Hey, Read This Entertaining Post About The NHL & NBA!

That might be my best blog title ever.

At first glance, this post may look like a sports post to you. It is, but it’s not. It’s an entertaining post. A really entertaining post, if I’m being honest. So before you decide that this isn’t your bowl of soup, give it a chance. You might laugh.

Writing about sports on this blog has become a rare occasion for me. Sometimes, I think I undersell just how much of a sports fan I actually am. I mean, are you aware of how much my life revolves around sports?

Let me put it this way, if sports didn’t exist, I wouldn’t know what to do with myself. Which is ironic because I already don’t know what to do with myself. But that’s a poem for another day.

My fandom isn’t even fandom anymore. It’s beyond that. Like breathing, it’s just what I do without thinking.

Oh, it’s nighttime? Time for me to watch whatever sports are on TV. There isn’t even a second option to what I might be doing at night. If you find me at a movie theatre, call for help because that would mean something very serious is wrong with me.

That being said, I’m now going to write down my final thoughts on the NHL & NBA seasons and I hope you join me in reading them. If you don’t, who will? Exactly. Now I’ve guilted into this. Perfect.

Let’s start with the National Hockey League because, well, I said so.

The Pittsburgh Penguins won the Stanley Cup. Three waddles for Pittsburgh!

Waddle, waddle, waddle.

Do you get what I just did? It’s like, “Three cheers for ____”, but I said waddle because they’re penguins. Get it? Do you? Please laugh! Don’t leave…

The people on my twitter feed weren’t too pleased that the Penguins won. Apparently, Sidney Crosby doesn’t have that many fans.

You know what I have to say to that? I have a pun that relates to ceiling fans. That’s what I have to say to that. I won’t actually say it; I’ll save it for another time. But that’s what I have – a ceiling fan pun.

Sidney Crosby has grown on me over the years. Almost literally, at times. I’ve been told on numerous occasions by friends, family, and children who need help poking a straw into a juice box, that I look like Sidney Crosby.

So in a way, I won the Stanley Cup the other night. Haters gonna hate hate hate hate hate.

No, that was not a Taylor Swift reference. Not at all. I learned in high school to use repetition for rhetorical effect. That’s what I did. Don’t doubt me!

Want to hear a joke? Of course you do!

What do you call Sidney Crosby when he has a sunburn?

Sidney Crispy.

Anyway, the Penguins waddled their way to victory over the Nashville Country Music Predators.

The entire series was about how the Penguins were going for their second Stanley Cup in two years and how Nashville was a country music town. That’s it. It almost felt cheesy enough to be a television show.

Hey, Nashville’s captain is married to Carrie Underwood. It doesn’t get more television show-y than that. The ‘ol “Captain of the team is dating the cheerleader” storyline, but advanced about 15 years.

Hockey players grow playoff beards. Is it superstition? Perhaps. But I think it’s just men being men and finding any excuse they can to not be shackled to a razor and a sink every day or two.

I fully understand it. Go to any college or university campus during exam season and observe the male population. They’ll have the “Exam Beard” in full effect. Why? Well, why not?

I did the whole Exam Beard thing and had no clue why I was doing it. Oh wait, I did. It’s because I couldn’t be bothered to shave. That’s it.

Bam. Exam Beard. Welcome to my face.

The good thing about the NHL is that all 16 teams that make the playoffs have a legitimate chance at winning the Stanley Cup. The Country Music Predators were the 16th seed. They are the poster child of unpredictability.

And that’s what I like about hockey, and sports – the unpredictable nature of it.

That’s why sports are basically the only thing worth watching live. Once you find out the score of a game you missed, why would you go back and watch it? (Unless it was a special game).

This brings me to the NBA. The playoffs were awful. Straight up.

Oh, I should state that the Golden State Warriors beat the Cleveland Cavaliers in the finals.

Fourteen teams and their fans got all worked up for nothing. All those times that “random player” from “team that isn’t going to win a championship” got mad at a referee for calling a foul on them, were pointless. Just a complete waste of time.

I’m already prepared to say that next season is going to be a massive waste of time, as well.

Barring injuries, the end of the world, or aliens stealing talent from players, Cleveland will face Golden State in the NBA Finals for the fourth year in a row. It’s not even a debate in my mind.

