NBA and NHL playoffs.
If you faded the favorites, you made $$$$$.
NBA: No Nets or Lakers in NBA finals.
You made money if you spread some cash on a few longer shots and had the Suns in the West or the Hawks or Bucks in the East.
Same thing in the NHL with the Lightning and the Canadiens.
But I want to talk again about NBA coaches allowing three-point shots on the other team’s final possession when the other team trails by three.
I half-jokingly said a couple of weeks ago that there might be a memo from the league office telling coaches NOT to foul the other team in that situation at game’s end to give fans a more entertaining and exciting finish.
Now I am CONVINCED there must be a memo like that, because I have watched 277 game-ending scenarios in the playoffs this year in which one team trailed by three in the final moments, and NOT A SINGLE TIME have I seen the team ahead intentionally foul to prevent the potential tying three-point shot.
This is a no-brainer, folks, and if it’s a no-brainer, it means I can understand it.
Apparently TNT’s Reggie Miller doesn’t understand it, because he talked about how he can remember a couple of occasions in which, after the foul to prevent the three-pointer, the other team then made the first free throw, then intentionally missed the second free throw, got the offensive rebound and made a game-tying two-point basket.
Really? I guess Reggiue Miller saw that happen successfully maybe twice in 20 years.
As opposed to the game-tying three-point shot, which happens twice a week in the NBA.
This is insane.
Even if the three-point shooter only makes that shot 25 or 30% of the time — and these days, the best of them make it more than that — that is a much better chance of tying the game than Reggie Miller’s preposterous make a foul shot, miss a foul shot, rebound and make a two-point scenario.
Let’s move to NHL playoffs ridiculousness, and this has nothing to do with the hockey.