Today, I’m taking the abbreviated approach thanks to two media sessions on campus this afternoon. But that doesn’t mean you’re not going to get a little something about Texas football, basketball, and baseball. Think of it as like your friend that was supposed to arrive at the tailgate two hours early with a bunch of beer, but instead showed up late with flasks full of nice booze. Here are 20 random thoughts about everything Texas and then some:
1) We’re less than a week away from the beginning of spring football practice. Time flies, doesn’t it? That’s especially true when the coaching carousel keeps circling for months.
All eyes will be on Sterlin Gilbert and the Texas quarterbacks. Specifically, what does Gilbert’s offense look like at Texas, and which quarterback(s) are adjusting to it the quickest and best? Based on his past, Gilbert’s quarterback is going to need to make quick decisions, get the ball out of his hand quickly, play with some athleticism in the pocket with eyes down-the-field, and be able to push the ball deep.
There will, obviously, be a ton to follow elsewhere too, and a few examples:
--- What does the Texas offensive line look like? We know Patrick Vahe, Connor Williams, and Kent Perkins are three of the five, but those other two spots are huge question marks.
--- Texas needs to find more play-making at the safety spot. If that means moving one of the talented corners into the secondary, it needs to avoid hesitation in doing that. This is a big spring at the safety spot for older players trying to hang on to starting jobs and take the next step and for younger players trying to get on to the field in that spot.
--- Charlie Strong wants his guys (recruits) to take over the team and leadership role. This is when that has to start happening.
2) It’s hard for me to watch Gilbert’s previous offenses and not think of John Burt’s ability to stretch the field vertically with size, speed, athleticism, and play-making ability. Right now it’s far too early, but the over/under for his targets in 2016 has to be something similar to 84.5, right? Tulsa ran more (45.5 attempts per game) than it passed (37.8) last season, and leading receiver Keyarris Garrett still had 96 catches, and Dane Evans attempted 485 passes.
3) Junior Days under Charlie Strong are like going to see the Rays at Tropicana Field against the Marlins and Mack Brown’s Junior Days were like seeing the Red Sox against the Yankees in Yankee Stadium; the latter is always the event no matter what, and the former gives you a chance to see a few big-time talents, but the event just isn’t that big of a deal.
That’s just kind of the way recruiting this time of the year is around the country too. Junior Days aren’t really about a bunch of offers and waves of commitments anymore; they’re about getting elite talent to show up and continuing to build relationships, which is what Strong was able to do last week. Getting five-star defensive back Jeffrey Okudah on campus was a pretty significant step forward for Texas. That alone made the Junior Day successful for the Longhorns.
4) The most important thing that came out of yesterday’s media session with Shaka Smart was that junior point guard Isaiah Taylor felt better Tuesday after being in a lot of pain Sunday and Monday due to Plantar Faciitis.
“I would be amazed if he sits out Friday. He lives for one thing – to play basketball, which I’ve encouraged him to understand he has a lot of other things going for him. But I was the same way at that age. He’s no sitting out unless you cut his foot off or he just absolutely can’t do it. Again, he’s feeling a lot better today so hopefully he can keep moving in that direction. We’re planning on him playing,” Smart said yesterday. READ THE FULL REPORT HERE
This is the kind of injury that doesn’t get better as a result of resting for a game or a couple of practices; Taylor has dealt with the injury for a while now, but something aggravated it during the Oklahoma game that made the pain much more difficult to deal with in the couple of days that followed. In order to truly get over Plantar Faciitis, it’s the type of injury that takes requires a month or more off in order to just stay off the foot and rest it.
Pain will come and go for Taylor, and the Longhorns are hoping it’s not the pain that he dealt with Monday. That being said, he was still able to play, and although he didn’t look completely like himself, he looked close to it in terms of sprinting and running.
5) A couple other intriguing discussion points came out of Smart’s lengthy chat with the media yesterday:
--- Throughout the season, Smart has often discussed the mental state of his team, and after listening to him expound on it so much, it’s hard not to think that he’s engaged in a complex reconstruction of the team’s mentality, which resembles at times what he wants. But not all the time. This is just a snippet of a long conversation (READ OUR FULL REPORT HERE):
“I was really concerned on Sunday with the way… I didn’t know that we would be able to handle that level of success. I addressed it with the team. We really tried to get them it the right place. But I was unsuccessful in stemming that tide in terms of… it’s important to respond to adversity. And we have to get better at that as evidenced by the start of the Baylor game, the start of the Kanas game last night. But we also have to get better to responding when we do have success, and that’s a whole different dynamic and I think there’s some things from the past that affect that as well.”
