Stat of the Day: Lakers vs. Celtics

Since the NBA’s first season in 1946, the Celtics have reached the NBA finals 20 times, and have more titles than any other franchise: 17 (85% winning percentage). The LA Lakers, on the other hand, have been to the NBA finals a whopping 30 times, but have managed only 15 titles, a mere 50% winning percentage. LA’s longest drought of not reaching the finals is seven years (1973-1980), compared to the Celtic’s twenty years from 1987 to 2008. Thus, the Lakers have been consistently good since their first NBA championship in 1949; they won their division at least twice in every decade, whereas the Celtics have created a pattern of dominant eras, followed by lackluster ones. They won eight NBA championships back-to-back from 1959to 1966, but went to the finals only twice in the 70s. Then, they played for the NBA championship in four consecutive years from 1984 to 1987, followed by a dry spell of twenty years, which ended only last year in 2008. The Celtics are better head-to-head in the finals, winning 9 of the 11 times.

Conference titles:
Celtics: 20
Lakers: 30

NBA titles
Celtics: 17
Lakers: 15

Win % in finals
Celtics: 85%
Lakers: 50%

Longest time without reaching finals
Celtics: 20 years (1987-2008)
Lakers: 7 years (1973-1980)

Most titles back-to-back
Celtics: 8 (1959-1966)
Lakers: 3 (1952-1954, 2000-2002)

Head-to-head wins in finals
Celtics: 9
Lakers: 2

NBA Finals: No Need for Nelson

As the Orlando Magic and LA Lakers suit up for game two of this seven-game series of the NBA finals, I hope Orlando coach Stan Van Gundy has learned his lesson from game one. Don’t play Jameer Nelson. Now, I know my esteemed colleague, Rob Costello, predicted Nelson would be the key to the Magic’s success in these finals, I just don’t see it. I know, Nelson is an All-Star point guard who was second in the NBA in 3-point shooting this season, but he just recovered from shoulder surgery. Correct me if I’m wrong, but you kind of need your shoulders at full strength in order to play professional basketball. And the finals should not be his rehab assignment! The surgery on his torn labrum was predicted to be season-ending. Why would the Magic rush him back and play him, when what they have now, with big men All-Stars Rashard Lewis and Dwight Howard has been working throughout the playoffs. They also have 2008’s Most Improved Player in Forward Hedo Turkoglu, as well as former Streetballer Rafer Austin. So people thought Jameer Nelson would ruin Orlando’s hopes because they can’t shoot from beyond the arc without him? In the postseason, they’re shooting 36% from 3-point range, barely off from their 39% mark that they got with Nelson (and that’s against much weaker defenses than the 76ers, Celtics, and Cavaliers they’ve faced in the playoffs). In game one of the finals, Nelson shot zero 3-pointers in 23 minutes. If anything, Nelson brought the team down a notch. The Magic were thinking too much about his presence, and not playing the type of basketball that has got them through the playoffs. They only scored 75 points against the Lakers, who gave up 99 points per game in the regular season! (The Magic have averaged 97 points per game in these playoffs.) I can’t believe Van Gundy would make Nelson play so soon after surgery, with no game-type situations to play off of (no pun intended). Ideally Nelson would come off the bench, starting with just few minutes per game, and increasing the number every game. But the Magic don’t have that kind of time, and were forced to play Nelson for more than 20 minutes in game one the NBA finals. We’ll see what they do in game two tonight, which starts at 8:00 in LA, but if I were Stan Van Gundy, I’d rely on Dwight Howard to play great defense and, likely facing the double-team, draw in the Laker defense, and get the ball to his more-than-decent supporting cast.

A Turning Point for the Sox?

