The NBA Finals has begun. Finally. And it is the home standing Toronto Raptors who have taken the early lead with a 118-109 triumph, to the delight of the delirious fans at ScotiaBank Arena, the hordes inside of Jurassic Park, the place where Torontonians can watch the game on big screens nearby the arena, and the nation of Canada.
This first-ever NBA Finals outside of the United States features a team built to win a championship against the defending champion. Toronto went out and got Kawhi Leonard to win this year. Leonard is a free agent at the conclusion of the series, and there is so much speculation of what he will do, win or lose. He has been surrounded by a tall, athletic crew who can play with a chip on their shoulders, even if the Raptors amassed the second-best regular season record in the league for 2018-19 and defeated Philadelphia on a miraculous shot to end a seven game series, then took down the top team record-wise when they handled the Milwaukee Bucks.
On the other hand, Golden State has been relying on its core of four—Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, Draymond Green and Andre Iguodala to carry them forward. Off of the successes against Houston and Portland, the team adjusted to the absence of Kevin Durant, who had been playing like the best player in the NBA until he injured his calf against the Rockets. However, those teams may not have been as good as Toronto or the foes the Raptors defeated.
It has been noted that the Warriors strength in numbers is a mirage. Realistically, that is true. The support players behind the four stars are either older or not as talented as need be. In Game 1, Toronto exposed that.
Add in that Iguodala is playing hurt with a bad calf which repeatedly has been the target of MRI’s and rest, the team is really a three-headed group in the absence of Durant. Which makes the odds for the Warriors to repeat much longer.
Toronto has a masterful game plan—shut down Draymond Green, make him play defense, accrue fouls and clog the passing lanes so that spot up shooters like Curry and Thompson do not have open looks and have to drive to the basket, where their effectiveness is reduced. Green had a triple double in Game 1, but his options to get Curry and Thompson to their spots was clearly reduced by the size and length of a very good defensive Raptors squad.
Do the Warriors need more to overtake Toronto? Yes. Getting Durant back in either Game 3 or 4 will not necessarily be the answer—he will be rusty and he will be wary of re-injuring himself. Boogie Cousins came back in Game 1. In limited action, he looked slow, out of shape, plodding and ineffective. This is not going to help the Warriors, as Toronto would be wise to take the action to him when Cousins is on the floor. Plus Golden State must do a better job of rotating defenders when trying to trap Leonard, for Marc Gasol is a good shooter from long distance.
I am hardly counting the champs out after one game. This time, they do not have home court advantage, which means they have to win all of their games at Oracle Arena and pick up a victory in Canada to retain their title. Not only are they facing the Raptors, they are facing the people of Canada. A daunting task. If there is a team which can accomplish such a feat, it is Golden State. Their chances would have been much better with Cousins and Durant healthy even if Iguodala is playing hurt.
One more comment about the Finals. Drake, the entertainer and Raptors “ambassador,” is attempting to rile up the Warriors. He has baited Curry and Green, who have responded to him. Golden State should ignore him like Spike Lee in New York or the bevy of stars at Lakers games. He is not the story. The two teams are. The NBA needs to clamp down on his antics so that the focus is on the game, not a sideshow. He certainly is not a reason Golden State might lose the series. He just should be a boisterous fan, not part of the game.
The NHL headed to Game 3 in St. Louis knotted at 1 with the Blues first ever Finals win after 13 tries coming in OT in Boston. The hits have been hard and mean. The goaltending is superb, but is Tuukka Rask not so invincible, taking the Boston mystique down a notch? With Boston convincingly winning Game 3, this series could be over in 5. If the Blues had won, they could have made it a very long series for the Bruins. Advantage Boston.
The French Open is into its second week and the men’s draw is virtually intact. Serena Williams and Natalie Osaka are both out of the tournament. Yawn.
