Thoughts and opinions

Proportionately speaking, no two teams in any professional sport have dominated their league the way the Lakers and the Celtics have. This latest meeting is the 62nd NBA Championship and at the end of it, no matter who wins or who loses, the two teams will combine to account for 50 percent of the league's titles.

To put that into perspective - the next two teams with the most titles, the Bulls and Spurs, combine for 10 total titles.

Counting each conferences' entry into the finals as a separate entry, the two teams account for 49 of 124 possible appearances in the finals.

No two (professional) teams in the Unites States account for as large a percentage of finals competitors.

Even if you wanted to be anal and discount the five wins as the Minneapolis Lakers, that's still 27 championships and 43 appearances.

Just going Super Bowl Era alone, there are no two teams that even come close to approaching the 50 percent mark in combined titles. Of the 103 World Series played, the Yankees and Cardinals combine for around 33 or 34 percent of the titles at 36 combined. The closest is in the NHL where the Canadiens and the Maple Leafs make up 37 of the 83 titles that are held by teams still active in the league (in other words, there are teams no longer in existence that hold titles that would push it to 92 titles since the 1914-1915 seasons).

That's domination.

One last basketball observation - I would like to see the Celtics win, however, I don't think they will. How I hope I'm wrong regarding that.

Required reading...

Peter King's Tuesday Morning Quarterback, essentially his mail bag for his Monday Morning Quarterback column at si.com should be required reading this week for everybody. If you haven't read it, you should.

His readers, for the most part, are responding to his Monday column dealing with Aaron Kampman and the tornadoes that tore apart Iowa last week. They are some of the more eloquent and touching letters I have seen from any columnists' fan base, and deserving of both our time and consideration.

Three for four...

Winning a championship is an exceedingly difficult feat on any level of sports. Even getting to the big game is a chore.

Last year, after an undefeated season, the Patriots lost in the Super Bowl. To stress the "any level" point - the Aussie rules team I play on was bounced in the national tournament one game shy of the championship match after an undefeated season.

Boston teams are three for four in just getting to that championship game, with only the Bruins not making it quite as far as the other three. And they still made it to the post season.

Right now the teams are one and one, waiting on the Celtics to see if that winning percentage jumps to .667, or drops to .333.

Some quick thoughts...

How is it the Red Sox can dismantle a solid pitcher like Mark Buehrle and then five games later make a mediocre Roger Clemens look like he's vying for the Cy Young award?

Imponderable - If Indians fans are "on the reservation," Red Sox fans are part of "Red Sox Nation," and Phillies fans are "phanatics," does that make Padres fans "pod people?"

A couple of comments on Peter King...

Peter King this week took issue with the NFL's pre-season, noting that football's exhibition season should be shortened from four weeks to three for several reasons. On ESPN radio this week he noted that the Giants suffered severe injuries in last week's game to four players that were likely to make their roster.

In general, I like Peter King - I don't always agree with him, but he tends to put a lot of thought behind his arguments. This was not one of them.

He talked about how the pre-season should be shortened to three games in order to avoid these injuries, using the Giants as an example. Of course the Giants injuries came in the third game rendering the argument...shall we say impotent?

Personally, I'm one of the few freaks that genuinely likes this time of year. I like to see the guys on the bubble, sometimes find somebody to root for to make the team. I will have my butt parked on my couch tomorrow night with the channel tuned to the NFL network to catch that last Patriots pre-season match-up with the Giants.

Also at SI.com, King listed what he felt were the top 500 players in the NFL - approximately the top 30 percent. Interesting read - 21 of the Patriots 22 starters made the list (T. Brady, Watson, Light, Welker, Moss, Stallworth, Koppen, Neal, Mankins, Maroney, Seymour, Warren, Wilfork, Vrabel, Colvin, Bruschi, A. Thomas, Hobbs, Samuel, Harrison, Wilson). Go over there for the actual rankings.

Little more than a week to kick-off. Can't wait.

A common complaint...

In recent years, I swear that one thing I hear announcers talk about when I watch football is how tackling is a lost art.

Players are more concerned with the kill-shot - the highlight reel shot that gets them their fifteen seconds of fame on ESPN. They drop their heads, lower their shoulders, and smack the crap out of the ball-carrier. Sometimes they knock the guy down, sometimes they don't. Either way, it almost always seems to make ESPN.

It seems like there's only a handful of teams left that have reputations as sound tacklers - where it tends to be unusual for a wide receiver or a running back to get extra yards after first contact, because the defender actually wraps the guy with the ball. During Friday's exhibition between Tampa Bay and New England, I saw Patriots corner Randall Gay make a text book tackle of one of the Buc's wide outs - helmet on hip, left arm around waist, right around leg. It was how coaches should be teaching kids on the Pop Warner level.

As for why you see less and less of this - well, it could be because players now are what "Concrete" Charlie Bednarick describes as, "pussycats." The last of the 60-minute men, the true two-way players, Bednarick put the emphasis on, "pussy," when he made that statement.

Or it could be because of the following, as reported today in Peter King's Monday Morning Quarterback Column at Sports Illustrated -

Speaking of ESPN, a great note from Ed Werder before the Cowboys-Colts
preseason opener -- the first tackle Dallas made in the game would be their
first full-contact tackle of the summer, because Wade Phillips hadn't had the
team in any full-contact situations yet. Amazing in this day and age that
full-speed tackling is very rarely practiced in camps around the league. Even in
tradition-loving places like Pittsburgh (one practice), Buffalo (two practices)
and Chicago (two practices), I saw zero put-'em-on-the-ground tackling drills or
full-contact tackling.

It's a wonder that tackling isn't worse.

Peter's Friends...

For all the moaning about the "mistake" the Patriots made in letting Deion Branch go in the trade, it is interesting that Peter King at Sports Illustrated had this to say in this week's Monday Morning Quarterback column -

"10. Seattle (10-8). Just a guess, but my feeling is the Seahawks would rather have the 22nd pick in the draft, plus the $7 million-a-year cap dollars it paid Deion Branch, back right now. Instead, New England sits there with two first-rounders, the rich getting richer, and Seattle is out of the draft business until late in the second round come April."

That's kind of a backhanded way of saying, "maybe we (the press) were wrong about Branch's impact."

Down to 181.5. aiming for 179 by next monday and 170 by the end of February.

Considering the results of last year's trades (Hanley Ramirez, Cla Merideth, etc.), I think it's wise of Theo Epstein to nix a trade with any team looking to plunder the Sox top prospects in order to unload an aging superstar with a bloated contract. I mean, the Sox don't really want to become the Yankees, do they?

I don't even really follow basketball, haven't in years. I look at the standings now and then, but there isn't really a team out there I root for. That being said, this year the Atlantic Conference in the East is bad - I mean really bad, like on a biblical level sort of bad. Currently the two best teams in the AC, New Jersey and Toronto are each a game under .500 with only 22 wins with less than half a season left to play. To put that in perspective, in the East alone Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland, Indiana, Washington, and Orlando all have better records.

In the West - Utah, Denver, Minnesota, Phoenix, The Lakers, The Clippers, Dallas, San Antonio and Houston all have better records. In a 30-team league, there are 15 teams with better winning percentages.

If division winners were not automatic locks to get into the playoffs, if playoff contenders were based on record alone it could be feasible that both teams could miss the playoffs as Golden State is only a half game behind the Nets and Raptors and Miami, Portland, and New Orleans are all within five games.