Finally getting over the hump against a great Oklahoma team was a huge moment for Texas players, and it’s safe to say they didn’t handle that in the manner Smart would have liked. And he didn’t hesitate to say he was unsuccessful in getting the team’s mentality where it needed to be. Also, like Smart said yesterday, it might not have even mattered because of the way No. 1 Kansas played.
--- It seems one of the things Smart is in the coaching ring battling against is that there is at least a little bit of the notion in the Texas locker room, among players, that they’ve accomplished a lot already this season. And there is a level of satisfaction about that instead of an all-out, hangry mood to want to achieve more.
“Well one thing that we had at VCU and we always had this, and they had this pre-dating me, is we had nasty, competitive guys. Those guys were killers. Not everyone, but we had a critical mass of guys on our team like that. And so – it’s easy to look back and speak glowingly about the past, but those guys wanted more. They were competitors. Now, they had their faults and challenges as well, but like the team we had that went to the Final Four, we went through a lot of adversity earlier in the year. But you always knew those guys wanted to go after it. There wasn’t like, ‘Okay we’re satisfied because of this or that.’ It’s something we’ll talk about today and moving forward. I do think a little bit in the back of some of our guys’ minds there’s a little bit of ‘Yeah, we’ve done pretty good.”
Someone mentioned the word complacency, which Smart didn't echo but didn't shoot down either. He followed it with another example of what a player might be thinking.
“We’ve done pretty good, you know? The media thought we were going to the NIT when we lost Cam, this and that.’ So we have to battle that. We have to want more.”
Smart made it clear he was disappointed in Texas not wanting to follow a great win with another great win, and having a level of satisfaction in simply achieving the split.
6) A look at the Longhorns’ March Madness resume (courtesy of CBSSports.com’s RPI/team comparison tool):
RPI – 24th
SOS (based on RPI) – 1st
SOS (based on KenPom.com) – 1st
Conference standing – Tied for fourth at 10-7
Top 20 RPI wins – 5 (North Carolina, Iowa State, at West Virginia, West Virginia, Oklahoma)
Top 50 RPI wins – 8 (North Carolina, Iowa State, at West Virginia, West Virginia, Oklahoma, at Baylor, Texas Tech, Vanderbilt)
Record against RPI top 50 – 8-7
Record against RPI top 100 – 12-10 (of note: Connecticut is No. 54 in RPI; Texas-Arlington and Texas A&M-Corpus Christi are No. 101 and 102, respectively)
Bad losses – 1 (at TCU; No. 176 in RPI)
Bracket projection (based on bracketmatrix.com compiling all available online projections to come up with one) – No. 5 seed (as high as a No. 3 and as low as a No. 7)
7) The Texas baseball team received a nice little boost heading into a four-game weekend series against No. 12 Cal when it avoided a rough loss at Texas State by scoring five runs in the 11th inning to win 10-4. The Longhorns held a 4-2 lead heading into the bottom of the seventh, but watched it disappear thanks to a Texas State solo homer in the sixth and eighth innings.
8) In the ninth inning, freshman flame-thrower Chase Shugart came on, and after he misplayed a bunt, Texas State had runners on first and second with no outs. Most pitchers, especially freshmen, would likely melt in that situation. Instead, Shugart fielded the next bunt to get an out, and then Texas intentionally loaded the bases. The righthander forced a grounder to Bret Boswell at short, who came home for the force, and then the next hitter rolled over to second to end the threat.
In 8.1 innings this season, Shugart has a 0.00 ERA, has given up just two hits (.080 batting average against), walked five, and struck out six. More importantly for he and Texas, the freshman is perfect when it comes to pitching out of jams in tight games late, which he’s done a few times already this season.