A quick shout out to Morristown-Beard’s Boys Lacrosse team, winners in a thrilling come-from-behind victory over Rutgers Prep to capture the Non-Public B title in New Jersey. I have been following this team from before the season, thanks to the intrepid Sal Tromonda, the team’s head coach and a personal trainer at Brooklake Country Club where we work out. Since the fall, Sal has been talking up his team. He worked hard to put together a pre-season team trip to Arizona, which has worked to bring the boys closer together.
While Mo-Beard has a 10-13 record, the team saved their best performance for the playoffs. Which resulted in some great and inspired play against the Argonauts, a team which had handily defeated the Crimson earlier this season. No matter the record, Coach Tromonda molded his players into a group which believed it could win. Mo-Beard’s 2019 Boys Lacrosse team is a champion, which no one can deny.
Still on lacrosse, the Middlebury women, who annihilated F&M, won the D-III championship. Cabrini took home the prize for the D-III men. Merrimack now has won back-to-back DII lacrosse titles. Adelphi won the D-II women’s event. Maryland and Virginia took the D-I crowns in women’s and men’s lacrosse.
FYI to some readers—there are four D-I men’s lacrosse programs in New Jersey. They are Rutgers, Princeton, Monmouth and NJIT. To someone who thought the University of Miami would be a good spot to be a men’s lacrosse coach—the Hurricanes do not have a team.
Switching to Rutgers for a moment. In men’s hoops, starting senior forward Eugene Omoruyii has entered the transfer protocol. Head Coach Steve Pikiell headed to Ontario to try to change his player’s mind. This comes after RU agreed to play in Toronto against South Carolina, to give Omoruyi a gift game near his hometown. Just before he put his name into the transfer protocol, South Carolina pulled out of the contest, replaced by St. Bonaventure. Rutgers will miss his leadership, size and scoring.
RU fired the baseball coach. Not a surprise given his team’s under .500 record. More so, because the team faltered at the end of the season, costing them a shot at making the BIG 10 playoffs for the first time. RU has been acknowledged to have the worst baseball facilities in the BIG 10. The addition of a new indoor facility across the street from the RAC will help. But unless there is an upgrade in the playing area (not that the crowd sizes have ever really warranted it), RU will always be looking uphill (a nod to the former RU Head Coach Fred Hill, who died recently), even when they are able to retain some of New Jersey’s better baseball talent (Jack Leiter, son of former Yankees and Mets pitcher Al Leiter and presently a star at Delbarton, committed to Vanderbilt, one of the premier baseball schools in the nation—provided he doesn’t go in the first round in the MLB Draft).
With all of this, Rutgers has a team headed to an NCAA Championship. The women’s rowing team made it to the big dance under the auspices of native Californian Justin Price, who rowed at UCLA. This is the first trip to the NCAA’s in 18 years. The women won their first Eastern Sprints, finished fourth in the BIG 10 and achieved a national ranking for the first time in history. They even have a rower who might make a national team. Not bad for a moribund program which barely survived until Price came aboard.
Rowing is actually older that football at RU. The men’s team has been dormant for years. I used to love to watch them practice and row on the tumultuous and unpredictable Raritan River, in a legacy sport that the Ivies, Wisconsin and West Coast schools were the big boys. I miss the men’s team and hope that with the infusion of conference money in 2021, the sport can be fully reinstated.
Meanwhile, we cheer for the women and hope for the best. It is great to see the upsurge at RU in wrestling and crew. What about the rest of its teams?
The Yankees and Red Sox are back at it this weekend. New York has won 31 out of its past 41 games and is 9 1/2 games in front of Boston and 2 1/2 games ahead of Tampa Bay. The replacement team has responded to the challenge, exceeding expectations. Didi Gregorius will return next week, the first of the key injured to make it back to competition. What will happen to Gio Urshela and Thairo Estrada, both batting over .300? What do you do with DJ LeMahieu, who has been a solid contributor playing second base while Gleybar Torres subbed for Didi at shortstop? A career .299 hitter, a two-time All-Star at Colorado and a fine defensive infielder, DJ is hitting .317 with six homers and 32 R.B.I. I hope everyone sticks with the team and gets enough future playing time.
