In six of the eight ongoing postseason series, one team has won three games. The Panthers lead the Leafs 3–0. The Hurricanes, Heat, and Lakers lead the Devils, Knicks, and Warriors 3–1. The 76ers and Nuggets lead the Celtics and Suns 3–2.
Our headline, to be fair, could turn out incorrect. It’s possible all six of the leaders win. Combining our Gelo model for hockey with FiveThirtyEight’s NBA predictions, we get a 37% chance all six of these teams get that fourth win. In the other 63% of cases? Someone, or someones, lose. The probability is 41% that exactly one of the six loses. Most of the remaining 22% of scenarios involve two of the six going down.
The Sixers and Nuggets are theoretically at the most risk, by virtue of having the fewest games left to work with, but FiveThirtyEight’s model has the Lakers in marginally more danger than Denver, and betting markets aren’t far off. The Lakers only play one more home game if the series goes seven games, and the Warriors/Lakers gap in overall rating favors the Warriors, whereas the lean on the Nuggets/Suns gap is up for debate. Still, the probability—and this is comparable to the likelihood that an MLB division champion beats an MLB tanker in an average matchup, to put some context on it—is that one of the six is going to go down. In the individual sample, that will be surprising, but overall, it’s expected. We play in dangerous times.
The Panthers Might Just Be Good
The concern with tonight’s Leafs/Panthers game is, on the Leafs side, that Toronto may have already given up. They’re down three games to zero, they’re on the road, they already have a reputation for choking looming all around them. The bigger concern should be that the Panthers are just a better team than they are.
I don’t want to lean too heavily on Gelo, since it’s unproven, but when it says the Panthers are now better than the Leafs, it’s not pulling that out of thin air. It’s calibrated to react quickly, but that’s not because we thought it’d be fun to have a model that acts fast. It’s calibrated that way because that gave us the most accurate model, with the most correct results predicted combined with the least obvious wrongness (see: Vegas, 2017). Gelo is seeing that the Panthers are playing well, and to hit the bell again on what we’ve said a lot this postseason, it makes all the sense in the world that they would be: They were great last year in the regular season, they had a productive offseason. The Panthers are a very good team. The Atlantic Division was a very good division.
Other series, other thoughts:
- It felt like whenever the Kraken did generate a chance last night, it was a great one, but the chances they generated were so few and so far between. This is the same script they followed against the Avalanche, or close to it, losing a home game where they could have seized full control of the series (in the case of last round, it was Game 6, which would have clinched the series). It worked last time, but that doesn’t make it a good recipe.
- The Devils have, this postseason, scored eight goals once, four goals twice, three goals once, two goals twice, and one goal five separate times. This is a baffling distribution, made all the more baffling by the fact one of their two-goal games included an overtime goal, meaning in more than half their postseason games, they’ve scored exactly one goal in regulation. It is very difficult to win when scoring only one goal, and it is impossible to continue to advance if you lose more games than you win.
- The Knights are playing with house money tonight in Edmonton. Lose, and they still have home-ice advantage heading into Game 5. Win, and the Oilers are on the brink, Vegas added to that list of six above. Nothing to lose. They should have all the confidence in the world, even in the face of what should be a blitz of an opening period from their hosts.
- Going back to the Leafs: I’m more concerned about the Knicks quitting than I am about the Leafs. This would be uncharacteristic for a Tom Thibodeau team, but Game 4 was a nightmare, and you can’t expect Madison Square Garden to be confident tonight (I’m aware these will be published after tip-off, but they’re being written in the afternoon). The Heat can finish New York off tonight.
- When full consensus is on one team to win, and when that team has only won one of four games in a series so far, that’s a red flag. The Lakers are undervalued tonight in the narrative. I agree, it makes too much sense for the Warriors to send the series back to SoCal, but the expectation seems to be that Los Angeles will roll over, and there are a lot of cases where that doesn’t play out.
- The Nuggets are just better than the Suns, right? Even if Chris Paul was out there? The Nuggets’ postseason success so far seems to suggest that being good in the regular season is a good sign for your postseason capability. That would be refreshing for the NBA.
