All posts by Ai

Cavs

The Hawks took their historical loss last night like real pros

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From Cleveland.com:

“CLEVELAND, Ohio – A few of the Atlanta Hawks players spoke to cleveland.com after Wednesday’s 123-98 rout by the Cleveland Cavaliers and voiced their objection with the way the Cavaliers went about breaking the three-point record.

“It’s a certain way of being a professional,” Paul Millsap said to Cleveland.com. “I’m not mad about it, but just being professionals man. If that’s how you want to approach it, that’s how you approach it. I think our team and our organization has class and I don’t think we would have continued to do that, but other organizations do other things so what can you do about it?”

Al Horford echoed his frontcourt mate’s sentiments.

“We probably wouldn’t do anything like that [if we were in that position],” he told cleveland.com. “…It’s hard to say, but I would say no.”

Kent Bazemore implied that what goes around, comes around.

“I’m a firm believer in karma,” the small forward relayed to cleveland.com. “Maybe we’ll be the team to break that record soon. Everyone knows how they play. They get out in front and they’re a totally different team. It is what it is. We’ll see them again. That wasn’t Game 4. That was only Game 2. They still have to beat us two more times before they can really celebrate anything.””

Hey Paul, Al and Kent. So you don’t want a team to make a record number of three pointers against you is what you’re saying. I get that. If only there was something you could do, collectively as a unit, to try and prevent a shot from your opponent from going through the hoop.

Oooooh ooh oh! Maybe try and mix in a little defense every now and again? Just spitballing here, probably way off base, just the first thing that popped in my head.

Now I’m no basketball czar, but I’m guessing if you baby birds didn’t let us shoot 8 of 12 from deep in the first, we wouldn’t have ended up heaving close to 50 before the final buzzer.

And even then, after that first quarter, you still had three other 12-minute chunks of time to try some new things like putting hands in people’s faces.

This is the NBA playoffs, not a CYO league. The #1 seed in your conference isn’t going to stop shooting threes when they have a chance to set an NBA record and their opponent continues to let them. Sorry buddies.

“I think our team and our organization has class and I don’t think we would have continued to do that,” – Paul Millsap

The team and organization that held a promotional night completely centered around an app whose sole function is to help drunk people find other drunk people willing to bang them? Twice? Is that the organization you’re referring to, Paulie?

All we did was hit a shit ton of three pointers. You guys are facilitating sex out of wedlock. Classy.

Gameplan: let LeBron shoot, don’t let JR shoot.

LeBron makes 4 of 6 from deep, JR makes 7 of 13.

Hawks – “They shouldn’t do that!”

Bye bye birdies.

https://twitter.com/MaNfrediNicK/status/728026570103902210

Indians

FYI, selfies look glorious on the new Progressive Field scoreboard

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progself

In a game that featured three hits and a bomb from Francisco Lindor, six innings of stellar pitching from Josh Tomlin and a two-out, two-run double from Mike Napoli to give the Tribe the lead early, it was Kyle Chaboudy who delivered the unequivocal play of the night at the corner of Carnegie and Ontario.

Regular selfies (ones that are taken for the purpose of showcasing things in the foreground, like the people taking it) have long since crossed over into the realm of ridicule. It is allowed, nay, encouraged to make fun of people for taking them.

In most cases, there are people in literally every direction. Ask one of them to take your picture.

You’re doing your country and, quite honestly, all of mankind a disservice if you don’t turn to the person next to you and point & laugh at the two duck-faced bimbos rotating their phone at every conceivable angle with their outstretched arm in an effort to hide as many of their chins as possible.

I mean it. They deserve it.

But selfies with a purpose, that take advantage of an opportunity to seize a moment that doesn’t come around often, those get you in the hearts of the American people and on the front page of Reddit. It’s those men and women who snap selfies to get those duck-faced bimbos in the background that our founding fathers had in mind when they talked about a “perfect Union.”

So I guess what I’m trying to say is, thank you Kyle.

 

 

 

That blog got away from me.

 

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Indians

A better April in 2016 isn’t saying much about the Indians

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cant

I was gone for one week.

It was Saturday morning, the 23rd of April. I got up bright and early, sans the bright – was on my way to Hopkins to kick off a week long vacation down in St. Pete by 4 AM. The Tribe had just taken game 1 in Detroit on the back of Josh Tomlin. I obviously didn’t know it at the time, but they’d go on to sweep the Tigers in the Motor City for the first time since people started wearing shoes. 9-7 heading into a 3 gamer against the caboose of the American League in Minnesota, followed by 3 more against the no-demeaning-introduction-needed Philadelphia Phillies? We were finally gonna have ourselves an April folks.

Three walk-off losses in four days. Five one-run losses in six days. One Cy Young candidate lost for 28-42 days.

I was gone for one week.

The dust has settled, the bodies have been cleared and we’re left with the fourth sub-.500 April in Terry Francona’s four Aprils in Cleveland. Underwhelming, considering getting off to a “hot start” was the overwhelming takeaway from coaches and players alike when they broke camp in Goodyear a month ago.

Here’s how things stood before the calendar turned to May:

april16

Not great.

Comparatively speaking, though, not that bad.

aptito

I know it’s not great. I wish they would get off to better starts. They wish they could get off to better starts. But at this point, until they have another chance to try again next year, it is what it is. And “what it is” is that it could be worse.

I caught myself using this line in an argument a while back – “If we played .500 ball in April and close to .500 ball against the Tigers, we’d have made the playoffs every year since Tito got here.” So like we always do here at Bottlegate, I decided to put my money where my mouth is and try to back up my point with lackadaisical research and questionable logic.

It’s real simple – I wanted to apply the Indians winning percentage in April this year to each of the past three seasons to see if that change in record would have changed the outcome after game 162.

aprapply

2013 was basically a wash, but we made the playoffs anyway, so ha. Three more wins and three less losses in ’14 and ’15 would surely launch us to the top of the (Wild Card) table.

apresults

That argument sounded so much better in my head. Although I stand by it if we could have managed a winning % better than what you get for putting your name on an exam in college against the Tigers.

 

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