Sportstalk Sunday (American) #5

I'm back with another weekly roundup of American sports. As you can see, this is my fifth edition so it's still a work in progress. The first ones were fairly easy because it was all football, all the time. We'll have to see how it evolves after football season is over with next week's Super Bowl. I'm getting a little taste of it this week as the NFL is off with the two week break before the big game. Let's see what else is out there...

NFL

First, there is still football, of a sort. The Pro Bowl games are taking place this weekend with the conference players taking part in lots of different fun events. They've obviously quit playing an actual football game. The money has just gotten too huge for these players, and no one wants to risk injury playing a game that doesn't matter. So now we have long drive contests, and skills challenges, and dunk machines, and lots of other things. It's actually kind of fun to see the players interact and cut loose in some fun events.

NHL

While the NFL continues to take up the lion's share of the limelight, the NHL is also having their All-Star Weekend. They, too, have gone away from playing a serious game. They now have the stars from the four different conferences compete in a mini 3 on 3 tournament with the winning team splitting a $1M prize. Not a bad thing to play for. That said, it's basically just a free-wheeling shooting contest with the poor goalies getting peppered all night. :-) The Atlantic Conference won the tournament with the MVP going to the home-town Florida Panthers kid, Matthew Tkachuk. He also got to play with his brother, Brady (Ottawa Senators), for the first time professionally, which they really had fun with. The other cool part of this weekend is seeing some of the great rivals play together on the same team. Watching Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin work a couple 2 on 0's (pretty common in an All-Star game--lol) was pretty fun. All in all, a good weekend for the NHL before the stretch run towards the playoffs begins right away tomorrow.

NBA

The NBA, on the other hand, was busy blackening it's own eye (literally) with a couple melees this week. First, Memphis's Dillon Brooks "accidentally" hit Cleveland's Donovan Mitchell in the balls. That didn't go over well, as you might imagine. It escalated from there with Brooks getting a one-game suspension and Mitchell a $20,000 fine. The next night, Austin Rivers of the Minnesota Timberwolves confronted an Orlando Magic bench player (Mo Bamba) over some derogatory remarks he was making from the sidelines. Bamba proceeded to throw a punch and it devolved into a melee with five players being ejected. Bamba got a four game suspension while Rivers got three.

LeBron

On a more positive note, LeBron James has moved within striking distance of the all time NBA scoring record held by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. He is currently just 36 points shy of the 38,387 points amassed by Kareem over a 20 year career with the Milwaukee Bucks and Los Angelas Lakers. LeBron is just one of seven players to score over 30,000 points and is the youngest to do it. The Lakers play Oklahoma City Tuesday in Los Angelas so he has a legitimate shot of getting it done then. Otherwise, they're home again on Thursday vs the Milwaukee Bucks. If he doesn't hit it Tuesday, he should get there Thursday since he's averaging around 30 points per game this year. Should be a cool moment, even if you're not a James fan. Kareem has held the record since 1984 so it's a pretty remarkable accomplishment. Almost 40 years of holding any record in professional sports is pretty amazing and this is a big one.

Kyrie Irving

The other NBA note I'll mention is to keep an eye on the Kyrie Irving sweepstakes. He wants out of Brooklyn and there are a few teams, the Lakers being one of them, that may have an interest in taking on the mercurial star's baggage in order to tap into his talent for the stretch run. It will be interesting to see if he goes and where as it could make a big difference in the second half of the season.

College Hoops

In college basketball, Purdue continues to look like the team to beat with only one loss on the year, while the Big 12 conference looks to have the most depth with six teams currently ranked in the top 15 in the latest polls. Things are starting to heat up with conference tourneys and March Madness only a month away. Just putting it on your radar as I'm sure it will get more press in the weeks to come.

---

That's it for this week. I'll be back next week with a preview of Super Bowl LVII between the Chiefs and the Eagles. Both teams are 16-3 counting the playoffs and both were the number one seeds in their conferences. Vegas has the Eagles as a 1.5 pt favorite which is one of the narrower spreads we've had for a Super Bowl. Hopefully the game will live up to the hype.

See you next week. Thanks for reading.

Hive is the Way.

Posted using SportsTalkSocial