A Random, Mostly Pointless Observation About Basketball

I watch a fair amount of basketball and I have noticed over the years that, more than any other sport I watch, seemingly more than any other major, popular sport, early leads in games tend to evaporate. Even supposedly substantial leads of nearly 20 points. There is no sport where what seems like a substantial early lead will more reliably be erased. I feel like 80% or more of basketball games I watch, early leads of up to around 20 points, maybe even 25, are eventually completely erased later in the game. I am not sure what an equivalent lead in other sports would be- 2-0 in hockey? 4-0 in baseball? 10-0 in football? I feel like those leads in those sports are roughly equivalent to a 15-25-point lead in the first two quarters of basketball, and I feel like they are much less consistently erased than such a lead is in basketball.

I could be wrong, would love to see it studied. Just my own feeling.

I have thought a lot about this. It seems equally often that basketball game scores are within a 10-12-point difference in the last 5 minutes of the fourth quarter.

This all suggests to me that basketball is, way more than other sports, a game of chance. The competitors are much more often of fairly equal skill and who wins the game more often comes down to little more than who was lucky enough to get the shots to fall.

And yet, the same two teams have reached the NBA Finals in each of the previous 3 seasons. Sooo... is my theory disproven? Or is it that only a small handful of teams are ever destined to rise to a tier above the rest?

I don't know, but I remain convinced that basketball is way more susceptible to erasure of big leads than other major sports. I'd like to see this investigated.

2017 World Series Game 1 Notes

Player of the game: Home-plate umpire Phil Cuzzy. Not because he did a great job but because he had the greatest impact on the game, frequently calling strikes that were outside of the strike-zone. Sure seems that starting pitchers Clayton Kershaw (Dodgers) and Dallas Keuchel (Astros) pitched well. At the same time it didn't hurt that they were able to throw strikes below batters' knees and outside the plate.

Justin Taylor, the two-headed monster of the Dodgers lineup, provided all the Dodgers offense. Chris Taylor led-off the game with a monstrous home-run. Joe Buck asked during a replay, "did that ball *actually* get outta here?" It reached the back rows of the stands, that's for sure.

Major League Baseball got its wish: a short game, 2 hours 28 minutes (or was it 24?). Now is that really what baseball wants to increase its fan appeal? A pitcher's duel where the hitters don't hit, and the pitchers are aided by Phil Cuzzy? It certainly didn't seem to be the game George Springer, Jose Altuve, and several other Astros wanted when they were called out on strikes that weren't in the strike zone. 2 hours and 28 minutes, featuring 2 minutes of offense. That's really gonna draw the fans.

It's the climate-change world series. 103 degrees at the time of first-pitch.

I'm guessing this was the first world series game to feature a commercial explicitly calling for the impeachment of the sitting president of the united states. And I am sure he was sitting. Thank you, Tom Steyer, for buying ad time calling for said impeachment. I checked out the website and signed the petition, even though I kinda sense the whole Russia-hacked-the-2016-election is a Democrats' fever dream.