Lakers, Clippers and the beginning of a new NBA season

Let's get you caught up in the world of the NBA. The new season tips off Tuesday night but first there's a few things you need to know.

CAVS

Lebron James is entering his 12th season so we have a pretty good picture of who he is and isn't. He the perfect player to build around but not someone who can join any team. He's been in the last 5 finals and won 2 of them. Look to see if he can do it again and bring a title to Cleveland. 

Thompson & Love are the Cavs power forwards. They are the key to the teams success. Thompson compliments Lebron extremely well and is allowed to play to his potential within the offenses sets. Love however compliments Lebron well as well but doesn't get to play to his potential due to his rebounding style and lack of dunking. Watching these two play together and to see how they get utilized this year is the Lebron and coach Blatt's biggest concern this year. Thompson held out all summer for a big contract but the Cavs gave his money to Love. Thompson did get a big contract however and no one knows where the money came from but we will see how the Love and Thompson dynamic play out. 

CLIPPERS 

Over the summer Doc Rivers added Lance Stephenson, Josh Smith, Paul Pierce, Cole Aldrich, Wes Johnson and a rookie named Dawson who looks like a baby Draymond Green. They retained DJ after an emoji battle and some shady lack of communication from Jordan to Cuban. Nevertheless he's back with JJ, CP and Blake making this the best roster the Clippers have had in franchise history. This puts a boom or bust pressure on the squad. I believe Doc to be overhyped but this year he gets to prove just how good he is.

DUB NATION 

The Golden State Warriors are the defending champions but have gotten little to no respect during the summer. If you are one of these people you believe they didn't deserve the title let me leave you this...
1-They won 67 games in the western conference finishing with the first seed
2-They are led by the defending MVP, the first MVP since Dirk in '07 who gets 75% of his points from jump shots. He's doesn't live above the rim.
3-They had the second best offensive rating and best defensive rating in the entire league.
4-They were led by a rookie coach.

This sounds like they were the best team in the league last year... So... let's give them their respect. They are not locks to win again this year but they did deserve their title last year. Watch to see how they do this year.

GO SPURS GO

The example franchise for the last 20 years struck gold again after signing LaMarcus Aldridge. So, what makes them so special? It's in how they are ran and operated. They know their team recipe and the ingredients that make it work. They don't go after just any ole player. They only after players who match ingredients. They never scrapped their team. I am excited to see how this team performs this year and how Kawhi Leonard emerges into a top 3 player in the league.

LAKERS 

After 4 disappointing seasons Laker fans are not looking for a championship rather they are wanting to see if the front office knows what they are doing. They have young stars in Clarkson and Randle and still have Kobe. Some Laker fans including me were very disappointed in drafting D'Angelo Russell. He's hyped to be a top point guard and can be a missing link in Los Angeles. I disagree but we shall soon see how he performs and fits the squad.

STORY LINES TO FOLLOW
1-Harmony in Sac Town
2-Lawson to Houston
3-Jabari's return
4-The Bulls
5-PG13 at Power Forward

So, who's ready to tip off the 70th season of the NBA?


To conclude I would like to wish the Saunders family condolences. Til next time...

-Schlierman

Dodgers fire Mattingley and Cubs lose

Mattingly getting fired was simply to show they are doing something for the team. The team failed to succeed at the right time more then Don Mattingly failed to put them in the position to succeed.

Sorry the Cubs lost. The Mets are really good though. I thought their pitching would be begin to tire, but getting this much time off as they wait for the AL team to claim that division, may be enough to keep their staff of 1/2 tier pitchers fresh. The biggest question for the Mets is how their arms do with so many young arms who haven't pitched this many innings.

Baseball Wrap Up

In May I wrote a forecast for the season which can be found here: http://4cornersports.blogspot.com/2015/05/baseball-is-sound-of-summer.html

So lets take a look at some of those predictions as well as forecast for the post season.

Offensively, my predictions seemed to be spot on. Josh Donaldson is looking to be the AL MVP and Kris Bryant could be the Rookie of the year. As predicted, Kris Bryant hit 26 home runs, although, his batting average was a bit better then expected. The kid’s a beast.