It isn’t just his electric stuff, which is a moving fastball that has already touched 97 MPH this year – yes, he’s just 5-10 and throws that hard – a power slurve that can spin so sharply and tightly that it has a chance to buckle hitters, and the occasional developing changeup. Shugart, similar to former Longhorns like Chance Ruffin and J. Brent Cox, is just wired a little different. And I mean that in a very complimentary fashion. If he was a football player, Shugart would probably be that guy in full pads an hour before the game tackling his locker, and he takes that sort of mentality to the mound. But along with it is a confidence and demeanor that, so far, just doesn’t get rattled.
Sure, there are going to be points in this year and in his career where he doesn’t convert those situations. But right now we’re seeing the makings of what has a chance to be another special bullpen and closer arm at Texas.
9) The Longhorns are still clearly trying to find their footing, improve their skills, and figure out what kind of team they are. That’s, for the most part, the nature of college baseball now as parity has increased and the amount of practice time before the season is just three weeks. Virginia was a train off the rails last season before figuring it out and winning the national title.
Although the Longhorns are dealing with a lot of injuries right now (Tyler Rand, who could be able to pinch-run soon and should be back closer to four weeks than six, Josh Sawyer, and Patrick Mathis; all three key pieces), they might look back on this stretch as a blessing in disguise.
Augie Garrido is a huge believer in the power of teamwork and its key role in developing a championship-caliber team. He believes in that with more conviction than John Stockton and Karl Malone believe in the pick-and-roll.
Right now, he’s getting important contributions from bench players turned regulars like Travis Jones, Jake McKenzie, Kaleb Denny, Brady Harlan, and Ben Kennedy. It’s fair to say that during the infant stage of this season, Texas’ entire roster feels involved in the winning process because 15 different pitchers have thrown already this year, and 14 different players have recorded at least one hit.
Take last night for example: Jones went 2-for-4 with a run scored, and provided maybe the play of the game when he gunned down a runner trying to tag from third and score in the seventh inning after Texas State had cut the lead to 4-3.
These are the sorts of moments and games where a team grows because everyone in the locker room genuinely feels like a part of what’s going on.
10) Arguably the most perplexing thing about the Houston Rockets’ black hole of a season is how they acquired one of the league’s best assist percentage point guards - that didn’t need to put up shots - and also a career 41 percent shooter from threes in the corner, and turned him into a buyout the first week of March.
Lawson was the definition of steady in his career with five-straight seasons of total win shares between 6.0 and 7.0 and PERs between 17.9 and 19.4. He wasn’t great during that stretch, but Lawson was a solid regular for a long time that saw his assists per game increase every year he was in the league, up to 9.6 last year, until he arrived in Houston. Then, Houston, with more offensive talent surrounding him, put the kind of dent in his numbers that Brady Anderson experienced when he stopped juicing.
Why Houston is the disaster it is probably stems from the type of chemistry that results in liquids that unexpectedly burn through tables, but it’s one of the more mystifying things the NBA has seen in a while. This isn’t like the Dwight Howard, Steve Nash, Kobe Bryant Lakers team that was a schematic misfit from the start. No, this was a team that went to the Western Conference Finals last year, and had a chance to win both games at Golden State to begin the series. What in the hell happened? Does James Harden really ooze that much of a harmful energy?
11) The Warriors are now projected to win 73 games, and have a 46 percent chance of winning the NBA Finals, according to FiveThirtyEight.com. I still can’t get over what Steph Curry did at Oklahoma City on Sunday, which caused the bar I was at in Downtown Austin to erupt like a 2005 Texas football game.
12) Sorry, Mavs fans. But does anyone remember that Baron Davis guy? At 36, it sounds like he’s attempting a comeback. Meanwhile, former No. 1 overall pick Anthony Bennett is about to be waived by Toronto. Even his hometown team isn’t willing to hang on. Soon, Bennett will turn into just an answer to a trivia question.
The crazy thing about that pick is that it’s not like Cleveland whiffed on five stars behind Bennett. Sure, solid regulars have emerged from the draft like Victor Oladipo, C.J. McCollum, Nerlens Noel, and Giannis Antetokounmpo. But this wasn’t taking Darko Milicic over Carmelo Anthony, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh.
13) Speaking of the NBA Draft, DraftExpress.com recently updated their 2016 mock draft earlier this week. Prince Ibeh is on the board at No. 44 overall in the second round. Oklahoma’s Buddy Hield is up to No. 9 overall.
