Sports discussion

[Flintlock]

Many times, I've wanted to talk about sporting events on TLS, but I know there aren't enough fans on here to keep dedicated threads going for each individual sport. I tried it for Formula 1 when I joined the site but I don't remember when it was last updated. Our only previous general sports thread, as far as I can tell, hasn't been updated since 2009, and was about playing sports, while this is about watching them (hence why I've put it in the entertainment section). Let's see how it goes. If it's popular, maybe we can watch some events while we Skype with each other, like we used to do with movies. Well, I say we, but I never took part. I don't really like many movies. But I do like sports!

What sports do you like or follow? What teams or athletes do you support, if any?

What sporting events are you looking forward to? What do you think is going to happen?

To get us started...

The NBA Finals start in less than an hour, Warriors vs. Cavaliers, the regular season MVP (Steph Curry) vs. the best all-around player (LeBron James). The Elo rating system gives the Cavs only a 25% chance of winning, and basketball is a sport in which the favourites win a lot more often than in other sports, but I think they'll be a lot closer than that. They've had a great post-season, James has been outstanding and he has experience of playing in championship games. None of the Warriors have done it before. I think the Warriors will win anyway, but it might go all the way to game seven, in which they'll have home court advantage. It should be a great series, I can't wait.

One of my favourite Formula 1 races, the Canadian Grand Prix, takes place this weekend. It should be a comfortable win for Mercedes, but that's what we said last year, and a Red Bull ended up ahead of them. There's maybe less chance of an upset this year. I reckon Lewis Hamilton will be pretty fired up after what happened at Monaco, so I'll back him to win. The Williams cars might get amongst the Ferraris this weekend but I still think Vettel will take third place behind the silver cars.

 

[Lex]

OK I hate sport, but I might enjoy it if I could watch it with people I can actually talk about it to. Like you guys. So I will submit that the following things do not make me want to kill myself:

Formula 1 (probably my favourite of the bunch)
Winter sports (particularly if it involves sliding down a mountain quickly)
Sometimes, rugby (I used to be on the school team, but stopped following it years ago)

That's it. Anything else is terrible. The Americans love that handegg thing and as Giles astutely notes in Buffy: "I just think it's rather odd that a nation that prides itself on its virility should feel compelled to strap on forty pounds of protective gear just in order to play rugby." I also dislike football generally but would root for the heathen team in Glasgow that all of football despises (call it daddy issues). I suppose I don't utterly hate tennis. Basketball I can't stand.

So my main point with this post (which everyone is free to ignore) is that I'm going to try and "be into" the sports that I like, because I do enjoy watching them, but I would enjoy them immensely if I could discuss them. It's just hard because when someone says "sport" I get images of Glasgow emulating Northern Ireland's troubles through football, bigotry that I can't get out of my head, misogynistic and homophobic straight men en masse screaming abuse at each other and bad memories of being picked last in childhood even though I was immensely good at most sports. The word just makes me feel super super bitter for a thousand reasons.

So roll on the mind cleansing, it's time to wash all the bad stuff away. Sport time I guess.

 

[Keveh Kins]

I dig Formula 1.

Watch soccer on and off, mostly the international competitions. Occasionally watch Celtic matches and then feel bitter because a grade A cunt like Scott Brown makes more money in a week than I'll likely ever see in a lifetime

I quite like Ice Hockey and Basketball too, support the Belfast Giants because they're the only team in Ireland that I know of. Like the LA Clippers on the basketball side of things. Always preferred playing Basketball to watching it.

Like Rugby, and Gaelic

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

I don't really care about most sports, but I do have a visceral love of soccer. TBH I am a soccer mom; I have the car and everything. I have a deep attachment to Tottenham Hotspur and a corresponding hatred of Arsenal. I love going to live soccer matches, doesn't matter if it's little kids or Premier League. Toronto FC is an embarrassment, unfortunately.

I also enjoy going to village green cricket matches, but I don't follow the sport.

 

[Alex Strife]

Everyone should just watch F1. Not to brag but you guys have an expert here as in, I have attended races as media and shit and I get paid for writing my opinions on Motorsports (even if not as much as I would need).

Regarding the Canadian Grand Prix... Mercedes are looking strong, as always. Lewis Hamilton, particularly. After what happened in the last race, he wants to talk on the track. And he loves the track. However... he can also lose the cool and while I believe he has the most chances to win, we can never know, can we? And of course, Montreal has often all sorts of surprises so we'll see.

