Month: August 2020

Stars +240 vs Avs Is Utterly Insulting

Wilbanks, 1 Comment

The throwback series between Stars and Avs begins tonight. Back in the glory days, we beat them back-to-back in the Western conference finals, and this year it will be a virtual conference final as we are easily the two best teams in the West.

Yes the Avs are sick year and the only team I was worried about beating coming into this, but that doesn’t mean I think they’re better us. I’m just not as confident as last series. Still, Stars +240 is a slap in the face by Vegas and if it wasn’t going to make me rich I would be pissed about it.

You should pound this as well. Here’s why…

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Miro > MacKinnon – everyone is obsessing over Nathan MacKinnon and for good reason, but Miro Heiskanen is the best young player in the league. He’s possibly even the best defenseman right now. As I said in the last blog, he is Zubov reincarnate especially in the playoffs.

Miro is just as deadly on offense as MacKinnon and he’s a shut down defender as well. Give me a stud d-man over a stud forward any day. Just like Zubov got the better of Sakic, Miro will get the better of MacKinnon.

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Goaltending – the jury is still out on Grubauer as a good goalie, much less a good playoff goalie. He is 18th in the league with a .919 sv%. Who’s first in the league? That would be Dobby at .930. Our Russian > their Nazi.

We also have a second goalie in Ben Bishop who finished 10th in the league in sv% and has been an absolute god in the playoffs over the past five years (including last year). He’s been nursing an injury for awhile but he should be healthy enough to start one of the back-to-backs in games 5/6. That’s huge.

Back in the glory days, Belfour vs Roy was a goalie battle for the ages. This year, it’s a bit lopsided.

Depth – The Avs are known for their top studs, but we have a full squad. The only weakness is our third pairing of d-men, but that doesn’t matter when Miro and Jamie ‘The Big Rig’ Oleksiak are playing half the game.

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Veteran Grit – unlike most sports, grit usually wins out over youth in the NHL Playoffs. That’s why the Avs lost to a garbage ass Sharks team last year. It’s also reason #2 (behind bogus officiating) that we lost to the cup-winning Blues in seven games last year.

Since then, we’ve added Corey Perry and Captain America JoePa Pavelski. They’ve been killing it in the playoffs so far. The Avs can skate fast and that’s cool, but they’re gonna have to stay fully healthy all series for that to matter. Ask Tkachump about that.

The Stars have some youth too, by the way. The aforementioned Miro, Roope Hintz, and Denis Gurianov is the best Euro trio in the league.

The Avs have a mild advantage in youth/finesse maybe. We have a huge advantage in grit/physicality for sure. Overall advantage: Dallas Stars easy.

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Season Series Sweep – we swept all four games in the season series. I know the Avs finished higher in the standings, but how on earth can we be a +240 underdog to them? Lock it in

Stars +240 vs Avs Is Utterly Insulting

Clippers Finally Get First Legitimate Win Over Mavs

Wilbanks, ,

It took a Luka injury to seal it, but the series has regressed back to the point where everyone thought it would look like going in. There’s no shame in losing to the best team in the league in what is the first ever playoff appearance for most of your players. Maybe we can make some noise and steal another game or two, but overall it’s been a great season and the future only gets better from here.

It’s still annoying because we should be up 2-1 without that bullshit KP ejection in the opener, but it’s the NBA and Mavs fans are used to shit like this happening to us. Whatever. Congratulations to the Clippers for finally getting their first legitimate win over us.

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As for the game itself, nothing interesting happened besides the Luka injury. He rolled his ankle in the 3rd quarter and couldn’t put any weight on it until they brought a wheelchair up to the locker room. That must have pissed him off because he immediately jogged back out and played again.

I’m not sure the prudence of putting him back in with a bum ankle and the game already out of hand, but the Mavs do have the best training staff in the league and they’re worth trusting. It looked bad, but we’ve already seen his other ankle roll way worse back in December.

That Miami injury only kept him out of four games. Those were meaningless December games too, so I expect him back tomorrow. It’s just going to be a pain in the ass for him.

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Now I want to take some time to touch on the Seth Curry/Callie Rivers/Doc Rivers/Paul George imbroglio. As I’m sure you’ve heard a million times on the broadcast so far, Seth Curry is married to Doc Rivers’s daughter.

What I completely forgot until this game was that Callie Rivers used to date Paul George until he knocked up a Miami stripper who refused his $1M bribe to get an abortion. Kind of a simp move on Doc Rivers’s part to coach the player who cheated on your daughter with a stripper, especially when that player sucks…

In Game 1, Jeff Van Gundy said he thought Callie Rivers was cheering for the Clippers so her dad could be happy and her husband could come home. What the fuck? What a moron!