The biggest head-scratcher on that list? Vanderbilt guard Wade Baldwin III at No. 16 overall. Baldwin left Texas’ game early with some sort of leg issue, but could have returned. However, he never did. Baldwin is a career 42.8 percent shooter from two-point range, which is somehow lower than his career 43.9 percent from three. Baldwin is a classic example of physical tools like wingspan – a ridiculous 6-10 wingspan at 6-1.5 in 2012 – mattering more than production. Somehow, he’s ahead of Michigan State’s Denzel Valentine on the list.
14) Keeping with the draft theme, Daniel Jeremiah’s NFL.com mock draft was updated yesterday, and has Dallas taking Joey Bosa at No. 4 overall (Carson Wentz at No. 2). Cowboys fans would have to be thrilled with that pick if it went down. Jeremiah has Houston selecting Notre Dame receiver Will Fuller at No. 22. Texas fans remember that guy.
15) Prediction: Boston’s Mookie Betts will ink a contract worth more than $200 million total before Los Angeles’ Mike Trout will.
By the way, anyone I talk to in baseball about the Angels' system says it's the worst in baseball without hesitation. That organization is a mess, and seriously might waste Trout's prime, which is a prime that might rank better than anyone we'll see, or have seen, in a long, long time.
16) Tottenham has a chance today, at home against West Ham, to join Leicester City in a tie at the top of the Premier League table after 28 games. We all saw this coming. Not really. This is like the Browns and Jets meeting in the AFC Title Game. Clearly, Leicester is Cleveland. Signed, a Tottenham fan.
17) Felt like Spotlight was the best movie I saw last year, so pleased to see it took the Oscar in what was probably an upset. Also, the Oscar voters got it right by finally honoring Leonardo DiCaprio, and they couldn’t have gone wrong with any of the Best Supporting Actor nominees. Now, I need to hurry up and watch Room because I’ve been missing out.
18) Anything with Candice Swanepoel in it earns a click, especially when followed with the word “lingerie” (just in case women in lingerie might get you in trouble, NSFW)
19)
20) The power of letters sent to a particular elderly gentleman is truly something special, and helped an engineer for the Challenger space shuttle begin to shed 30 years of unbelievably heavy guilt.
1) We’re less than a week away from the beginning of spring football practice. Time flies, doesn’t it? That’s especially true when the coaching carousel keeps circling for months.
All eyes will be on Sterlin Gilbert and the Texas quarterbacks. Specifically, what does Gilbert’s offense look like at Texas, and which quarterback(s) are adjusting to it the quickest and best? Based on his past, Gilbert’s quarterback is going to need to make quick decisions, get the ball out of his hand quickly, play with some athleticism in the pocket with eyes down-the-field, and be able to push the ball deep.
There will, obviously, be a ton to follow elsewhere too, and a few examples:
--- What does the Texas offensive line look like? We know Patrick Vahe, Connor Williams, and Kent Perkins are three of the five, but those other two spots are huge question marks.
--- Texas needs to find more play-making at the safety spot. If that means moving one of the talented corners into the secondary, it needs to avoid hesitation in doing that. This is a big spring at the safety spot for older players trying to hang on to starting jobs and take the next step and for younger players trying to get on to the field in that spot.
--- Charlie Strong wants his guys (recruits) to take over the team and leadership role. This is when that has to start happening.
2) It’s hard for me to watch Gilbert’s previous offenses and not think of John Burt’s ability to stretch the field vertically with size, speed, athleticism, and play-making ability. Right now it’s far too early, but the over/under for his targets in 2016 has to be something similar to 84.5, right? Tulsa ran more (45.5 attempts per game) than it passed (37.8) last season, and leading receiver Keyarris Garrett still had 96 catches, and Dane Evans attempted 485 passes.
3) Junior Days under Charlie Strong are like going to see the Rays at Tropicana Field against the Marlins and Mack Brown’s Junior Days were like seeing the Red Sox against the Yankees in Yankee Stadium; the latter is always the event no matter what, and the former gives you a chance to see a few big-time talents, but the event just isn’t that big of a deal.
