0 comments by Matt Zemek on 5/23/2015
As Dan Aykroyd’s Bob Dole character said on Saturday Night Live decades ago, “You know it, I know it, and the American people know it.” The Cleveland Cavaliers are going to sweep the Atlanta Hawks out of the Eastern Conference finals, barring a piano falling on LeBron James before Game 3. After a Game 2 […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 5/22/2015
It is easy to be merciless toward millionaire athletes and coaches who preside over a train wreck in a decisive moment of a late-stage playoff game. “THESE GUYS GET PAID SO MUCH! THEY ARE SUPPOSED TO BE HIGHLY-TRAINED! THEY’VE SPENT THEIR LIVES DREAMING ABOUT PLAYING FOR A SPOT IN THE NBA FINALS! HOW COULD THEY […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 5/19/2015
Editor’s Note: Crossover Chronicles is happy to welcome two special guests to a roundtable on the Eastern Conference finals between the Cleveland Cavaliers and Atlanta Hawks. Joining us are special guests Raphielle Johnson and Aaron Torres, whose analysis will lead off our examination of this series. The other five panelists for this roundtable are Crossover […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
Editor’s Note: Crossover Chronicles is happy to welcome two special guests to a roundtable on the Western Conference finals between the Houston Rockets and Golden State Warriors. Joining us are special guests Raphielle Johnson and Aaron Torres, whose analysis will lead off our examination of this series. The other five panelists for this roundtable are […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 5/16/2015
You very likely recall the Steve Bartman Game, and how a Chicago Cubs team felt the weight of a curse that was nearly 60 years old in 2003 and is 70 years old today. You probably also recall the Curse of the Bambino, the hex which dogged the Boston Red Sox for over 85 years. […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
In any sporting competition, the balance of responsibility between the winner and the loser will always be different. The Boston Celtics lost Game 7 of the 2010 NBA Finals more than the Los Angeles Lakers won it. The Miami Heat lost the 2011 NBA Finals more than the Dallas Mavericks won it… and Dallas lost […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 5/14/2015
Let’s get something straight at the outset: The Atlanta Hawks and the Washington Wizards are good basketball teams. The Hawks won 60 regular-season contests. That takes talent. The Wizards have fought well in the playoffs with John Wall either out or battling injuries. Randy Wittman has coached far better than he did in the regular […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 5/12/2015
In this and every American sports springtime, the glory of the NBA and NHL playoffs is revealed in a number of specific moments. Naturally, Game 7s stand apart. Game 6s in which the lower seed is trying to close out a series occupy another lofty place in our imaginations. Recall LeBron James changing his legacy […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 5/11/2015
If the 2015 NBA Playoffs have told us anything about the league’s head coaches, they’ve generally affirmed the conventional wisdom on a number of fronts. Doc Rivers: elite. David Blatt, as Crossover Chronicles writer Joseph Nardone explained, is reaffirming all the wrong public perceptions at the moment. Tom Thibodeau of the Chicago Bulls? His level […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 5/10/2015
The 2015 NBA Playoffs are becoming a blur, in which one game feels strangely like another. They’re also becoming a volatile postseason journey unlike anything since the late 1970s. There are so many things to say about these playoffs, now that four lower seeds have gained 2-1 leads over higher seeds in the second round. […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
At Bloguin, I also write about college sports and tennis — college sports at The Student Section and tennis at Attacking The Net. Perhaps I’m pre-conditioned to link other sporting events, such as the NBA playoffs, to college sports and tennis. Yet, as I watched two top-seeded teams with at least 60 wins look like 43-39 […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 5/9/2015
Professional sports is a bottom-line business: You either win or you lose. True enough. However, the complexities of competition and the plot twists provided by all sorts of events — especially injuries — rightly alter the ways in which we assess coaches and players. There can certainly be honor in losing — you just have […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 5/8/2015
Human life is complicated and messy. Accordingly, so is sportswriting and the subsequent attempt to assess sportswriters. Anyone who puts views on paper or in cyberspace for a living is constantly subjecting himself (or herself) to criticism. “I could write that column better than you” is a reaction which any writer has encountered, given any […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 5/5/2015
Yes, it’s convenient that we’re writing about Hack-A-Player at this specific point in time. Yet, the argument against allowing the practice existed far before the 2015 NBA Playoffs. Even before the Hack-A-(DeAndre) Jordan employed by the San Antonio Spurs over the past two weeks; even before Monday night’s sorry spectacle of the Hack-A-Jordan dueling with […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 5/2/2015
It is a sportswriter’s dream to be able to write about radiant, transcendent sports spectacles such as Game 7 of the Western Conference first-round series between the Los Angeles Clippers and the San Antonio Spurs. Yet, the marvelousness and the magnitude of what we saw on Saturday night in Los Angeles were so overwhelmingly powerful […]