The Yankees are up there in wins with the Twins, Astros, Dodgers, Cubs and Phillies. Minnesota and the the Dodgers have combined offense and pitching; Minnesota is on a pace to obliterate the home run record of the Yankees, and MLB recorded the most homers ever hit in a month in May.
Yet attendance is significantly down in MLB parks. I know this first hand, because on May 21st, we were with my F&M teammate Bob Byelick in the stands at Tropicana Field, a few rows behind the Dodgers’ dugout, watching Clayton Kershaw mow down the Rays. Certain Hall of Famer Kershaw pitched for the first time at the Trop. He went 6 1/2 innings, surrendering 6 hits, two earned runs, while walking one and striking out six as the Dodgers prevailed 7-3. It was not much of a game, as the Dodgers collected 12 hits off of a variety of Rays pitchers. There were no home runs.
Despite being called the worst park in baseball, we liked the Trop. Did it look a little old? Yes. Did it cause me to lose the ball a couple of times in the white roof? Yes—but a Toronto Blue Jays fielder lost one up there that resulted in an inside-the -park home run. So I am not alone. It was sure nicer than the Kingdome or the late, lamented Metrodome or even Toronto’s behemoth indoor ballpark.
Yet nobody goes. A crowd of 15,000+ was in attendance, largely LA fans in their uniforms or T-shirts. They were loud and they were happy. The Tampa crowd had little to cheer for. With the upper deck closed off, the Trop still looked empty at over 50% capacity. A few nights after, the Rays hosted the Blue Jays, and the smallest crowd in park history was present.
We were in Sarasota the next day and I can see why so few come north. I-75 is a slow mess and then there is the bridge to navigate. The same applies to those coming in from the north vis I-375—traffic and a bridge. St. Pete is in the middle of the Tampa Bay Area, but hard to get to. The city is going through a building boom, but those people are not going to be Rays fans. The Buccaneers and Lightning are in Tampa proper, so they draw from a larger population, closer by. Plus there are Spring Training sites all around—the Yankees being most prominent in Tampa. Our Hilton hotel was directly across from historic Al Lang Stadium, which was the Spring home for the Yankees, Cardinals and Mets for years and now is the home of the second tier Tampa Bay Rowdies soccer team (soccer aficionados will vividly recall in the heyday of the North American Soccer League that Tampa Bay and the New York Cosmos were two of the top teams in the league). There is no significant mass transit to access the stadium.
Maybe the Rays and their Florida brethren in Miami are unique—two teams in a state where sunshine is the norm and that people don’t appreciate domes. Or they are more symptomatic of a downswing in interest in baseball for a myriad of reasons. I believe that this younger generation has other interests and sports are not the primary form of entertainment. The cost to attend one game with a young family is staggering. Maybe the slow pace has something to do with it too—but I don’t think that is the primary reason MLB attendance is falling. Unless we are talking about the big, established markets like the Yankees, Red Sox, Cubs and Dodgers or the Phillies attendance surge with Bryce Harper and ditto with San Diego and Manny Machado, if the team isn’t in contention at this stage, people won’t go. Weather also may have been a factor, starting the season in March and with an incredible rainy season everywhere (the Angels were actually rained out in Anaheim—an exceptionally rare occasion).
I do not have a solution to this problem plaguing baseball. My view at the Trop was just fine and I knew two good teams were meeting in a major league setting. This trend is not good for the game. And to me, it is troubling.
On Saturday, Astors pitcher Justin Verlander passed Cy Young to take over 21st place on the all-time strike out list. That’s a big name in baseball he just passed. Verlander is 9-2 in 2019, as he is probably headed towards joining Young at Cooperstown if he keeps pitching like this. Or he can go home and console himself with the millions he has earned and the trophy wife he has—Kate Upton.