That’s just kind of the way recruiting this time of the year is around the country too. Junior Days aren’t really about a bunch of offers and waves of commitments anymore; they’re about getting elite talent to show up and continuing to build relationships, which is what Strong was able to do last week. Getting five-star defensive back Jeffrey Okudah on campus was a pretty significant step forward for Texas. That alone made the Junior Day successful for the Longhorns.
4) The most important thing that came out of yesterday’s media session with Shaka Smart was that junior point guard Isaiah Taylor felt better Tuesday after being in a lot of pain Sunday and Monday due to Plantar Faciitis.
“I would be amazed if he sits out Friday. He lives for one thing – to play basketball, which I’ve encouraged him to understand he has a lot of other things going for him. But I was the same way at that age. He’s no sitting out unless you cut his foot off or he just absolutely can’t do it. Again, he’s feeling a lot better today so hopefully he can keep moving in that direction. We’re planning on him playing,” Smart said yesterday. READ THE FULL REPORT HERE
This is the kind of injury that doesn’t get better as a result of resting for a game or a couple of practices; Taylor has dealt with the injury for a while now, but something aggravated it during the Oklahoma game that made the pain much more difficult to deal with in the couple of days that followed. In order to truly get over Plantar Faciitis, it’s the type of injury that takes requires a month or more off in order to just stay off the foot and rest it.
Pain will come and go for Taylor, and the Longhorns are hoping it’s not the pain that he dealt with Monday. That being said, he was still able to play, and although he didn’t look completely like himself, he looked close to it in terms of sprinting and running.
5) A couple other intriguing discussion points came out of Smart’s lengthy chat with the media yesterday:
--- Throughout the season, Smart has often discussed the mental state of his team, and after listening to him expound on it so much, it’s hard not to think that he’s engaged in a complex reconstruction of the team’s mentality, which resembles at times what he wants. But not all the time. This is just a snippet of a long conversation (READ OUR FULL REPORT HERE):
“I was really concerned on Sunday with the way… I didn’t know that we would be able to handle that level of success. I addressed it with the team. We really tried to get them it the right place. But I was unsuccessful in stemming that tide in terms of… it’s important to respond to adversity. And we have to get better at that as evidenced by the start of the Baylor game, the start of the Kanas game last night. But we also have to get better to responding when we do have success, and that’s a whole different dynamic and I think there’s some things from the past that affect that as well.”
Finally getting over the hump against a great Oklahoma team was a huge moment for Texas players, and it’s safe to say they didn’t handle that in the manner Smart would have liked. And he didn’t hesitate to say he was unsuccessful in getting the team’s mentality where it needed to be. Also, like Smart said yesterday, it might not have even mattered because of the way No. 1 Kansas played.
--- It seems one of the things Smart is in the coaching ring battling against is that there is at least a little bit of the notion in the Texas locker room, among players, that they’ve accomplished a lot already this season. And there is a level of satisfaction about that instead of an all-out, hangry mood to want to achieve more.
“Well one thing that we had at VCU and we always had this, and they had this pre-dating me, is we had nasty, competitive guys. Those guys were killers. Not everyone, but we had a critical mass of guys on our team like that. And so – it’s easy to look back and speak glowingly about the past, but those guys wanted more. They were competitors. Now, they had their faults and challenges as well, but like the team we had that went to the Final Four, we went through a lot of adversity earlier in the year. But you always knew those guys wanted to go after it. There wasn’t like, ‘Okay we’re satisfied because of this or that.’ It’s something we’ll talk about today and moving forward. I do think a little bit in the back of some of our guys’ minds there’s a little bit of ‘Yeah, we’ve done pretty good.”
Someone mentioned the word complacency, which Smart didn't echo but didn't shoot down either. He followed it with another example of what a player might be thinking.
“We’ve done pretty good, you know? The media thought we were going to the NIT when we lost Cam, this and that.’ So we have to battle that. We have to want more.”
Smart made it clear he was disappointed in Texas not wanting to follow a great win with another great win, and having a level of satisfaction in simply achieving the split.
