Part I: Sports
Pardon my self-indulgence, but I will survey them starting from those in which I'm most interested at this moment. What will be present is the level of passion in my recounting.
Basketball : In the NBA, we head toward the real thing. By that, I mean the playoffs--including even the gimmicky "Play-in" rounds, in which the teams with the 7th to 10th best regular-season records in each Conference have single-game matchups seeking to earn the #7 and #8 seeds in the full-scale best-of-7 playoff rounds. Those spots--which would then face #2 and #1 in the first round--would not seem so prized, but two recent title winners with large fan bases, large payrolls, and big aspirations to return to the top--the Warriors and Lakers--are likely to occupy spots in those high-pressure Play-in games. If they were to get through, they would pose a real threat to the teams seeded #1 and #2.
As things stand now, those top spots are occupied by newcomers to the top echelon; their regular-season performances have been major surprises. One of these surprises is the Minnesota TimberWolves: their acquisition at the trade deadline a year ago of 7+-foot Rudy Gobert didn't seem to work out, but this year their Two-Towers-reminiscent frontline (with Karl Anthony Towns--KAT) has worked seamlessly with rising star Anthony Edwards ("Ant-man"), and they have the best road record in the league, itself a promising stat for the playoffs, regardless of whether they end up first in Conference. The other surprise is the Oklahoma City Thunder, making a return to strength after a decade-long rebuild, starring emerging superstar Shai Gilgeous-Alexander ("SGA") and talented freshman stringbean center Chet Holmgren.*
The discussion so far doesn't even reach to the two most popular choices of analysts to win the West, who are currently sitting at #3 and #4. The Denver Nuggets are the defending champions, and their combo of Jamal Murray, whose presence made the difference in getting the team over the top, and Nikola Jokic, likely to win his third MVP now and one of the most well-rounded players ever in the game, is unsurpassed in quality and now truly proven. The LA Clippers, who should finish no worse than their current 4th, no matter how slack some of their regular-season games are, have without doubt the highest-ever quality assemblage of wing talent--Paul George, Kawhi Leonard, James Hardin, and Russell Westbrook, all future Hall-of-Famers--but will it fly? That's unclear.
Also unclear are the fates of potential magic combinations fitted together for this season in Dallas (Luka Doncic and Kyre Irving!) and Phoenix (Kevin Durant and Bradley Beal!) The other two teams in the Conference mix are playoff unknowns like the current top two: the New Orleans Pelicans overachieved, then they got Zion Williamson back (I just heard him described as "a tank that flies"); the Sacramento Kings have a pairing that has proven strong in Domantas Sabonis and DeAaron Fox, but their sometimes inconsistent play suggests playoff vulnerability. Bottom Line: Wide open, once someone can beat the Denver Nuggets.
The Eastern Conference is different, but interesting in its own way. There is a clear favorite, the Boston Celtics, who have reached the highest level with their own Jayson Tatum-Jaylen Brown combo but not won at that level. This year they added two critical new pieces in point guard Jrue Holliday, who's a top man-to-man defender, and multi-talented big man Kristaps Porzingis. As long as all four can be on the court together, they are unlikely to lose a series, so we'll see how long that lasts.
The team that looked mostly likely to challenge them, the Philadelphia 76ers, lost the big half of their key pair, Joel Embiid, to a knee injury. He should be back for the playoffs, but whether he will have the dominant play and the great coordination with scoring point guard Tyrese Maxey seen earlier in the year (Embiid was the leading candidate for MVP then, the team right up there with Boston) is a question mark, as is the team's seeding for the playoffs. So, the team we should expect to meet the Celtics in the Conference finals is the Milwaukee Bucks, a recent championship team that added the immense talents of Damian Lillard to those of superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo. They haven't fully meshed yet, but that could still happen in this season's playoffs. The Miami Heat and their Jimmy Butler-Bam Adebayo pairing is another proven winner: they reached the Finals last year. They will have to knock over a couple of favored squads on the road to make the Conference finals, but they can't be counted out.
Based on improved regular-season performance, either the Knicks or Cavaliers should reasonably hope to make the Eastern Conference semis, but if the 76ers can re-coalesce well, they'll likely grab one of the spots which currently have their name on them. Bottom Line: I'll go with the chalk: the healthy Celtics to cruise through the Conference playoffs and outlast whichever Western team survives their side.
Closing my commentary on the NBA, I will say their marketing is doing just fine. The "In-season tournament" thing they came up with this year was not as bad as I feared, the key success being their ability to schedule flexibly enough that competing teams' games counted for their regular-season standings (all but the championship game itself), and teams no longer in the tourney carried on more or less normally. So, rather than detracting from the poor old regular season, they added some interest early in it. Also, the league is prodding players and coaches to bring their stars out on court more consistently. I think that particular one will end with more stars' time on court being severely and strategically rationed--more games played, less minutes per game. Of course, the main thing is the playoffs themselves, and I think the outlook for that is awesome.
