June 5, 2024

Hello readers, welcome to the latest issue of O For 4. Thank you if you are a repeat reader. This week, I discuss the NBA and NHL Finals, the latest from the French Open, Justin Jefferson’s new contract with the Minnesota Vikings, and, lastly, the late, great, Bill Walton. Please leave your comments on any and all of this week’s topics at the end.

1. NBA & NHL Finals: And Then There Were Two

Let’s get this going with some coverage on the NBA and NHL Finals, now that the matchups are set.  

In the NBA, we have the Boston Celtics, who had been the best-performing team all season, taking on the Dallas Mavericks, who had arguably been the best-performing team over the last month of the regular season.  Boston breezed through the Eastern Conference Playoffs, losing a total of two games against the eighth-, fourth, and third-seeds.  Dallas has had the tougher path, taking out the fourth-, first, and third-seeds, but still never going past a game six.

Boston probably has the deeper and better overall roster.  Three players (Jayson Tatum, Jalen Brown, and Jrue Holiday) have been all-stars in 2023 or 2024, if not both, while two more (Kristaps Porzingis and Al Horford) have been in the past.  But Dallas may have the best player in the NBA in Luka Doncic.  Sure, that is a subjective comment, but there are some objective arguments for that being true.  Among all playoff players who made it out of round 2, he leads the way in points per game, after leading the whole league during the regular season.  He also leads all playoff performers in assists per game, a stat he was second in during the regular season.  Let’s put the totals aside for a minute.  He has also come up in the clutch moments for his team, most notably knocking down a game-winning triple to win game 2 of the Minnesota series and then having a monster 20-point first quarter in the knockout fifth game to really take any suspense out of that game.

Boston has been here recently, having represented the East in 2022.  This version of Dallas has not been here.  Two players have been to the Finals with previous teams, Kyrie Irving with Cleveland from 2015-2018 and Derrick Jones Jr. with the 2020 Heat.  As a whole, this will be their maiden Finals trip.  If Doncic does plant himself as the league’s top player, as I discussed in last week’s piece, it would be no surprise to see them back here again repeatedly.

So what do I predict will happen?  Well, I have been saying for a while now that the Celtics will win it all, going back to the regular season.  On the other hand, I have been picking against the Mavericks in every round and getting it wrong.  How does the saying go?  “Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice, shame on me.  Fool me thrice, I’m a fool.”  Something like that.  So now I need to ask myself if I want to risk being fooled a fourth time and stick with my initial prediction or do I want to jump ship at the last possible opportunity and stop getting burned.

My answer to that dilemma will be revealed at the end of this section.  But first, let’s get to the ice.  The Stanley Cup Finals get going a couple days after the NBA Finals with a matchup of the two most geographically distant teams in the NHL (by plane; if you drive, Vancouver and Florida are the furthest apart).

Similar to the NBA storyline, the last two standing in the NHL includes a recent finalist and a team doing it for the first time.  Florida went this far last year, though last year they were the eighth and final team to make it from the East.  Edmonton has not been this far since falling to Carolina in the 2006 Finals when, obviously, none of the current Oilers were on the roster.  These two teams have succeeded this year for very different reasons.  In the regular season, Edmonton was fourth in the NHL in goals scored with 292 (Colorado was first with 302 if you were curious).  In these playoffs, the two leading goal scorers and the top four in points are all Oilers.  On the other hand, Florida led the NHL this year in goals against, and in the playoffs, they have the second best goals against average (Nashville, who was eliminated in the first round, is the only team with a better mark).

In regards to roster strength, I can’t make the same claim as I did about the NBA finalists, where one team is better all-around while the other has the best individual player.  No, it would appear that Edmonton has more overall scoring as well as the best player, Connor McDavid.  What Florida does have going for them is a goalie who is winning the games for them.  Sergei Bobrovski has a ridiculous 2.2 GAA and .908 save percentage in these playoffs.  None of this is to say that Edmonton’s keeper, Stuart Skinner, is a slouch, but Bobrovski has been on a slightly higher level.

