Rants and Ranks

    At the beginning of this season, all anyone was talking about was the Warriors, now with Durant, and the former champs, the Cleveland Cavaliers.  As the season progressed, talks continued, and continued, and continued.  The absolute domination of each team's respective conference made it near-impossible to talk about anything else.  Sure, the Cavs ended up with the east's 2nd seed due to a horrendous month of March, but was there any doubt that Cleveland would make its third straight trip to the Finals?  Maybe for fans of the Celtics, but the Celtics proved to just be pretenders for now.   Durant had an injury scare during the year that cost him numerous games. The Warriors had to sacrifice a lot of depth to acquire Durant, so there was valid concern that this was  the worst possible case scenario for the Warriors.  Well suffice to say they didn't miss a beat, and come playoff time Durant was firing on all cylinders. So much so that...

Spiritual Machines 53.9 I've thought about doing this for some time now.  Listening and ranking every album and song of my favorite band, Our Lady Peace.  I was having lots of fun when I started this project, but naturally the more songs you hear, the more daunting the task becomes.  That being said, I relished in the chance to see the final product. Gravity 52.8 A few notes worth mentioning.  Firstly, this only contains songs from studio albums.  My goal was to use mathematics to figure out which albums were truly my favorites.  I had an idea naturally, but I didn't know if I could accurately lay them out in order without really thinking about it.  So since it was used for ranking albums, there are no rarities (like Trapeze) or covers (Dear Prudence, Drive, Imagine etc.) included here because that would have messed up the math.  Yes it would make for a more complete list of best songs, but again that wasn't the initial point.   ...

courtesy: nba.com Of all the years I have been writing this blog, I've been ranting and raving about all star selections.  Some years haven't been so bad, but others have gotten downright ugly.  This year is about as close to perfect (in my mind) as it's going to get. West: Anthony Davis Kawhi Leonard  Kevin Durant Stephen Curry James Harden Russell Westbrook Demarcus Cousins Klay Thompson  Draymond Green Marc Gasol Gordon Hayward DeAndre Jordan East: LeBron James Giannis Antetokounmpo Jimmy Butler  Kyrie Irving Demar Derozan John Wall Paul George Kyle Lowry  Paul Millsap Kevin Love Isaiah Thomas Kemba Walker The root of the problem every year was the fans voting the starting lineups.  Fans are morons.  (Myself included on that list.)  This year, and hopefully forever going forward, fans only accounted for 50% of the votes.  Which we are lucky that is the case because otherwise Zaza Pachulia would be sta...

It's that time again for my annual thoughts running into the new NBA season.  Let's get things rolling. 1. Even though LeBron finally won his beloved Cleveland a ring, there is one thing that completely overshadowed it from the second it happened.  Durant to the Warriors.  This had been rumored for more than a year, and was something that most people just cast aside.  It was too ludicrous to put much thought into.  Well those rumors heated back up after the Warrior's NBA Finals loss, which was preceded by the Thunder losing in the Western Conference Finals ironically enough.  It still seemed like a stretch though.  How can a team have that much firepower, that much star power, and still coexist without any major issues? On paper I feel this the greatest offensive team ever, but with great power comes great  responsibility.  To bring in such a high-volume scorer like Durant would mean that the other two elite scorers (Klay and Steph) would h...

As awesome as the CWC appears to be, after watching the Bracketology show I couldn't help but wonder how much better it could be with a few more big names involved.  I'm not going to lie, I don't know a lot of the guys.  17 to be exact.  Now I hope to become fans of these men once everything is all said and done, but for now they are all dropped from my "dream bracket."  After a few more drops, my remaining competitors are: Zack Sabre Jr. Kota Ibushi Akira Tozawa Tajiri Brian Kendrick Rich Swann Tony Nese T.J. Perkins Johnny Gargano Tommaso Ciampa Cedric Alexander I'm also sticking to their strict 205 lbs and less rule.  So according to Wikipedia, guys like Jay Lethal, Christopher Daniels, or Roderick Strong aren't eligible to compete.  Bummer.  But we have more than enough options around the world to choose from.  I also didn't use anyone from NXT or WWE excluding the ones that were already listed.  Sure Kalisto, Neville, or Au...

si.com The Cleveland Cavaliers can have their first championship parade in franchise history.  LeBron finally was able to deliver for the Cavs, in what some thought was predestined since he showed up in '03.  Let's talk about the Finals later though.  We have some other things to attend to first.  Very shortly after the season began, Kobe announced he would return at season's end.  Would he have done it if the Lakers were competitive or if his body clearly didn't break down beyond repair?  It's hard to tell.  If you want to read my very detailed thoughts on this, or Kobe's career in general, click   here .   As for the Lakers team, they did something I didn’t think was possible, and had an even worse season than last year’s!  Kobe’s Farewell Tour put a bit lighter spin on the season (for some), but it was 76ers-bad.  I suppose if you’re going to be bad, be really bad.  It did get them another number two pick i...