Saturday’s game at Fenway had a couple noteworthy performances. One, Jon Lester dominated the Rangers, making the AL West-leading club look like teenage girls trying to swat flies with a pencil. Through six innings of sheer excellency, Lester was perfect—surrendering no hits, no walks, while striking out ten. Ten K’s through six means Lester had more punch-outs than he had pop-outs, ground-outs, line-outs, or any other kind of outs. Only in the ninth inning did he throw his hundredth pitch—maybe Daisuke can learn a little something about efficiency from this 25 year-old. Lester finished the game going a full nine innings (Wake is the only other Sox pitcher who has pitched a complete game this year), while giving up only two hits to Michael Young (a career BA over .300), striking out eleven (one short of his career-high 12, set last week in Toronto), and giving up just one run (a a sacrifice fly in the ninth inning). After earning a 6.10 ERA through his first ten starts (3-5), Lester has allowed only two earned runs in his last two starts. This could be the spark Lester needed to jumpstart his season, as he tries to duplicate his 16-6, 3.21 ERA of 2008.
The other thing to take away from Saturday’s game is Ortiz’s second homer of the season. A hulking, monumental blast in the bottom of the sixth inning, the solo shot cleared the wall in front of Pesky’s Pole by no more than three feet. With no one on base, this home run barely went 300 feet: a single in any other ballpark. Is this what it’s come to, Papi? You hit the shortest home run known to man, and get a curtain call at Fenway? Only from the Fenway Faithful could such a pipsqueak home run by a guy batting .196 garner such a reaction. He finished the game going 2-3. As for this being a turning point in Ortiz’s letdown of a season/slow start, well, not yet. I’m going to need to see a little more umph from this 4-time Silver Slugger Award-winner in the upcoming home series against the Yankees to really be convinced he's back on track.

What Baseball can Learn from the XFL

Watching the Sox play the Rangers this week made me laugh. No, not because David Ortiz and Julio Lugo will be paid a total of $366,000 for this three-game series alone (even though that is somewhat laughable), but because Jarrod Saltalamacchia’s jersey is plain buffoonery. It got me thinking about more absurdly-long names in major sports. Often, in the NHL, some Canadian players have hyphenated last names (e.g. Letourneau-Leblond), and teams will opt to put only the second name on the back of a jersey (just Leblond) to avoid a Saltamlamacchia-type situation. In the NFL, Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie is lucky enough to have his jersey embellished with enough thread to wrap around the globe, since the Cardinals allowed him to have his full last name on his uni. Don’t even ask about the NBA. Dikembe Mutombo Mpolondo Mukamba Jean-Jacques Wamutombo, better known as Dikembe Mutombo, wouldn’t even ask the Rockets to sew anything near that jumbo-sized name on his jersey. But instead of chopping off part of an athlete’s family name like a butcher at a slaughterhouse, the NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLB should take a lesson from a league that, despite disbanding after its inaugural season in 2001, knew what to do with a player’s last name. The league is the XFL: players could put whatever nickname they wanted on the back of the jersey. (Remember “He Hate Me” Rod Smart? How about “Big Daddy” Jerry Crafts?) Chad Johnson of the Bengals knows how to do it; last year he legally changed his name to Chad Ochocinco so he could wear his nickname on his jersey. How cool would it be to have Paul Pierce don a jersey embroidered with “The Truth”, or Adam Jones wear “Pacman”? If you don’t dig these examples, what about “A-Fraud”?

NBC Welcomes Steroids

This week, former-Patriot Rodney Harrison announced his retirement, along with his hiring as an NBC broadcaster for the NFL. Harrison is not the innocuous fan-favorite retired athlete you usually see hired by sports networks. More often, it’s people like Charles Barkley (TNT), John Madden (ABC), or Bill Walton (ESPN). Harrison, however, was twice voted NFL’s “dirtiest player” in an SI poll (2004 and 2006). But, more significantly, he admitted to knowingly taking human growth hormone in 2007. There seems to be a double standard in baseball and football about PEDs. You probably don’t even remember when Harrison was suspended for a quarter of the NFL season for taking a banned substance; it was only in the news for a couple days. But, now, several weeks after the fact, we’re still hearing about Ramirez’s positive drug test, and we’ll hear about it again in a few more weeks, when Ramirez returns from his suspension. Can you imagine Mark McGuire being hired by ESPN on Baseball Tonight? And McGuire hasn’t even been found guilty, tested positive, or admitted to any steroid use! To be honest, why the NFL doesn’t seem to be affected by baseball’s “Steroid Era” is beyond me. It’s not like steroids give batters a bigger advantage over their opponents than they give linebackers. If anything, a football player would benefit more from taking steroids, since strength is so important in a physical sport like football. NBC must see something extraordinary in Harrison, because—outside of New England—he has just about every reason to be hated by fans.