What happens, as the old saying goes, when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?  That seems to be the question that summarizes this upcoming matchup.  Could it come down to home-ice advantage?  If so, advantage Panthers.  Could it come down to power plays?  If so, advantage Oilers.  Could it come down to getting more shots on net?  Advantage Panthers.  Or could it be penalty killing?  Advantage Oilers.

In the end, I think we will see that the “Hardest trophy to win in professional sports” will go to the team that can do the most heavy lifting, and in this case, that means finding ways to score.  So yes, Canada, “The True North”, you are getting the Stanley Cup for the first time since 1993, and Edmonton wins their sixth championship in franchise history and first since their dynasty of the 1980s.  

Oilers in Six!

Six seems to be a safe number, but that means that unlike the Stanley Cup Finals, the NBA Finals will see its champion clinch on the road.  

Celtics in Six!

2. French Open: Some Mistakes Were Made

Last week, I promised more tennis coverage in this issue, and it is too soon in the life of this blog for me to start breaking promises.  As the French Open races to the final matches, we have seen an amazing lack of major upsets.  As this year’s tournament reaches the quarterfinal round, the men’s bracket sees all eight remaining players seeded no lower than 11th.  And the women have seven players remaining seeded 12 or higher, and one unseeded player.  On both sides of the field, we had the potential to see semifinals featuring the top four seeds until the news came out that Men’s #1 Novak Djokovic had to withdraw ahead of his QF match due to an injury.  And then those 12th-seeded and unseeded women knocked off the fourth and second seeds, respectively in the QFs today.  But overall, this tournament is seeing its best players advance.  And that should provide us with some excellent matches in the final days.

But, as it always is in Paris, the big story is Rafael Nadal.  As I said in my entry last week, we were not sure what version of Nadal we were going to get.  The 14-time French Open champion has been limited over the last two years and had not looked like he was fully rehabbed in his clay court tune-up appearances.  As a result of his minimal play of late, he was coming into this year’s tournament unseeded.  And the fate of tennis’ draw protocols left him to play #4 Alexander Zverev.  While Nadal looked better than we had seen from him recently, he still was overmatched and fell in straight sets to Zverev.  No official word from Rafa yet if that was his final time playing in the tournament he has dominated for nearly two decades, but judging from his post-match words to the crowd, I would bet it was.  

In the first issue of O For 4, I recognized the possibility that sometimes pro sports are fixed.  Maybe not winners and losers, but other aspects like draft selections could be manipulated.  So here I would like to argue that there absolutely are cases where the leagues or, in this case, the pro tours SHOULD rig things.  The French Open needed to fix their drawing of the tournament field in a way to help Nadal have an easier path and a chance to win a few last matches.  In tennis, if a player is unseeded for a Grand Slam event (there are 32 seeded players in a 128 person field), then that means they will face a seeded player in the first or second round.  I am here to argue that they should have manipulated the drawing to have Nadal get an unseeded opponent for the first round and a player in the 25-32 range for his second round match.  That way, he could ease his way into this tournament.  I guarantee if he would have played the way in the Zverev match against an unseeded player and against a player seeded 25-32, he would have won those matches.  Maybe those wins would have helped him create some momentum and he could have even knocked off a higher seeded player and maybe even made it to the second week.

The fans of tennis deserved that.  More importantly, Rafael Nadal deserved it.  The organizers of the French Open committed a massive disservice by not figuring a way to protect Nadal in the field, regardless if it was by legit means (i.e. awarding him seeding on an honorary basis) or by more clandestine methods.  That story deserved a much better ending than the one it got.