One other thing regarding baseball. The aftermath of the young child being struck by a batted ball in Houston should have been swift. Put up the protective netting to the foul poles. If MLB is so concerned about fan safety, this is a no brainer. If they are worried about viewing the game, put up plexiglass like in hockey arenas. Hockey fans don’t mind being safe. Shouldn’t the same sanity apply in baseball?
We made it to New Orleans to celebrate our daughter’s birthday. After a visit to the National World War II Museum on the day prior to Memorial Day, we took a walk on the campus of Tulane University. We passed the basketball arena, where I could peer in and see a small portion. Our walk led us to their current football stadium, Yulman Stadium. It is a pedestrian arena seating 30,000. Signs inside of it made me think back to another era—when football was bigger at Tulane.
Tulane was a founding member of the Southeastern Conference. It had a on campus stadium aptly named Tulane Stadium, which was the host of the Sugar Bowl game and had a capacity well over 80,000. The New Orleans Saints in their infancy played at Tulane Stadium until their current home, the Mercedes-Benz Superdome was ready for use. Green Wave football also played at the Superdome until Yulman Stadium was finished.
Tulane Stadium closed in 1975, with so many rich memories of Southern football etched on its grass and subsequent synthetic turf. I thought of game days when in state rival LSU, or neighboring state schools from Mississippi and Mississippi State came to town. The tailgates on the streets surrounding the campus must have been something. Football was king in New Orleans and nowhere more prominently at Tulane Stadium, affectionately known as the “Queen of College Football Stadiums.” Symbolically, the last Tulane home game was a loss to rival Ole Miss on a cold November afternoon. It also hosted three Super Bowl games and was the site of Tom Dempsey’s legendary 63 yard field goal to win a game for the Saints.
Now there are dorms, a recreation center and other campus buildings where Tulane Stadium once proudly had its brick and bleachers. Tulane has a newer stadium and a different football tradition. The best of the SEC don’t come to Yulman Stadium like they once traveled to play at Tulane Stadium. Coaches like Clark Shaughnessy , Bernie Bierman and the three SEC championships (more than 7 current members of the SEC) are nearly forgotten.
Even more faded are the recollections of the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association, the predecessor to the SEC. Tulane was an original member with the likes of founding institutions Alabama, Auburn, the University of the South, North Carolina , Virginia, Vanderbilt, Georgia and, surprisingly, Johns Hopkins. So many other schools belonged to this conference during its tenure—starting in 1895 when Tulane joined along with Clemson, Cumberland, Central (Eastern Kentucky, Kentucky, Southwestern Presbyterian (Rhodes), Texas, Mississippi A&M (State), Mercer, LSU and the University of Nashville. It is a veritable Who’s Who of Southern football and colleges.
Tulane left the SEC after the 1965 season, two years after Georgia Tech left. Another founding member, the University of the South, left the SEC in 1940. Rivalries with Auburn, Southern Mississippi, Mississippi and LSU ended, the latter in 1994. Tulane won the last LSU game played at Tulane Stadium before more than 86,000 fans. Overall, LSU dominated the series, but Tulane holds an edge over Auburn, trails Mississippi by 15 games, and is rekindling a series with Southern Mississippi in the future.
Tulane’s decision to leave the SEC was based on changing philosophies, an inability to compete on a scholarship basis along with tightening admissions. They became a wanderer, playing an independent schedule through 1996 before joining Conference USA and now they reside in the American Athletic Conference, a far cry form the days of Tulane Stadium.
So that was my stadium tour from this trip. I didn’t dare ask to see the Marlins’ New Orleans AAA affiliate’s stadium. I had enough history in one day on the Tulane campus and at the National World War II Museum.
I would have sworn that while walking through the Tulane campus, the white-haired 70’s ish man on a bicycle who rode by was Archie Manning, the former New Orleans Saints QB who played his games at Tulane Stadium and is the father of Peyton and Eli. This came after we passed the Manning’s restaurant nearby the National World War II Museum. Coincidence?
I think I had seen enough Louisiana ghosts for one day. For sure.
No comments:
Post a Comment