Grantland is brimming with NBA playoff excitement. You may have already noticed. Since we couldn't wait for the games to get going, we asked our staff to make three predictions — one realistic, one reach, one pipe dream.
Chuck Klosterman
Realistic: Whoever ends up playing Dallas (Ed. note: It's Oklahoma City.) loses (or very nearly loses) in seven games. I realize they've had a bad season. But they have a guy who can score with his back to the basket from 10 feet away, and that's the single-most important aspect of any playoff series.
Last month, we asked our panel of experts a bunch of people we work with whether Ricky Williams was overrated, underrated, or properly rated. This month, we're taking a look at March Madness. Does anyone honestly think this great American tradition is overrated? (Spoiler alert: yep.)
Chuck Klosterman
The NCAA basketball tournament is my favorite event of the year. I support it unconditionally. However, it's become slightly overrated. I want to deny this, but I can't. It gets hammered by its own potential. Part of this is because we only remember historical moments that are awesome (and then unconsciously meld them into one collective memory of what "the NCAA tournament" is usually like). Another part has to do with two things that have changed within the past 10 years. It's possible both of them could be viewed as improvements, but it doesn't feel like it.
Something disappointing and inevitable occurred at the conclusion of Saturday's Mid-American Conference title game. Akron trailed Ohio 64-61 with 6.2 seconds on the clock, 94 feet from the basket. Recognizing the situation, Ohio coach John Groce made what proved to be the right decision: The Bobcats intentionally fouled a Zip with 3.1 seconds remaining, forcing Alex Abreu to make the front end and then miss the second on purpose (which, to his chagrin, bounced in anyway). Ohio won by a point and advanced to the NCAA tournament, which it deserved. But this is a bad way for a basketball game to end. The very idea of a team with the lead intentionally fouling sometimes makes “winning sense,” but it’s vaguely unsporting and antithetical to how the game is played 99.9 percent of the time. It abuses a technicality.
For your holiday weekend listening pleasure: Didn't you know Chuck Klosterman would have a unique take on Linsanity? That ended up being our launching point for … well, I don't know what happened after that. We argued about the Emmy process, the point of TV shows, whether I'm too critical of NBA coaches, who's the NBA MVP and why HBO churns out the same type of show over and over again. I swear, it made sense as it was happening.
Baltimore Ravens running back Ricky Williams announced his retirement on Tuesday, much to the dismay of football fans, potheads, and yoga aficionados everywhere. His decision also sparked a Grantland office debate over whether the 34-year-old Williams, who spent 11 seasons in the NFL, was overrated, underrated, or properly rated. Here are the results.
There’s limited value in writing about things that didn’t actually happen (“What if the South had won the Civil War?” “What if Winona Ryder had been cast in The Godfather III instead of Sofia Coppola?” Etc.). But something almost happened on Sunday that’s worth considering, at least briefly: For six hours, it looked like Chip Kelly was going to become coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. By the time I woke up Monday, the rumor was already extinct; Kelly was staying at Oregon. And that bland reality destroyed the mesmerizing unreality of what he might have done to the NFL.
What is one to make of a Jewish person who is fascinated by Adolf Hitler? How do we comprehend a man who goes out of his way to study the most hated thing he can imagine? In 99.9 percent of all possible scenarios, such paradoxical absorption would be dark and meaningful. It would be twisted and bizarre, and it would be perceived as the ultimate manifestation of self-loathing. Unless, of course, the Jewish person in question was Al Davis. Then it makes perfect sense. Of course Al Davis was interested in the Nazis. Of course he was. Somehow, it would have been more surprising if he hadn’t been.
We thought it would be fun for Chuck Klosterman and Michael Weinreb to debate this year’s college football season, via e-mail. Turns out it was really only fun for us.
Klosterman
Good morning, Michael J. Weinreb. I was recently asked to have an e-mail conversation with you about college football, because — as we all know — there is nothing the average consumer enjoys more than reading the e-mails of two unemployed people they've never met. I was initially going to start our exchange with "The SUPERHOT questions for 2011," which typically involves all the issues everyone in the media is talking about: Who will win the national championship, who will win the Heisman Trophy, and how Oregon and Miami will deal with the dark clouds of impropriety that engulf their respective programs. However, I'm going to take things in a different direction. I'd like to hear your opinion on a variety of questions that absolutely no one is talking about. They are as follows:
1. Who do you think will win the Mid-American Conference?
2. Who do you think will finish second in the voting for the Doak Walker Award?
3. Who will have a better statistical season: Florida quarterback John Brantley (now being coached by new Gator offensive coordinator Charlie Weis) or Texas quarterback Garrett Gilbert (now being pushed by Colt McCoy's little brother, the oddly named Case McCoy).
4. If Boise State were in the SEC East, how many games would it win?
5. If Nebraska immediately wins the Big 10, does that essentially prove that the Big 10 is not an elite conference?