I already thought Doc Rivers was the luckiest and most overrated coach of all time before this. Now I worry that LA has a serious coaching problem. Kawhi is probably good enough to make it not matter, but we’ll see.

Clippers Finally Get First Legitimate Win Over Mavs

Stars Extinguish the Flames

Wilbanks, ,

Last night’s game six vs Texans-Chiefs divisional round – which do you got for the best comeback blowout of 2020? I enjoyed both but last night was certainly more exciting for me.

Much like the series itself, the Stars were caught sleeping at the wheel early on. We barely made it past five minutes before it was 3-0 Flames. Luckily, Milan Lucic got arrogant and took a stupid penalty so Miro could activate his god mode.

Miro is so fucking awesome. People are sleeping on him because Luka has such a huge spotlight for Dallas already. The odds of one city having the best young player in both basketball and hockey at the same time are so slim, and everyone is in denial about the fact it is happening for Dallas.

Miro averaged a cool 2 points per game this series. He did that as a defenseman. It’s good for 2nd in the league this postseason and everyone else on the list plays forward. He is Zubov reincarnate, especially in the playoffs and that goes back to last year too.

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From that goal on it was an onslaught. Seven straight scores. Denis Gurianov was ready to see round 2.

He ended up getting a fourth that made Matthew Tkachump very very sad. That’s right prick, next time hold on flopping until after the very first period of a series if you want to play more.

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The Flames are fully extinguished. Finally. I prefer we did it in four or five games, but six was the maximum acceptable outcome and we achieved that. I’m satisfied.

We did a lot of things that good teams don’t do, like giving up a shorthanded goal and the opening goal almost every single game. But only good teams can pull off the comebacks we did and end a series like that in dominant fashion. The Cup lifting potential is definitely there.

Next up is a throwback series vs the Avs. Colorado is the best team in the league, but we can beat them because we swept them in all four games during regular season. Bring on the challenge. After all, can we really party like it’s 1999 without beating down the Avs first?

Stars Extinguish the Flames

The Clippers Rang up Themselves a Nightmare

Wilbanks, ,

So it turns out the ‘You Rang’ nickname that Shaq gave to Boban comes from the Adamms Family.

Hmm. It took me forever to find out what that meant, but it is very interesting now that I know! Certainly more interesting than anything that happened on the court if you care at all for close basketball games. It was a Mavs manhandling from wire to wire.

You could say this game was somewhat of an anomaly because Luka only played nine minutes in the second half. He had foul trouble and we were winning without him, so he sat. He finished with 28 points, which unfortunately means he won’t have a never ending 30pt game streak for his entire postseason career. That kind of sucks.

Petty complaints aside, it’s time to start looking at the Mavs as serious contenders again. The only thing keeping this series from being 2-0 Mavs is that bogus ass KP ejection. Other than that, we’re thoroughly dominating the pre-tourney favorites, and the opponents will only get easier from here.

The Clippers were 10-1 this year when fully healthy and that’s why they were favorites. But that also means they’ve never been fully healthy and they haven’t been able to work as a group all year. They’re struggling with injuries still and those strip clubs vacations were not time well spent in hindsight. It looks like arrogance is finally catching up to them.

This is more what I expected the bubble tourney to be. Mavs getting a leg up not only because of neutral courts every game, but because the conditions favor younger and more cohesive teams. Luka god mode just needed real playoff games to be fully activated too.

  • Mavs win series +310
  • Mavs win West +2000
  • Mavs win Finals +4000

Maybe the best odds I’ve ever seen. Time to get rich.

The Clippers Rang up Themselves a Nightmare

Stars Win a Gritty Game 5 – One More Til Colorado

Wilbanks,

Stars win game 5 last night and now have a chokehold on the trash ass Flames. That’s more fucking like it.

One more win tonight and we move on to a glory days rematch vs the Avs. We need that win tonight and not Saturday so we can get some rest for rd2. Those Avs look gooood.

The Stars look good too though. In the first four games, we dominated possession stats but couldn’t consistently put it together for wins. On Tuesday night, the Flames were able to match us in anal ytic metrics but we outshined them in grit.

Here were the top three moments in grit:

1 – Faksa headhunting Johnny Hockey in minute one (Tkachump still out btw)

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2 – Dickinson stabbing TJ Brodie in the face

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3 – Corey Perry bringing out his inner Matvichuk. Dare I say, I’m actually starting to like this old man?

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The opening goal was gritty as hell too. Finally, we are the ones scoring shorthanded goals. Also finally, we are the ones scoring first!

