The final four and more ramblings

Since I was lazy yesterday and not much has changed today, how about some ramblings about some recent going-ons? I thought you'd say that.

There are only four teams left playing for the Stanley Cup. While I'm sure that the NHL isn't too happy the West Coast and Canada not being represented in the final four, having Sid the Kid and the Pens in is great. Matching up Pittsburgh with their natural rival. the cross-state Flyers is going to be a great series. In the West, having Dallas still playing could draw the southern markets; Detroit has always been a hockey hotbed and an original six draw. It'll be interesting to say the least.

A-Rod apparently passed out in the hospital while his wife was giving birth to their first daughter. Am I supposed to care? If an average player — say Morgan Ensberg, who's filling in while A-Rod is injured — had passed out during child birth, would anybody care. Also, this incident happened in 2004. Get over it.

Kobe Bryant deserved the NBA MVP more than Chris Paul did. Whoever is calling this a "lifetime achievement MVP" is an idiot. Bryant was by far the best player on the best team in the best conference and was playing without another all-star — unlike Paul. Don't get me wrong CP3 had an amazing season and was a very worthy candidate, but was not more valuable than the Black Mamba.

Roger Clemens. I don't even know what to think any more about the Rocket.

So Ronaldo allegedly beat up some cross-dressing prostitutes after finding out they were, in fact, men. I've seen the pictures of the prostitutes. Either Ronaldo has severely awful taste in women or he's blind. They were obviously dudes. And it's nice to see he's finding time to get in the news while rehabbing his torn ACL.

Suns coach Mike D'Antoni won't be with Phoenix for long after getting team approval to shop his services around. The best possible fit would be Toronto where his former boss Bryan Colangelo is running the show. D'Antoni could turn Jose Calderon into a surefire all-star.

Nice game, Gavin Floyd! The previously written off starter pitched 8 1/3 innings of no-hit ball before one of the best batters in the game (Joe Mauer) managed to beat him. Floyd is showing more and more this season that the Phillies were wrong to send him packing and that the White Sox were smart to take him on. And just how do you allow a run on three walks and an error in a game? I don't think the were in a row either.

A big congratulations to Big Brown for winning the Kentucky Derby. But with the second-place finisher running on broken ankles, how weak was the rest of the pack? Also, for the record, I did pick Big Brown to win, even if I am just saying it days after the fact.

And, finally, how did LeBron miss that last layup? That seemed a bit ridiculous to me and if you didn't find Game 1 boring, you must have a far better tolerance for defensive tilts than me. Spur-Celtics could be even worse than Spurs-Pistons if San Antonio makes it.

Coach of the year eh?

Let me just say this before I start complaining: Congratulations Byron Scott, you did a great job coaching the Hornets this season and are quite deserving of the Coach Of The Year award.

Now, does he honestly deserve it? There were a ton of great coaches this season. Greg Popovich did a great job while missing at least one of his big three for parts of the season and dealing with his roster aging. As much as I dislike Mike D’Antoni, having to change his team’s style of play while still maintaining position in the West gets him some kudos. Nate McMillan did an amazing job with a team that had been written off before the season started – even if the Blazers petered out. And let’s not forget that Phil Jackson won the West with Kobe, almost a half season with Gasol, and a roster full of “not that good”
players.

That’s right, absolutely no love for Doc Rivers. We know that it’s KG coaching that team.

The COTY award too often goes to coaches who are simply at the helm of teams that had a tremendous turnaround from the previous season. Look at last year’s winner, Sam Mitchell of the Raptors. The only reason he kept his job because the media looked past the roster overhaul and saw a big win-total jump. Now, I’d hardly be surprised if Sam was fired after another first round exit.

How would my ballot have looked you ask? D’Antoni would be third, Scott would be second and Phil Jackson would be first. Did you know that would be the Zen Masters second COTY award? How does a guy with nine – NINE – NBA championships win the coach of the year award only once? A tad ridiculous, don’t you think?

Isiah Thomas gets the comedic vote and a landslide victory.

Two awards in one day?

Sure it may not have been completely official, but the NBA pretty much announced two of its regular season awards in one day. After announcing the Magic's Hedo Turkoglu had won the Most Improved Player award, word started spreading that the Hornet's Byron Scott would be the coach of the year winner.

Turkoglu played amazing this season and was a huge reason why Orlando won their division. He may not be the best player on his team but still was an integral part of the Magic's lineup. He also had big shoes to fill after Grant Hill's departure. Nobody took as big of a leap talent-wise as Turk did.

As for coach of the year — to be formally announced today — Scott is a good choice. He helped turn around the Hornets and coached them to second place in the hardcore West. He may have had Chris Paul running the floor but he didn't have as much depth up front as I thought they did going into the season.

I would really like to know who does the voting for some of the NBA awards as well. It is apparently by a panel of sports writers across North America but some votes are just too dumb to have been cast by people who follow the sport for a living.

Honestly, who could possibly think that Shaquille O'Neal was the second most improved player this year? What an idiot. Oh, there were other questionable votes too: LeBron James, while steadily improving on his greatness, should not be getting a first place vote. Al Jefferson falls somewhat into the same category. Giving Monta Ellis some votes is kind of questionable considering he won the award last year. Come on, most improved in the entire league twice in a row? Andrew Bynum greatly improved but was injured for half the season.

