This is the last sports column for The News before the holidays, and in the holiday spirit, we humbly present our sports holiday wishlist. This list is presented without bias toward any team; these are things we feel the sporting world as a whole would be enriched by, regardless of whose colors you wear or what holiday(s) you celebrate.
Going on a tear of 16 straight wins and ranking up to the league’s best defense wasn’t exactly what the analysts were predicting after the nightmare start to the league. Not even the Boston faithful could’ve imagined such a start.
We’re almost six weeks into the 2017-18 NHL season, and it’s time to take stock of what we’ve learned from the 18 or so games each team played thus far.
It’s a worthwhile exercise, not for the assignment or subtraction of glory, but because of the need to understand how teams do and should spend their money in today’s cash-flooded MLB.
The League Championship round is in full swing, and the four teams remaining are New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Houston: the four largest media markets in the United States.
Crosby has been doing something incredible for over a decade now, and he’s shown no signs of slowing down. He’s the closest thing this era has had to a Gretzky or a Lemieux.
With seemingly every NBA team involved in a blockbuster trade this offseason and Nike now in charge of the NBA jerseys, we have officially stepped into a new era in the NBA. And it’s one that the Celtics are poised to take control of, which is why they will win 60 games during the 2017-2018 season, narrowly edging out the Cavaliers for the top spot in the Eastern Conference. Your eyes read that correctly.
Tangentially, this is yet another example of the NHL lacking any regard for its players. The league doesn’t listen to the players on issues like the All-Star Game, it shows little care for player safety and now it has ignored the opinion of virtually every player on the Olympics.
The playoff format MLB uses is a flawed way of crowning a champion considering the nature of baseball. The game’s arbitrary, large-sample-size friendly tendencies lend themselves to the long haul of its 162-game regular season, not the whiplash-inducing brevity of its playoffs. Too many unpredictable and unpreventable things happen over the course of one baseball game for such an unforgiving playoff format to be a good method of choosing a champion.
The decision to reward North Carolina sets a precedent for other states hoping to oppress the LGBTQA+ community—lawmakers in those states now know that they can pass discriminatory bills without consequences, as long as those bills aren’t too discriminatory.
The Red Sox, located in the huge media market of New England, have significantly more funds available to them than the Pirates, who call one of the smallest MLB media markets home.