- On the exact same note: How about the Sixers? No, they weren’t better than the Celtics in the regular season, but to hear betting markets tell it, the Sixers hardly dodged the Play-In Tournament. That isn’t, of course, what happened. They were a good team in the regular season, they’re good in the playoffs. The playoffs have been chaotic in terms of seed-line upsets, but if the Sixers finish this off, only two of the six (Lakers over Grizzlies, Warriors over Kings) will have fit the pre-series narrative.
Kirby Smart Has a Problem
De’Nylon Morrissette was arrested late Sunday night on multiple charges, one of which was DUI. De’Nylon Morrissette was a backup wide receiver this past season for the Georgia Bulldogs.
I don’t know what’s going on with Georgia. This is the fourth player arrested since the season ended. Three of the arrests have been driving-related. One of the arrests, one of the driving-related arrests, was tied to the deaths of a player and a staffer.
We talk a lot about how Nick Saban’s program has so little legal trouble relative to a lot of premier college football. Georgia is the antithesis of that right now, and specifically, Georgia has an issue with cars.
It would make more sense if the arrests were all over the legal map, or if the arrests were spaced out year by year. So many similar arrests at once, though? That’s the sign of a message not getting through. You have to assume Kirby Smart’s staff is telling its players not to endanger their lives and the lives of others with their motor vehicles, probably in much less technical terms. Why is that not working?
There’s a trope in sports media about journalists and bloggers asking if a coach has lost control of his players, but in this case, it’s egregious. These are reckless, reckless incidents, no matter where the court process leads. It is shocking that similar issues continue to happen.
Smart is an entirely different person from Urban Meyer, but it’s worth remembering that Meyer also had players frequently involved with legal issues, most memorably back at Florida, and it’s worth remembering that Meyer’s ultimate downfall was an inability to control. In Meyer’s case, it was his own lack of self-control which did him in, but the theme is the same. Whether it’s self-discipline or team discipline, discipline is discipline. Right now, Georgia doesn’t seem to have it. Multiple players aren’t respecting rules, let alone the lives of those around them. Surely, this is not happening by Kirby Smart’s choice. So why is he failing at this practical and moral responsibility? And what does it say about Georgia’s ability to hold onto this dominant moment?
Abolish the American League Central
This is out of date now, but take a look at the AL East and AL Central standings after last night’s games:
This isn’t to criticize individual franchises within the AL Central. The Royals, Twins, and Guardians have each achieved impressive success in recent memory given their stature (from the Tigers and White Sox, more should be expected based on market size). But damn, is this division bad.
We wrote a couple weeks ago about MLB expansion and realignment, and we advocated for something which accounts for this very thing: Two divisions in each league. Not four. In the plan with four total divisions, Cleveland and Detroit would be in the AL East, while Minnesota and Kansas City would be in the AL West (the White Sox’ location would depend on where a few other chips fall). These teams, largely uncompetitive within the American League as a whole, would have to do more to earn their playoff spots. Better franchises—the Blue Jays and Rays and (at least last year) the Mariners—would have a lower bar to clear. The AL Central is an abomination, and it’s messing up the whole American League. Clean it up, MLB.
Christopher Morel’s Joy, My Personal Optimism
I adored Christopher Morel’s reaction to his game-tying home run last night. I’d forgotten how fun that kid is. I have no idea how good he’ll turn out, but damn was he good last year for a 23-year-old, and damn has he been great in the minors so far this year.
The Cubs fan milieu appears to have taken a despondent turn in recent days, joining us in the realization that this is by no reasonable expectation a playoff team. What the Cubs fan milieu is ignoring, though, is the reason we’ve hit that note so hard over the last six months: The Cubs are on the verge of being really, really good.
As a franchise, the Cubs have one of the best farm systems in baseball, solid young players who could easily fit on a championship roster, and ample resources for future spending (if you don’t think top-five payrolls are coming back, you’re ignoring history, and even this year they’re in the top half of the league). Dansby Swanson, Nico Hoerner, Ian Happ, Seiya Suzuki, and even more uncertain assets like Morel and Justin Steele could all very reasonably fit into a World Series plan, and there’s a lot more where that came from, more on both the prospect front and eventually through free agency, where the Ricketts family has absolutely shown a willingness to spend when playoff-caliber baseball is within reach.
