Oh, yeah….i have this blog thing to write in

With the perfect storm of the holiday season, extended hours at work, and the cleanup after my father’s funeral, I haven’t been able to write much in The BBC lately.  I’d apologize, but you understand, I’m sure.

Here’s what I’ve missed yelling at you about;

Cleveland Cavaliers

Mid-last week, the news came in that Daniel “Boobie” Gibson and Zydrunas Ilgauskas would both miss games because of injury.  Fear struck immediately, but it was soon announced that Z might only miss a couple of games and Gibson a couple weeks.  Not much damage done if they heal properly.

One trip to Atlanta later, and the Cavs had their first loss in weeks, falling by five points to a good Hawks team.

Immediately after that loss with two stars benched, ESPN decided to forget about the Cavs, publishing an article on the 1998 Bulls and how their 72 win-season could be topped by the Celtics or the Lakers.  Hellloooooo?  At the time of that article, the Cavs had 20 wins and only 4 losses.  Extrapolate that out and you get 69 wins….why weren’t the Cavs included in that scenario?  ALL of our four losses were to teams seeded fifth or higher in the playoff system this year, and all of them were on the road.  Surely ESPN doesn’t think that we’re finished as one of the elite teams this year?

Meanwhile, two of the Lakers’ four losses are to Indiana and Sacramento, who won’t get into the playoffs without buying a ticket like eveyone else.

By the way, Boston also lost to the piss-poor Indiana Pacers…and they fell to Denver by 9 at home.

Speaking of Denver, the Nuggets are the hottest team in the West right nowsince they traded away Allen Cancerson to Detroit and picked up Chauncey Billups.  They’ve won 16 out of 21 and are playing incredible basketball at home.

Oh, wait….scratch that.

Last night, the Cavs manhandled the Nuggets on their own floor in a 105-88 blowout.  Cleveland opened up a quick first-quarter lead and never looked back.  They led by 16 after one quarter, and midway through the second period, the Denver boo-birds were in full-force.  Ilgauskas showed little ill-effect from his ankle, pouring in 23 points.  Denver got it down to 9 points for a couple seconds, but the Cavs turned up the heat again and pushed the lead to 22 points a couple of times before cruising across the finish line.

Cleveland now stands at 22-4 and has the second-best record in the NBA.  Beating Denver gives them a big boost heading down the final stretch of 2008.  Here’s what they have for the rest of the calendar year;

• at Oklahoma City (3-24)
• Houston (17-9)
• Washington (4-20)
• Miami (13-12)
• at Miami (13-12)

Houston is the only true standout in this upcoming stretch, and that game is at The Q, where we are 13-0.  Tomorrow night’s game against OKC and Christmas Day against the Wizards should be easy wins, and Miami should be a fun pair, but the Cavs are clearly better than Wade/Marion/company.  I’d be happy going 4-1 and entering 2009 at 26-5.  But 27-4 is not at all a stretch considering what we did to a top West team last night.

More Cavaliers

It goes without saying that the Cavs are a vastly superior team to the wine and gold of last year.  But what is often overlooked is HOW they have the aura of invincibility.

They’re beating the living tar out of the lesser teams.

Last season, our biggest downfall was the inablility to put down the teams that were CLEARLY the worst teams in the NBA.  That’s no longer the case.  Here’s a pretty chart to prove it;

Going from 15-11 to 11-0 is an excellent summary of how much better the Cavs are this year.  If they keep that up, it will mean the difference between a four-seed and a first-seed in the NBA playoffs.

College football Bowl season

Yes, it begins now.

There’s four games today.  Lemme make this quick.

• I’ll take Wake Forest over Navy
• I’ll take Fresno State over Colorado State
• I’ll take South Florida over Memphis
• I’ll take BYU over Arizona

Tonight and tomorrow, I’ll begin my preview of each remaining bowl game and we’ll see how horrible my prognosticating skills are!

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