It’s huge seeing Benn and Seguin get into a groove together. We’re going to NEED that against Colorado. Seguin hasn’t looked himself all series – he’s definitely banged up and is going through one of his ‘post hitting’ funks. This is the type of assist he needs to get that confidence going and kickstart more odd man rushes.

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And Klingberg, my sweet love that I never doubted, what a beautiful game winner…

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Last but not least we have to give it up to our badass Russian goaltender Anton Khudobin. AKA ‘Dobby’. What a fucking beast. He’s not a backup – he’s a second starter.

An absolute brick wall all night but especially in the 3rd period. God he’s the fucking man.

Stars Win a Gritty Game 5 – One More Til Colorado

Deja Vu in Mavs Playoff Debut

Wilbanks, ,

Deja vu – the story of an MFFL

Awesome way to kick off a playoff career. The more things change, the more the stay the god damned same. Why is this always happening to the poor little Mavericks?

We are the Saints of the NFL. One glorious banner from one of the greatest sports stories ever and we’ll always be thankful for that, but so many others were taken away by refs.

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We had 2014 vs the Spurs. That series was ruined by a Dejuan Blair ejection/suspension for accidentally grazing his leg against someone in the slightest of all kicking motions. We lost in seven to a Spurs team that Lebron fanboys will tell you was the greatest team of all time.

We had the Cristal Taylor series vs the 09 Thuggets. That was when the refs decided to go blind and ignore a blatant intentional foul to let Melo win a pivotal game 3. We lost in six to what Knicks fans will say was the greatest player of that time.

We had Danny Crawford bragging in Tim Donaghy’s book about the Mavs going 2-16 in his games playoff games. That record, based on point spread simulations, had a 0.5% chance of playing out.

And then obviously the 2006 finals

I thought this shit was supposed to stop when David Stern died. I guess it didn’t. If this is what playoff basketball is all about, then it’s no surprise that NBA ratings keep floating down the toilet. Fix this shit.

In other news, Luka went 42-7-9. He broke the record for points in a playoff debut. He’s just 21. Pretty fucking sick. Hopefully the rest of the series will be 5 on 5 instead of 5 on 8.

Deja Vu in Mavs Playoff Debut

Derek Dietrich Joins the Rangers and Immediately Wins Us Three Straight Games

Wilbanks, , 1 Comment

Jon Daniels did more than just gift us Rafael Montero (the coolest closer in the league) to turn the season around; he got us a badass new batter too. Derek Dietrich first entered the lineup on Wednesday and immediately won us three straight games. Let’s break it down…

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Dietrich’s ability to take an HBP is one of the things he’s been known for in the past, as he led the MLB with 24 in 2016. He knows the value of a free base and he stands firm like a man when a pitch drifts his way. This came out big in his first game with us.

Down 4-0 in the 6th and us getting dominated by Seattle all game, Dietrich takes a two out HBP that he easily could’ve avoided. That free base turns into a stolen base when he catches Seattle in a shift, which turns into a 2 out run.

A comeback win ensues and we take the series against the Mariners.

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Next game was at Colorado on Friday night. Pinch hitting in the top of the 8th with a 2-2 tie, he takes one for the team again. You could hear the ball crack against his bone it was so loud.

By getting on first base, he opened the infield for a Choo bouncer to get through. A couple batters later, bam we got a game winning GIDP RBI.

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It doesn’t always have to be scrappy; he can get runs the old fashioned way too. Case in point the very next night in Colorado. Tenuous 3-2 lead in the top of the 8th. Two outs, two runners on and the first pitch he sees turns into a Dietrich Dong.

Boooom! Game iced. Rangers are ABOVE 500 for the first time since Opening Day.

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Dietrich was playing regularly for the Marlins from 2015-2017, the first two seasons of which were really good. When Dee Gordon got suspended for steroids, he became the regular 2B and hit .279 and an OPS+ of 121.

He was helping the Marlins mash in a lineup that also included Stanton, Yelich, Realmuto, and Ozuna. Once the fire sale started, his play slipped and he eventually started bouncing around to the Reds and Cubs minor league systems.

He got released last week and JD snapped him up within a day. What a pickup it’s been so far. Not only is he winning games for us, but he’s also put trash ass Odor on the bench so that dude can stop losing games for us.

What an August for a rebuilding team huh?

Derek Dietrich Joins the Rangers and Immediately Wins Us Three Straight Games

Mavs vs Clippers – Every Legend Starts With a Humbling

Wilbanks,

Every legend starts with a humbling, especially in NBA, and it appears the legend of Luka’s Mavs has started with a major humbling in the bubble. It shouldn’t have been a surprise that one of the youngest teams there was also the cockiest, just like it shouldn’t be a surprise that every other team has been so sharp and focused. I was expecting the opposite and it appears Luka and boys were as well.