3. Justin Jefferson’s Contract: Too Much, Too Little, or Just Right?

It was only a week ago that I was on here discussing the quarterback market in the NFL in the wake of Jared Goff’s contract extension, which made him the second highest paid QB, and now I am back to discuss the value of the wide receiver position after Monday’s news of the extension Justin Jefferson signed with the Minnesota Vikings.  If you had not yet read the numbers, Jefferson’s extension is a four-year deal worth $140 million.  Not only is this the highest contract ever given to a WR, it is the highest contract ever given to a non-quarterback.

Last night, on my podcast, “dOllar betZ”, my cohost and I discussed which position in football should be the highest paid aside from QBs.  There were three positions considered: defensive ends/edge rushers, blindside offensive tackles, and wide receivers.  My cohost argued that the defenders tasked with rushing the quarterbacks and setting the edges were the next most valuable.  I, on the other hand, stumped for the receivers.  My argument was that in today’s NFL, with the rule changes over the years that have continuously been made to promote big plays and scoring, the wide receivers, particularly the tallest and fastest among them who are known as X-receivers in today’s parlance, are the guys who have the most impact on the games.  Most of the members of the 100-reception club in 2023 fell into this category, with the likes of Jamarr Chase and CeeDee Lamb using there physical gifts to dominate the box scores.  These best-of-the-best WR1s get targeted by their QBs ten times in a game and are usually good for hauling in seven or eight of those targets.

For DEs/Edges, the stat that most signifies their impact on a game is pressures.  In the 2023, the player who led the NFL in this category was Aidan Hutchinson (Go Lions!), who recorded 62 pressures over the campaign.  The next highest total was 50.  So that means that the player who was the most disruptive to opposing offensive linemen and quarterbacks only created those disruptions less than four times a game.  Obviously, there are other stats which can be impactful (forced fumbles, recovered fumbles, interceptions) as well as more subtle plays such as tackling a rusher which can become more important based on the situation of the game at the time of that play, but then again, there are also other things that receivers can do to be impactful beyond just making catches.

So in this case, I feel like I won the argument; WRs should be getting the next most money.  But how much should that be?  And let’s look at Minnesota’s specific situation.  Was this really the move they should have made?  A year earlier, coming off their 13-4 season in 2022 where they earned the 3-seed in the NFC, I would have said absolutely.  A year later, having gone 7-10 in a season done in by injuries to their QB and to Jefferson (he only played 10 games) only to let that QB walk in free agency (not to mention their best defensive player) and draft a new quarterback who is very much a question mark, it feels like this team is in a rebuild mode.  

With two years left on Jefferson’s contract still before the newly-signed extension even kicks in, this feels rushed from the Vikings perspective.  That is not to say it was the wrong thing to do.  Justin Jefferson deserves to be the highest paid receiver in the league.  Since being drafted ahead of the 2020 season, he has the sixth-most receptions and second-most receiving yards, and he may have been first in both categories if it were not for the games missed last year with the injury.  He is as good of a weapon as there is in football.  And certainly, on a team that is known to be ready to be a contender, this would be a no-brainer.  

But what happens if neither of the Vikings newly acquired QBs (Sam Darnold from free agency and J.J. McCarthy from the draft) is the answer?  What if the rebuild gets pushed back further?  Do they really want to risk wasting the prime years of Jefferson’s career with a quarterback who cannot utilize his talents effectively?  With his massive salary, now he is priced out from most teams from being able to trade for him, so the Vikings also are unlikely to be able to flip him for future assets in the event that they are not contenders in the next few years.

The timeline just feels off.  This is a move that a team with its franchise quarterback in place and with top talent at all levels of the defense does.  This is not the move that a team with this many questions does.  So while I am happy for Jefferson for getting this well-deserved deal, I have a feeling this is not going to end well for the parties involved.  Maybe Jefferson will be the next high-profile receiver demanding a trade away from a team that is not able to take advantage of his abilities.  Or maybe the Vikings end up having to cut him at some point if the situation becomes disruptive to the locker room.  It’s happened before, and it will certainly happen again at some point.  This could be it.

