomes has yet to pass one on the title counter. Aaron Rodgers has yet to pass one on the title counter. Peyton Manning only got two, and the second was brought to him by his defense. It’s hard to believe some time-traveling general manager would choose Brady over any of the others, if offered the choice between the entirety of each’s career, but Brady’s titles dwarf the competition. You have to go back to Joe Montana to find someone with more than three titles. You have to go back to Troy Aikman to find someone with more than two. Brady has seven. He got a lot better as his career went on, but the rings all count the same, and we’re a rings-based society. Which brings us back to Curry.
For so much of LeBron James’s career, the debate has revolved around him and Michael Jordan. But at the moment, three years younger than his rival and with a better team this year, Curry’s a better bet to finish on top in titles. And if our coming around on Tom Brady taught us anything, it’s that perceptions can change a lot over a few years. This might not be LeBron’s era, even if it’s been LeBron’s era for almost two decades. This might be Steph Curry’s era, and we may not have known it at the time.
Schwarber!!!!
Man, that was awesome. If only it hadn’t come off of also-very-worthy-of-love Yu Darvish. I guess it made it better that Schwarber’s homer was the one remembered instead of it being a 1-0 ballgame on the back of Bryce Harper. Darvish pitched well, too. Zack Wheeler just pitched better and didn’t have to face Kyle Schwarber.
The Phillies are in a powerful position all of a sudden, and while that’s always the case when you take a 1-0 series lead, they’ve got the added benefits of trotting Aaron Nola out there tonight and then going to play the next three games at home. I’m curious if Bob Melvin will have a shorter hook with Blake Snell than he did in the NLDS. He’s got more bullpen to work with and he’s got a day off tomorrow. This may be a good evaluation of where Bob Melvin’s head’s at with what I’m guessing he calls “the whole analytics thing.”
The Yankees Aren’t That Good
Something you’ll find me yelling about a lot in these notes for the next few months is that the Yankees are not good. Because the Phillies and Padres both didn’t win ninety games, their series is being pitched as a shocking matchup, but each of those, on paper (using FanGraphs’s evaluations of rosters here) is better than the Yankees. The Blue Jays are better than the Yankees. The Yankees are, on paper, baseball’s eighth-best team.
That all said—well, let’s look at the series probabilities.
Depth Charts: Not Updated
ZiPS: Astros 54.5%
Betting Markets: Astros 64.0%
What betting markets seem to be thinking (and this is a reasonable thought) is that the Yankees are definitely going to lose tonight. They’re playing on no rest after flying to Houston after celebrating an emotional postseason series victory. They’re starting a 3.94-FIP guy against the probable Cy Young winner. They’re on the road. They aren’t as good as the Astros.
What betting markets may be neglecting is that Justin Verlander got beat up by the Mariners before Yordan Alvarez did the Yordan Alvarez thing, and that the Yankees could punt on bullpen usage in a loss and stay fresh behind Luis Severino tomorrow, and that after that they’ve got Gerrit Cole starting at Yankee Stadium on normal rest. The Yankees might not be that good, and the series script might not be great, but the Astros have their own question marks and if the Yankees steal one today—entirely possible because this is baseball, so it’s got a lot of randomness, and this is baseball, so teams travel and then play another night game all the time—they’ll have the Astros very much on their heels. Betting markets right now have the Astros as a bigger favorite than the Phillies are in the NLCS, and the Phillies just took a 1-0 series lead on the road. I don’t believe in the Yankees, but that’s a stretch.
Anyway, check back for our latest futures in an hour or so. Sometime before the NLCS Game 2 starts.
The Bulls Begin
The Bulls start their season, we promised to blog about them, it’s the kind of game where nothing that bad can happen because they’re playing a good team on the road. Get blown out? Whatever. Keep it close? That’s a good thing. Win it? Wow! No-lose situation. For now. On the aggregate, lots to lose.
What’s Wrong With the Packers?
My favorite theory on what’s going on with the Packers comes from my brother, who speculates that Aaron Rodgers started doing Ayahuasca at the same time that he started doing squats and incorrectly attributed his renaissance to the former rather than the latter. Is it correct? I’m not sure. But he’s certainly not playing as well as he played the last two years, and the offensive line is having issues, and the defense is good but has not shut the door in a number of instances where it would have helped a ton if they shut the door (it’s miraculous, looking back, that they shut the door on the Bucs). It’s a little puzzling, because the pieces are all there and Matt LaFleur seems like a pretty effective coach, but you can’t deny that the Packers just lost to two mediocre teams, and they’ve lost to one other fine-not-great team, and their one good win came over a team that’s having parallel struggles. The Packers aren’t good right now. They might be good again soon, but they’re not good right now, and they may need to beat either the Bills or Eagles on the road to win the division, which was previously a baseline expectation. Yikes.
Trying
Same list as yesterday for shit we’re working on over on my side:
- Re-launch Gelo for 2022-23 NHL season (and get up to speed on NHL season to-date)
- Get conference tiebreakers into college football model
- Get these notes caught up on the MLB offseason (which is happening) and the NHL/NFL/NBA seasons (which are also happening, though I remain skeptical that the Packers are actually playing games—this seems like a fakeout)
- Catch up on college football futures
- Catch up on soccer futures
- Start NHL, NBA futures
- Build out college basketball models for 2022-23 (both men’s & women’s)
**
Viewing schedule, second screen in italics:
MLB
- 4:35 PM EDT: Philadelphia @ San Diego – Game 2, Nola vs. Snell (FOX)
- 7:37 PM DT: New York (AL) @ Houston – Game 1, Taillon vs. Verlander (TBS)
NBA
- 7:30 PM EDT: Chicago @ Miami