Our fate as the 7 seed was sealed for good right out the gate after royally fucking up both of our first two games. Since then, we’ve apparently looked a lot better. Luka had what some would say the best game of his career against the Bucks.

We might have started sucking less in the clutch too. I don’t know. I didn’t watch because the games were worthless and there’s too many other sports on the buffet line right now. What I do know is that we’re about to be fed to the slaughterhouse. Literally any other team in the league I’d be comfortable against but this one.

It’s too bad, because after watching the Nuggets game today it’s obvious we would’ve destroyed them. Getting that first series win under the belt is so huge and we should’ve been able to do it this year. Instead, Luka’s wait lasts all the way to Year 3.

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Who knows though, maybe Kawhi gets hurt? That’d be interesting. Otherwise, I just hope we can have some cool moments and maybe cover the 2.5 game spread.

Then we move on to next year and start making some real noise with KP’s first full season. We got expiring contracts coming up and won’t have to pretend Tim Hardaway is good anymore. Maybe the Greek Freak will decide he wants a euro super team. That’d be sick.

The future looks bright, but the next two weeks do not. Enjoy what we can and regroup next year.

Mavs vs Clippers – Every Legend Starts With a Humbling

Do the Cowboys Have a Certified Death Star Front With Everson Griffin?

Wilbanks,

We all the knows the Cowboys offense is certified Death Star status and possibly one of the greatest of all time. The defense? Just needs to be solid enough to hold teams under 35, and the prospects for that got way easier last week when we signed EVERSON GRIFFIN!

Ohh ho hum just a nice little rental for a $6M Pro Bowler to add to this group…

We officially have the best front seven since the glory days. Everson Griffin is just as good at pass rushing as Robert Quinn, except Griffin can actually stop the run too.

Speaking of run stopping, we have big DTs for the first time since like, ever… Gerald McCoy and Dontari Poe. No more Rod Marinelli banging his god damned hand on the table to make us draft Trysten Hill. We finally have competence over the ball in the form of eight combined Pro Bowls.

That will free up the best young LB duo in the league to do cool superstar LB stuff. Leighton Vander Esch and Jaylon Smith are switching positions – LVE to Mike; Smith to Will – because Mike Nolan does this novel thing with his linebackers called blitzing. It’s going to be awesome to watch.

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Speaking of rushing the passer, D-Law is still a top five edge rusher in the league and will actually have a training camp this year. It’s so nice when your star player doesn’t have to hold out on his surgery for four months because you procrastinate on giving him a fair contract. He’ll be certified Death Star status this year for sure.

The depth on the pass rush hinges on Aldon Smith and Randy Gregory. Two huge question mark players yes, but if just one of them works out the pass rush will be so deep and deadly. If both of them work out? Quarterbacks will start looking like Alderaan.

And to top it all off, we have one of the most legendary position coaches of all time – Jim Tomsula baby. 

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So is it fair to call this front seven a Death Star unit? No. Because as I was writing this blog, Gerald McCoy ruptured a tendon and is out for the season. God damnit. Antwaun Woods and Tyrone Crawford are going to have to not suck, which is possible. But until then we are just badass Star Destroyer status. With our offense, that’s more than fine by me.

Do the Cowboys Have a Certified Death Star Front With Everson Griffin?

JoePa Saves Stars Season With 12 Seconds Left! HOLY FUCK YES!!

Wilbanks

Ohh man oh man were the Stars so fucked right at this moment in time…

It looked like a higher scoring version of Friday night. Another game without Tkachump and another game we dominated by any measure of anal ytics. 64% Corsi, +1.5 xG, but also another god damned damned shorthanded goal given up! As well as enough other random fuckups (and another bullshit ref call) to have church bells ringing on the season.

And then the Klingberg entry. The Seguin gymnast splits. And the cool old JoePa backhand for the season saving hattie.

And the Stars. Are. Fucking back babyyy!!

Oh yeah there was overtime too. A tense sixteen minutes until we broke some fuckers stick and set him up in front of this rocket by none other than John Klingberg who I never ever doubted…

And just like that all in the world is right again. The sun is out, the people are smiling, and the Stars are good again.

And now I got that Michael Buble song stuck in my head. It’s a new dawn. It’s a new day. We’ll party like its ninety niiiinne? Yes we may!

JoePa Saves Stars Season With 12 Seconds Left! HOLY FUCK YES!!