6) A look at the Longhorns’ March Madness resume (courtesy of CBSSports.com’s RPI/team comparison tool):
RPI – 24th
SOS (based on RPI) – 1st
SOS (based on KenPom.com) – 1st
Conference standing – Tied for fourth at 10-7
Top 20 RPI wins – 5 (North Carolina, Iowa State, at West Virginia, West Virginia, Oklahoma)
Top 50 RPI wins – 8 (North Carolina, Iowa State, at West Virginia, West Virginia, Oklahoma, at Baylor, Texas Tech, Vanderbilt)
Record against RPI top 50 – 8-7
Record against RPI top 100 – 12-10 (of note: Connecticut is No. 54 in RPI; Texas-Arlington and Texas A&M-Corpus Christi are No. 101 and 102, respectively)
Bad losses – 1 (at TCU; No. 176 in RPI)
Bracket projection (based on bracketmatrix.com compiling all available online projections to come up with one) – No. 5 seed (as high as a No. 3 and as low as a No. 7)
7) The Texas baseball team received a nice little boost heading into a four-game weekend series against No. 12 Cal when it avoided a rough loss at Texas State by scoring five runs in the 11th inning to win 10-4. The Longhorns held a 4-2 lead heading into the bottom of the seventh, but watched it disappear thanks to a Texas State solo homer in the sixth and eighth innings.
8) In the ninth inning, freshman flame-thrower Chase Shugart came on, and after he misplayed a bunt, Texas State had runners on first and second with no outs. Most pitchers, especially freshmen, would likely melt in that situation. Instead, Shugart fielded the next bunt to get an out, and then Texas intentionally loaded the bases. The righthander forced a grounder to Bret Boswell at short, who came home for the force, and then the next hitter rolled over to second to end the threat.
In 8.1 innings this season, Shugart has a 0.00 ERA, has given up just two hits (.080 batting average against), walked five, and struck out six. More importantly for he and Texas, the freshman is perfect when it comes to pitching out of jams in tight games late, which he’s done a few times already this season.
It isn’t just his electric stuff, which is a moving fastball that has already touched 97 MPH this year – yes, he’s just 5-10 and throws that hard – a power slurve that can spin so sharply and tightly that it has a chance to buckle hitters, and the occasional developing changeup. Shugart, similar to former Longhorns like Chance Ruffin and J. Brent Cox, is just wired a little different. And I mean that in a very complimentary fashion. If he was a football player, Shugart would probably be that guy in full pads an hour before the game tackling his locker, and he takes that sort of mentality to the mound. But along with it is a confidence and demeanor that, so far, just doesn’t get rattled.
Sure, there are going to be points in this year and in his career where he doesn’t convert those situations. But right now we’re seeing the makings of what has a chance to be another special bullpen and closer arm at Texas.
9) The Longhorns are still clearly trying to find their footing, improve their skills, and figure out what kind of team they are. That’s, for the most part, the nature of college baseball now as parity has increased and the amount of practice time before the season is just three weeks. Virginia was a train off the rails last season before figuring it out and winning the national title.
Although the Longhorns are dealing with a lot of injuries right now (Tyler Rand, who could be able to pinch-run soon and should be back closer to four weeks than six, Josh Sawyer, and Patrick Mathis; all three key pieces), they might look back on this stretch as a blessing in disguise.
Augie Garrido is a huge believer in the power of teamwork and its key role in developing a championship-caliber team. He believes in that with more conviction than John Stockton and Karl Malone believe in the pick-and-roll.
Right now, he’s getting important contributions from bench players turned regulars like Travis Jones, Jake McKenzie, Kaleb Denny, Brady Harlan, and Ben Kennedy. It’s fair to say that during the infant stage of this season, Texas’ entire roster feels involved in the winning process because 15 different pitchers have thrown already this year, and 14 different players have recorded at least one hit.
Take last night for example: Jones went 2-for-4 with a run scored, and provided maybe the play of the game when he gunned down a runner trying to tag from third and score in the seventh inning after Texas State had cut the lead to 4-3.
These are the sorts of moments and games where a team grows because everyone in the locker room genuinely feels like a part of what’s going on.
10) Arguably the most perplexing thing about the Houston Rockets’ black hole of a season is how they acquired one of the league’s best assist percentage point guards - that didn’t need to put up shots - and also a career 41 percent shooter from threes in the corner, and turned him into a buyout the first week of March.