All the talk this year about how Cleveland didn’t look “right”. How they didn’t even get the first seed in the East, as if that meant anything. All the talk about how Boston’s defense could give them a real challenge.

Shut up.

I don’t want to hear another analyst doubt a team that has LeBron James on it, ever again. There are about 83 analysts that should be fired for even thinking that Cleveland could be beaten four times by a team in the East.

Laughable.

The Raptors aren’t doing it. That pains me to say, but it’s the truth.

The Celtics aren’t doing it. And don’t give me the whole, “Ohh but if they get Gordon Hayward then they have a shot.” No. You’re wrong. They don’t.

The Wizards aren’t doing it. What a delusional team that is. After they were sent home in the second round, they were whining that they were the only team in the East that could be Cleveland.

Ha! You couldn’t even get passed Boston. The Wizards don’t have the pieces needed to beat Cleveland.

As for the other pretenders in the East, they’re just biding their time until LeBron takes off for the Lakers after next season. That will free up the East.

By the way, when LeBron goes west and a LeBron-less team makes the finals in the Eastern Conference for the first time in eight years, they’re getting swept. You heard it here first. In 2019, the East representative is getting swept in the finals.

As for Golden State, they won the championship this year.

I don’t like how they present the trophy in basketball. They do the same thing in baseball and football. Is this an American thing? The commissioner hands the trophy over to the owner of team.

EXCUSÉ MOI?

I get it, without the owner, there is no team. But what a slap in the face to the players who actually had to go out there, in front of millions of people, and be better than their opponent.

I just think it’s dumb, stupid, and every other synonym of “dumb” and “stupid”. Present the trophy to the captain of the team. The owner can get his/her chance to hold the trophy after that.

Hockey does it right. The captain comes over, poses for a photo, and lifts the Cup above their head while screaming. Then they do a lap around the ice before passing it off to the next teammate.

This continues for about fifteen minutes, until everyone has put their lips on the Cup. It basically turns into an episode of The Bachelorette.

For the NBA trophy presentation, they huddled everyone on a podium, gave the trophy to the owner, and then shoved about 35 interviews down our throat. The players looked more anxious than a Grade 1 class waiting for the recess bell to ring.

Come on. We just watched the game. We don’t need to hear these player’s monotone thoughts on “How they feel” and “What this means to them”. Enough! Stop the stupidity!

If I ever run for public office, my campaign slogan is going to be: “Stop The Stupidity!” Imagine that on a lawn sign.

Let them celebrate! The team was forced to stand there and pretend to listen to their teammates give cliché answers. I was cringing for them. Why couldn’t they run laps around the court with the trophy, like the hockey players did?

I didn’t know who to cheer for in this series.

As individuals, I like the players on Golden State. As a team, I couldn’t cheer for them, even though they were fun to watch and I enjoy witnessing the joy with which they play. I just couldn’t cheer for them. I know, it’s twisted.

Their team was unfair. Signing Kevin Durant in the off-season ruined it for me. There was no unpredictability this season. Everyone knew they would be in the finals and would probably win.

The NBA has always been predictable in that the same few teams always seem to end up in the Finals. It’s a star-driven league. I can live with that. But this year was just unfair.

And I say it was unfair, knowing full well that Golden State did everything fairly. If they want to sign Durant, and he wants to sign with them, then it should be allowed to happen. And it was.

But it took the joy out of it for me.

Remember at recess how the four best soccer players would say, “Us four vs. everyone” and “everyone” consisted of about 15 people? The NBA has turned into that.

Sure, 15 people might appear to have the advantage, but then you realize that their combined skill doesn’t even come close to that of the 4 individuals on the other team.

Some people will say that they like these “super teams” and that they’re good for the league. I don’t like them. Why should I continue to spend money to support my local team, when I already know that they have no chance at winning a championship?

Before Golden State got Durant, I cheered for them in the Finals for two years. They were a homegrown team. Their star players were all draft picks.

And then they got Durant, who I like, but I couldn’t find it in me to cheer for them.

The NBA is in a weird place right now. If every player in the league isn’t working on a three-point shot this off-season, then why are they even in the league? Golden State is the team to beat and, spoiler alert, you’re not going to beat them by posting up every time down the floor.

NBA games are going to turn into a three-point shootout. If you can’t put up 120 points in a game, you’re not going to win the championship.

Sorry, the truth hurts.

I’m done.

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