TMB? Still more on basketball, as we must look at their feeder league, a/k/a college basketball. For my money, there is a clearly dominant player, Zach Edey of Purdue. At 7-foot-4 with skills, Edey is a giant among mortal hoopsters. He is a future NBA presence, though success there is far from guaranteed. At present, the Boilermakers are the #1 ranked team, though positions in the top 10 have been very fluid this season. Some of it is the inconsistency due to the rapid turnover of teams--besides the "one and done" single season for some extremely talented players, a key feature of recent seasons has been the transfer window, allowing players to move between colleges without having to lose a year, and permitting strong college teams to rebuild quickly--but there is also a broadening of the number of powerful teams, with an increased number of upsets by unranked teams.
My personal primary focus in college basketball in 2024, as it is most years, concerns the University of Kentucky Wildcats. In the words of Elvis Costello, This Year's Model is quite attractive, with talent, skills, and a recently-discovered ability to play defense. Coach John Calipari has done his usual masterful job harvesting top prospects from around the country who like that team's history of producing great pro basketball players. (Quick quiz: How many starring players in the NBA analysis above played for U of K?+)
Although the team's record is not that impressive at 19-8 (compared to something like 25-2 of Purdue or Connecticut), these Wildcats have shown they can defeat anyone on the right day. They have all the elements to succeed and will win big on their best days, and they even have good free-throw shooting, which always becomes essential to proceed through the tournament. What an NCAA champion has to prove, though, is that they can survive and win somehow on their worst day--they've had a few shocking losses, too.
If necessary, I could explain at length why I simply have had to be part of what became Big Blue Nation, uncool and incorrect as that may seem. But I think the current reality is sufficient justification for my support.
The NCAA tournament will be extremely difficult to handicap, and I'm not ready to do so. I would say the team I've been most consistently impressed with is Tennessee, though they've had their bad games, too. I haven't yet gotten used to watching women's college basketball, though I recognize that there are incredibly talented athletes there. Like men's, the women's college game is about organized defense and timely scoring to win close ones, with the coach's influence front and center.
Baseball: I'm just as excited about the upcoming baseball season as I am about the current hoops one, it's just that I don't have so much to say about the present, which is spring training. There's plenty of recent past, for which I 'll give some quick takes, and the future pennant races, which are far off at present.
There are some teams clearly favored to make the playoffs, either as division winner or as wild card (there are now three of each in the playoffs for each league). Having a bye in the first-round series, as the two division winners with the best records get, has not looked like an advantage against a hot team coming off a winning wild card series, anyway not as often as their regular season advantages would suggest. The objective, then, is making the playoffs, anywhere from 1-6 . After that, throwing the dice and winning two or three series beyond are the icing, sprinkles, and ornamental crown on the cake.Wild card expansion has opened up late-season excitement for a lot more teams than previously, so there is benefit. As a remedy, though, I think they should give greater advantage to the home team in the Divisional Series, which should expand to seven games.
The LA Dodgers are the super team in the re-making, but I don't expect them to look that way early in the season, even with their massive lineup. They signed the two top free agents, Japanese ballplayers Yoshinobu Yamamoto (best pitcher in the Japanese leagues the last couple of years) and the One and Only Shohei Ohtani. Ohtani will not be pitching in 2024 but will have this season to exhibit his hitting without any limitations. As we can look forward to his full-time return to pitching next year, along with that of Dodger stalwart pitchers Clayton Kershaw and Walker Buehler, it looks like 2025 could be their breakthrough. Although they have had great regular-season success, the only year the Dodgers won the World Series title so far this century was the Covid-shortened season of 2020.
In 2023, the Houston Astros and Atlanta Braves were the teams that were supposed to be the best in each league, but they were each knocked aside in short series, with the Texas Rangers and Arizona Diamondbacks the surprise World Series opponents. Congratulations to the Rangers for finally getting the title for the first time since the hazy days of the Minnesota Twins and Washington Senators in the Sixties and beyond (literally, a long story).
As a fan of the Cincinnati Reds (no title since 1990), I am highly enthused by my team's chances to break into the playoffs, which they almost succeeded in doing last year (being edged out in the last week for a wild card spot by the Diamondbacks and Cubs). With the kind of young talent the Reds have, though, making the playoffs this year is just one step up the ladder, without a ceiling in sight. They made a number of moves in the offseason which shored up their depth, both in the field and on the mound, but they have not (yet) signed the veteran ace starter they will need to compete in the postseason in 2024. There are some still available--yes, I'm a bit impatient. Bottom Line: Teams making the playoffs, from near-certain to wild-ass speculation--Braves, Astros, BlueJays, Rangers, Rays, Dodgers, Diamondbacks, Phillies, Reds, Mets, Yankees, Indians. Sorry, Orioles, Padres, Cubs, Brewers, Bosox.