On the other side, Joc Pederson and Josh Hamilton struggled in the 2nd half as expected. Actually more then I had expected. While his home run numbers were at 26 on the dot, his batting average dropped to just above the mendoza line at .210. Josh Hamilton on the other hand had a batting average very close to .260 but never had the at bats to get 14 home runs. He was on pace for about that many, however with 8 home runs in 170 at bats.

Bryce Harper broke out as I expected but I never foresaw him doing THIS http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/players/8875/splits/. His season has become a historic one. If you want to look into the numbers, you’ll see they’re rivaled only by names like Mantle, Hornsby, Ruth, Bonds and similar household names.That’s in terms of best seasons EVER. I’m giving myself a bit of a break on this one because I would have felt crazy if I’d predicted the numbers given, and you’d probably call me crazy and decided to never read my posts again. And we don’t want that. But to get some perspective, Bryce harper was on pace for about 20 home runs last year and 150 hits. I predicted 32 home runs and around 20 or 30 more hits. Instead, he doubled last years home run pace, and had roughly 20 more hits then that this year while he also doubled his walk rate with about 60 more bbs! It’s hard to guess about his future but keep in mind, he didn’t really break out until May. April (and technically a shortened October) was his only month he hit below .300, but since then he never stopped swinging a hot bat. 

Many of us joked “remember when we thought Bryce Harper would battle with Mike Trout for best player each year? hehehe”. Well now that looks like a real possibility. And keep in mind Trout is a better fielder. He is. The only fielding tool Bryce has over Trout is his arm. But imagine if Harper had stayed behind the plate as a catcher? Bryce harper may have been the clear number 1 value. This is still assuming he could stay healthy, but a lot of his problems have been from running into things in the outfield, so who’s to say he would have gotten hurt as often behind the plate?

So be before I get too thrilled with myself, we’ll move on to pitching which I was much more off on. While DeGrom was superb, and Carrasco had a good enough last month (and I maintained to be cautious), so I’ll call those a win, there were plenty that went wrong. McHugh, Richards, Pineda and Odorizzi never quite panned out. They all have great stuff, and have shown flashes of being fantastic, but never put it together enough to really have a fantastic season. 

The sell pitchers turned out to be more on point. Wacha still had good turns but as September rolled along, he fell apart. He truly is a good pitcher, but his numbers lead me to believe he’s hurt. Either way, he’s been doing no one any good in his final month of pitching. Archer continued a solid campaign, but returned to normalcy, posting an era between 3.20 and 3.30 as predicted. Kazmir also struggled big time as that month continued, but he also had some very good turns. While he definitely didn’t continue to be the pitcher he was early in the season, he still was a fairly reliable pitcher, more so then I expected, so I’ll take that one as me being wrong, which leads to the team predictions…

The New York Mets! This one was a bit of a reach on my part, as they were competing with the team favored to win it all. The Nationals. However Syndergaard proved to be a highly valuable pitcher who won them some games as soon as he was called up. While there’s plenty of competition, he may even get the call for ROY. Kris Bryant continues to be the favorite for ROY, but don’t sleep on Syndergaard if he gets hot in the post season and Bryant doesn’t. I like Syndergaard to have a solid post season, while I think Bryant may struggle out the womb in his first playoff birth. They’re both very talented players but if Syndergaard flourishes and Bryant flutters, that may be the push to give Syndergaard enough votes for ROY.

POST SEASON PREDICTIONS

Post season is one of the toughest things to predict as it’s hardly ever the best team who wins it all. This year, I’m predicting it will be however.

The TORONTO BLUE JAYS will win it all BUT ONLY if they can gain some momentum out of the gate. They play the Rangers who have been hitting very well lately, which could give them enough moment to knock off the Blue Jays before they pass go. If that happens, I think it’ll be the Astros to win it all. As it stands however, the Blue Jays have the offense and with newly acquired pitchers, David Price and Marcus Stroman, the pitching to win it all. The National league Mets will make it to the final showdown, but with all those young arms, not used to pitching late into the season, and their one veteran pitcher (Matt Harvey) on a pitch limit, their going to really start to struggle as it gets further into the race. I think they have enough to get there, but experience and arm strength will be the determining factor that holds them back.

So make your bets, find your local spot to watch them games and enjoy the fall season as baseball comes to an end!

See you next year, and in the mean time, enjoy some football!

-Alan Clark