Lawson was the definition of steady in his career with five-straight seasons of total win shares between 6.0 and 7.0 and PERs between 17.9 and 19.4. He wasn’t great during that stretch, but Lawson was a solid regular for a long time that saw his assists per game increase every year he was in the league, up to 9.6 last year, until he arrived in Houston. Then, Houston, with more offensive talent surrounding him, put the kind of dent in his numbers that Brady Anderson experienced when he stopped juicing.
Why Houston is the disaster it is probably stems from the type of chemistry that results in liquids that unexpectedly burn through tables, but it’s one of the more mystifying things the NBA has seen in a while. This isn’t like the Dwight Howard, Steve Nash, Kobe Bryant Lakers team that was a schematic misfit from the start. No, this was a team that went to the Western Conference Finals last year, and had a chance to win both games at Golden State to begin the series. What in the hell happened? Does James Harden really ooze that much of a harmful energy?
11) The Warriors are now projected to win 73 games, and have a 46 percent chance of winning the NBA Finals, according to FiveThirtyEight.com. I still can’t get over what Steph Curry did at Oklahoma City on Sunday, which caused the bar I was at in Downtown Austin to erupt like a 2005 Texas football game.
12) Sorry, Mavs fans. But does anyone remember that Baron Davis guy? At 36, it sounds like he’s attempting a comeback. Meanwhile, former No. 1 overall pick Anthony Bennett is about to be waived by Toronto. Even his hometown team isn’t willing to hang on. Soon, Bennett will turn into just an answer to a trivia question.
The crazy thing about that pick is that it’s not like Cleveland whiffed on five stars behind Bennett. Sure, solid regulars have emerged from the draft like Victor Oladipo, C.J. McCollum, Nerlens Noel, and Giannis Antetokounmpo. But this wasn’t taking Darko Milicic over Carmelo Anthony, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh.
13) Speaking of the NBA Draft, DraftExpress.com recently updated their 2016 mock draft earlier this week. Prince Ibeh is on the board at No. 44 overall in the second round. Oklahoma’s Buddy Hield is up to No. 9 overall.
The biggest head-scratcher on that list? Vanderbilt guard Wade Baldwin III at No. 16 overall. Baldwin left Texas’ game early with some sort of leg issue, but could have returned. However, he never did. Baldwin is a career 42.8 percent shooter from two-point range, which is somehow lower than his career 43.9 percent from three. Baldwin is a classic example of physical tools like wingspan – a ridiculous 6-10 wingspan at 6-1.5 in 2012 – mattering more than production. Somehow, he’s ahead of Michigan State’s Denzel Valentine on the list.
14) Keeping with the draft theme, Daniel Jeremiah’s NFL.com mock draft was updated yesterday, and has Dallas taking Joey Bosa at No. 4 overall (Carson Wentz at No. 2). Cowboys fans would have to be thrilled with that pick if it went down. Jeremiah has Houston selecting Notre Dame receiver Will Fuller at No. 22. Texas fans remember that guy.
15) Prediction: Boston’s Mookie Betts will ink a contract worth more than $200 million total before Los Angeles’ Mike Trout will.
By the way, anyone I talk to in baseball about the Angels' system says it's the worst in baseball without hesitation. That organization is a mess, and seriously might waste Trout's prime, which is a prime that might rank better than anyone we'll see, or have seen, in a long, long time.
16) Tottenham has a chance today, at home against West Ham, to join Leicester City in a tie at the top of the Premier League table after 28 games. We all saw this coming. Not really. This is like the Browns and Jets meeting in the AFC Title Game. Clearly, Leicester is Cleveland. Signed, a Tottenham fan.
17) Felt like Spotlight was the best movie I saw last year, so pleased to see it took the Oscar in what was probably an upset. Also, the Oscar voters got it right by finally honoring Leonardo DiCaprio, and they couldn’t have gone wrong with any of the Best Supporting Actor nominees. Now, I need to hurry up and watch Room because I’ve been missing out.
18) Anything with Candice Swanepoel in it earns a click, especially when followed with the word “lingerie” (just in case women in lingerie might get you in trouble, NSFW)
19)
20) The power of letters sent to a particular elderly gentleman is truly something special, and helped an engineer for the Challenger space shuttle begin to shed 30 years of unbelievably heavy guilt.