Football (a/k/a Soccer):
It's fair to say that the 2024 season-ending race in the English Premier League should be as exciting as there has been in recent memory. Yes, there was that incredible result in 2019 when Leicester won as a 100-1 shot, but this looks like three quality teams battering each other all the way to the finish. Manchester City, Arsenal, and Liverpool. Like in the jousting tourney, if Lancelot, Tristram, and Gawain faced off in a three-way.
City is the favorite, the world champion club team and defending champ as well, but they are not leading, and they have come up short on a couple of opportunities. Liverpool is making a mad dash to win all the trophies before their beloved coach Jurgen Klopp moves on after this season. And Arsenal's young, exciting team looks to exploit the opportunity to reach the top and save their coach's job.
I see Liverpool having the opportunity to create some space in front
of Manchester City by winning their game with them at home on March 10, then maintaining that lead to the end with a favorable schedule.
If they don't do that, perhaps Arsenal, which has the toughest schedule
down the stretch and therefore would be least favored of the trio, will
do Liverpool a favor on March 27 and make City lose points. That's
what Chelsea did in their games, twice.
I can be fairly objective, because my dog is not in this race, really. Chelsea has suffered, mostly, since the Ukraine War took Russian oligarch owner Roman Abramovich away from his favorite toy. Since then, there has been comparable amounts of money spent under the new ownership, but without comparable success, and the fans are nervous at a second straight finish in the middle of the 20-team table, as they've come to expect a lot. Chelsea has played well at times, particularly against Manchester City, but has come up short against teams that in past years they would defeat.
There is a promising rebuilding effort under veteran coach Mauricio Pochettino around a variety of young players, but whether it will be given time to flourish is unclear, especially because there may be crippling penalties imposed soon for unwise spending in recent years. Bottom Line: The F.A. Cup is the last chance before Chelsea does something silly like bringing Mourinho back, one last time, so they better win it!
In International soccer, Chelsea's not in it, and I haven't been watching yet. I'm hoping to see a team other than Real Madrid in the final. The big event internationally will be the competition in the Olympics in Paris in July. I will comment more on the Olympics more generally as that event draws night. I am dearly anticipating the Olympics as a global break from political ugliness, which is what it was always meant to be.
Tennis: My interest in the tennis tours has a bimodal distribution (two humps). The first was the opening of the new season and the emergence of the patterns of player performance that come in waves through the year, seen best through the Australian Open, nowadays a fair early test across the board. The second is the summer, with the French, Wimbledon, and the US Open to climax the season. My takeaways from the early season are as follows: 1) The Aussie showed that Novak Djokovic and Iga Swiatek's positions at the top of the rankings are not so secure. 2) The herd is coming after them, a continuing flow of 18-21 year-olds on both tours armed with all-round games. Jannik Sinner and Coco Gauff are examples, but not the only ones. 3) Titles, including Grand Slams, are going to be distributed more widely than the domination in recent years by the Big Three in men, or to the currently-reigning queen of the women's tour. Bottom Line: Carlos Alcaraz will need to win the US Open to take the top spot, but Djokovic will hold him off one more year. Swiatek's consistency should keep her on top for the women though she can be outslugged.
Football (the American kind): I watched the Super Bowl fairly closely, though not the pregame or halftime shows. The 49ers brought a good game and had chances to win, so one has to credit the KC defense for holding them to field goals at two key moments late. They gave Pat Mahomes the ball with a chance to win the game; it took overtime, but that is what happens. I think the Travis Kelce-Taylor Swift thing is good, clean fun.
Viewed from afar, the key game was the AFC Championship between Mahomes' Chiefs and the Baltimore Ravens, the top-seeded team in their conference. I didn't watch it, though.
I credit the NCAA football poobahs for recognizing the need to expand beyond four for their playoff next time around, as they evolve randomly toward intelligence. Twelve teams is too many, though, unless they get rid of the odious conference championships, which will not happen. The correct number is six, or seven, if you want to push it, as the NFL successfully did this year.
If they had six this year, they wouldn't have had the scandalous results in which undefeated conference champion Florida State was denied a bid--apparently for the irrelevant reason that their quarterback would be injured. Of course, the Seminoles promptly abandoned ship and were destroyed in their lesser bowl game against an angry, similarly-denied Ohio State. Oh, some SEC team won again.
*Speaking of talented stringbean rookies, Victor Wembanyama. His team (the formerly powerful San Antonio Spurs) is going nowhere this season, but one must put him on one's radar for the future.
+ 6. I easily could have fitted several others in without showing any bias whatsoever.
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