Personally, I think that Hedo deserved it and I would have given the second place vote to Jose Calderon while David West would get my third place vote.

The MVPs

So, predictably, Alex Rodriguez took home the American League MVP award on Monday, yet somehow didn't manage to get all 28 first places votes like he rightfully should have. Magglio Ordonez pried the final two votes away from A-Rod and while he did deserve to finish second in voting, there should have been no comparison to how well A-Rod played this season.

Then yesterday, in a much tighter race, Jimmy Rollins of the Phillies took home the National League award, narrowly edging Colorado's stud Matt Holliday by 17 points and 5 first place votes. Rollins nearly led the Phillies into the playoffs while putting up huge, five-tool numbers across the board. Rollins hit 30 and had almost 100 RBIs — which are great numbers for a leadoff man — while hitting .296 and swiping 41 bases.

So congratulations to all the MLB award winners and now the real nitty-gritty of the offseason starts with free agent signings and the winter meetings coming up. I can hardly wait.

MLB awards

I like Major League Baseball's style... Well, sort of. While it's nice to have an award show where all the players and coaches can dress up, bring sexy dates and then after-party the night away, why not spread out the individual awards and soak up as much press as possible? Come to think of it, I've now realized after a quick head-count of the professional sports leagues that only the NHL, the weakest of them all, still throws a gala of sorts.

As for what has been awarded so far in baseball's award season...

C.C. Sabathia finally beat Josh Beckett, too bad it wasn't in the playoffs eh? If you're looking around reading stories about the AL's Cy Young award winner this year, you're going to be seeing that lead A LOT. Cleveland's ace but Boston's clutch performer by a fair margin, picking up 119 points to Beckett's 86. Sabathia also had 19 first place votes while Beckett only managed eight. The other first-place vote getter you might ask? None other than Anaheim's John Lackey. You've gotta love those jackasses who show home-town pride and vote stupidly for these awards.

Sabathia and Beckett both had similar, great numbers but the deciding factor, I would think is that C.C. pitched a whopping 40 more innings than Josh. Maybe that's why Boston was able to comeback against the Indians ace and start their ALCS roll this year...

In rookie of the year voting, Dustin Pedroia easily won the American League award but the NL's race turned out to be the closest ever. Milwaukee's Ryan Braun beat Colorado's Troy Tulowitzki by a mere two points, 128-126. Both Braun and Troy had great seasons and either had a great case for the award. Good thing nobody really cares about the rookies of the year, I mean, look how well Eric Hinske and Angel Berroa are doing now.

The end of two seasons... kind of

With the NBA finals coming to a merciful end and the NHL awards show uneventfully concluding, two seasons have effectively come to an end. Well, unless, of course, you want to include the NBA draft into this season but then we'd just be arguing over semantics. So with those two (I won't say major because hockey is sliding that much) league's play, it's time to get used to baseball posts. So, I submit to you, the reader:

Which did you really find most surprising, or interesting from last night's events? Well, Sidney Crosby cleaned up at the NHL awards, but, come on now, that was completely predictable. How about the Spurs winning the NBA championship against a beleaguered-looking Cavaliers team? Well, I did think LeBron could've stolen at least one game at home; but he'll be back, don't you worry.

So, the reason I had to stay late at work, the lowly Kansas City Royals managed to put 17 runs up on the board against St. Louis in their cross-state rivalry. If you saw that coming, you must be clairvoyant. It was almost as if they wanted to get all of their scoring out of the way for one season last night. And if you can tell me the last Canadian, or even player, to come up with two triples in one game, you deserve some sort of prize Disclaimer: I don't give out prizes.

Some NBA awards

Only a year after he was on the chopping block and called one of the worst coaches in the league, the Raptors’ Sam Mitchell took home the honours for coach of the year. Mitchell was at the head of a revamped Raptors team that improved their win total by 20 games from last year; an NBA best. Picking up 49 first place votes for a total of 394 point, Mitchell edged out Utah’s Jerry Sloan (301 points) and last year’s winner, Avery Johnson of Dallas (268). I personally think that Mitchell isn’t anything more than a right place, right time coach and cudos should be awarded to GM Bryan Colangelo; the real man who turned this team around. It’s pretty hard to lose games in the Hotlantic division, especially when you have the best point guard tandem in the NBA and a stud like Chris Bosh.

As for Sixth man of the year, Leandro Barbosa was the run away winner. The man nicknamed “the Brazilian Blur” picked up 101 first place votes to dominate second-place finisher Manu Ginobili 578 to 269. Barbosa is part of the Phoenix Sun’s high scoring offense and is their key component coming off the bench. Personally, I hate the Suns and think that everybody’s favourite South African, Steve Nash isn’t an MVP and that their coach Mike D’Antoni is wildly overrated because he can’t get his team to play enough defense. The Suns have given up over 100 points a game over the past three seasons despite having a stopper like Raja Bell and defensive player of the year candidate Shawn Marion. For me, coaches should be able to teach defense and MVP’s should be able to play it.