The connection between long-term optimism and short-term pessimism is that the biggest present threat to the Cubs’ eventual return to prominence is a hard pivot away from the current plan. Expectations for this year need to be low, as we’ve been saying, because public pressure to oust Jed Hoyer would be ridiculous this far into the course. We’re a year or two away from a roster that should win the NL Central. Stay the course. If it doesn’t get there, then yes, pivot, but right now it’s likelier than not that good things are just around the corner, so long as everyone can just hold their melodrama at bay for one more year.
Denny Crum, Louisville’s Founding Father
Before Denny Crum arrived, Louisville had made six NCAA Tournaments. In Crum’s first twelve years, Louisville made ten, reached the Final Four in five, and won a national championship. In his fifteenth season, they won another title. Denny Crum is among the most successful college basketball coaches of all time, and he is responsible for Louisville reaching the status it has today as one of the programs most obviously capable of competing for national titles.
Crum died yesterday at the age of 86. A city and a fanbase are mourning. I know little personally about the man, but I’ve yet to hear a bad thing. It sounds like he was like most people—good and decent and kind—and perhaps even better than most. I can’t speak to any of that personally. What I can speak to is Louisville’s status as a university in the national college athletics landscape, where it is wholly one of a kind.
Louisville, the city, is the heart of the 45th-largest metropolitan area in the country, and it’s the sixth-largest of those which lack Big Four professional sports. Of the five bigger than it, one (the Inland Empire) is adjacent to Los Angeles, one (Austin) is stuck between Dallas and Houston and San Antonio, one (Providence) is dropped between Boston and New York, and two (Hampton Roads and Richmond) are in Virginia, where especially Richmond resides in close proximity to Washington, D.C. Louisville, meanwhile, is close to…Cincinnati. Cincinnati has two Big Four teams, but Louisville is more like Hampton Roads than any of the others which share its sports emptiness. Hampton Roads, made up most notably of Norfolk, Newport News, and Virginia Beach, is *empty.*
This, by my impression, creates an attention vacuum into which the University of Louisville has stepped over the years. It’s noteworthy that the vacuum isn’t wholly occupied by the University of Kentucky, instead. The Cards are Louisville’s team, and they’re Louisville’s team to a degree where frequently, throughout history, they’ve made Kentucky legitimately a two-power state, rather than a state like Ohio with only one true power school. In this sense, Louisville is the only school like itself. The closest is Georgia Tech, another Power Five city school who’s made its state a two-power state at times, but Atlanta has professional sports and is the capital of both SEC Country and Black America. Louisville’s primary regional and national purpose is that it hosts the Kentucky Derby. Those are massively different societal roles. The Louisville Cardinals, at their most powerful, can harness the energy of an entire top-50 city, and they can do so with no clear competition. It’s wild, considering the athletic program’s history, that it has.
Louisville spent years as a mid-major, mostly independent in football while the basketball team bounced through the Ohio Valley, Missouri Valley, and Metro Conferences before the Metro Conference merged with the Great Midwest Conference to form Conference USA. Even then, Conference USA isn’t exactly the source of schools capable of holding their own within their respective states. Still, here is Louisville, undisputedly a power conference athletic department, recent basketball national champions and recent producers of a Heisman Trophy winner.
How did this happen? It almost had to be Crum. Louisville only entered Kentucky’s state university system in 1970, one year before Crum arrived, imported from UCLA where he’d assisted John Wooden. Plenty of city schools exist within their state’s system without boasting a nationally relevant athletic department. Louisville is the exception.
It is so hard in the world of college athletics to not be a mid-major, and it would be so easy for Louisville’s teams to be like UAB’s, located in a good-sized city and competitive at the mid-major level but not making a dent in the cultural fabric of the state. Through Crum, though, Louisville became a basketball power, and while I’m not a Louisville expert by any stretch, it’s hard to see any other explanation for the school managing to craft the identity it’s since crafted. Football certainly wasn’t doing it—the team finished ranked one time prior to 1990, and it wasn’t until the Bobby Petrino era that they ever finished in the top ten. It almost had to be Crum and the success he built on the basketball court. Crum, by every clear indication, pried the University of Louisville a piece of Kentucky, wresting it away from the Wildcats. That piece remains theirs to this day.
So, rest in peace to Denny Crum. I know little about the guy beyond his record of success, but his presence is felt in the fabric of the American sporting world. His personal attributes are more important than that, of course, and our condolences go out to his family and friends. But carving out space for a unique university within the vast American landscape is no small legacy to leave behind.