Jefferson’s agent gets an A+ (for now), but the Vikings get a C (for now) on this one.

4. Bill Walton: Remembering A Legend

I did not think I would have to write about the passing of a sports icon this soon after beginning this blog.  I’ll be honest, I am a bit nervous about this assignment.  I hope I can do it justice.

Nearly two weeks ago, the world lost Bill Walton.  Bill is regularly referred to as one of the best college basketball players of all time, and he probably would have been one of the best pros too if it were not for a career nagged by injuries.  After his playing career, he carved out a great second career as a commentator for NBA games.

Now, Walton’s last year playing in the NBA was the 1986-87 season, and by then he was a reserve player on a powerhouse Boston Celtics team, so I was just too young to have any memories of him as a player.  But, as I got older, he did become someone who I would regularly see on TV and someone I would hear stories about from his colleagues.  And somewhere along the timeline, I happened to learn the other famous fact about Bill Walton, that fact being that he was a massive Deadhead (Grateful Dead fan for the unaware).  A Deadhead myself, I felt instantly attached to this character, though it was a bit odd.  I had always felt a massive rift between my sports friends and my jam-band-listening hippie friends.  So seeing this famous person who was so integral to the world of basketball but who was also “The biggest Deadhead in the world” (drummer Mickey Hart’s words) was in some ways a comfort to me.  It was the universe telling me that I, too, could enjoy both things immensely.  And it is from the world of music, not basketball, that I have my Bill Walton story.  

In July of 2015, the four living members of the Grateful Dead joined up with a few other musicians for a series of concerts at Chicago’s Soldier Field called “Fare Thee Well” which would be the last time the four of them would share a stage together.  It was 50 years since the band first formed as well as 20 years since the original frontman, Jerry Garcia, passed away.  Soldier Field was also the location of the Grateful Dead’s last show with Jerry still alive before they would go through a series of incarnations with various lineups and new members.  Naturally, I had to get tickets to all three nights of that final run.

Bill Walton had to be there too.  Standing at 6’11”, Bill Walton was often easy to spot in a crowd.  And on one of those nights, the Soldier Field cameraman found Bill among the fans standing in the general admission floor section.  In the middle of a song and with a sold-out stadium full of sentimental fans, a live feed of Bill popped up on the two giant screens to either side of the stage… and the crowd went crazy.  The “Woooo-hoooo”s were flying from every which way and everyone who saw the big man on the screens was dancing with their arms in the air in pure excitement.  And we all saw the moment that Bill realized he was on TV, which drew a smile and a wave from him.  However, the cameraman made the mistake of keeping the focus on Bill for too long, and it became obvious that Bill became uncomfortable with the continued screentime, eventually stopping to dance, crossing his arms, and changing from a smile to a look of disturbance.  Thankfully the cameraman picked up on the not so subtle cues and cut away.

When I heard the news of his passing, this was the story that came to mind.  Obviously, I don’t have any memories of his playing days.  All I did have was that single moment from a concert and all the hours he spent entertaining me as the commentator on games I was watching.  And that is when I realized why he was so great in that role.  Bill Walton did not want to be the center of attention at a concert; that role was reserved for the band on stage.  Similarly, as a commentator, Bill never made it about him, something that I cannot say about many of his colleagues.  He told stories, he talked about the game, and he discussed the players and coaches involved.  But he did not try to be some created character and he did not spend time on camera discussing his own greatness.  He commentated on games the way a Deadhead enjoys the concert, in a calm and collected and joyous and jovial manner.  He was there to go along for the ride of that particular game, regardless of what kind of game it was, and we were fortunate to have him watching the game with us.  

He was larger than life but never bigger than the moment.  He brought a passion to everything he did, and because he had several passions, he became this transcendent character in various segments of American pop-culture.  Certainly, he will be missed by those who knew him personally as well as by many who did not.

Fare thee well, Bill Walton. Hope you are getting all the basketball and Grateful Dead music you desire up there.