I believe Ferrari will be clearly ahead of Williams, however. They're bringing quite a few updates, mainly on the engine side. So even if the Williams should go well on this type of track, Ferrari ought to stay ahead.

And SOME (not all) weather forecasts are stating there's rain for Sunday. Throw all the predictions down the sink if that happens!

 

[ForceStealer]

I'm a baseball guy myself. I know no one else likes it and thinks it's boring. I think I like the one-on-one nature of it, while still being a team sport. At any given time, it's always simply a battle between the pitcher and batter. And while it can drag at times, other times it can be damn stressful.

I've slowly become more and more confused why it has the reputation of being boring in the US when American football stops every four seconds and the games actually take longer than most baseball games.

Regular football/soccer has always bored me. The field is too big and no one ever scores. It's like really slow hockey. And anytime I knock it everyone's response is "but they're in such good shape!" as if that has any bearing on whether I would enjoy the sport or not.

Basketball is boring for the exact opposite reason as soccer. They score constantly and there's no discernible strategy to it.

I don't regularly follow hockey, but I like it when I watch it.

As for Formula 1, I love cars and I like racing games and all that, but I never got into it. They're also usually very long, aren't they?

 

[Flintlock]

As for Formula 1, I love cars and I like racing games and all that, but I never got into it. They're also usually very long, aren't they?

Races usually last around 100 minutes. The longest a race can be is two hours (plus the completion of the lap the cars are on when the two hour mark is reached). With boring races I often find myself falling asleep or getting distracted for the middle third of the race. :/

 

[Alex Strife]

I guess it all depends on how much you're into it. Honestly.

Basically those who care for the first 4 or 5 positions only VS those who care for everything. Not that there's anything wrong with either but I find it difficult to actually get bored with an F1 race. Don't get me wrong, there are some races that are clearly better. But I always (almost) find something interesting going on.

I also believe that part of the reason people are bored with races is because everyone's drunk on information nowadays. 20 years ago, nobody knew shit about racing. Nowadays, the coverage is so good that even if you do not know too much, everything's well explained and the more you know, the less uncertainty there is. The sport hasn't really changed THAT much over the past two decades*.

* It has, just not as much as some people insist.

 

[Keveh Kins]

^This be true. My girlfriend's dad likes to watch F1 purely so that he can calculate from all the lap times and other stuff what lap a certain driver will attempt an overtake on another driver. He's gotten freakishly quick at doing it up too

Maybe it's not that complicated, but I'm a total dunce with mathematics so as far as I'm concerned the man is a savant

 

[Flintlock]

Alex, I actually find that the more information I have, the more I enjoy races. I used to have the live timing screens from the F1 website up whenever I was watching a race so I could see which drivers were closing gaps or pulling away even if they weren't on camera. Now that information has been taken away, presumably to push people towards paying for the official mobile app, but I'm not going to give them my money for something I think should be free.

 

[Alex Strife]

For me, it is the same!! But for the casual fan, if you remove the uncertainty, you remove part of the appeal. Or so I have seen.

For me, the more I know, the more I understand and the more I understand, the more I can enjoy them. In fact, I often call strategies before they put them into motion, which is not so impressive considering that it's their job to decide strategies on the spot and they are risking a lot more than I am from home... but I also have less information. So it's not bad.

I feel the same way towards the app and live timing. I used to really enjoy having the numbers there. Now I still keep the live timing on because it's still useful and if you actually know how to read what little information they give you, it is still possible to get more from it. I admit having the actual split times would be better but I do not feel I want to pay... unless I actually, really need it for my job. Which is not the case, for the time being.

 

[Ghost X]

I've all but given up volleyball. I'm still listed on my team, but university has become a life-swallowing behemoth. I try to play on holidays, or if on the rare occasion I think I can afford the time to play.

I don't have much time to watch sport for similar reasons, but I participate in a tipping competition for the Australian Football League (aka Aussie Rules). I'm pretty good, at least in my local group / micro-comp. I tend to win or come second each year. I look at a lot of stats each week as well as the footy news to see who is injured and what not. This helps me pick upsets. I was once really tempted to put money on it, but I don't think I'm that good yet, or will ever be .

I will go to some national 20/20 cricket matches during the summer. That's really it at the moment. I used to play squash, but got no time for it. I would be interested taking up velodrome-type bike-riding in the future. Also interested in swimming due to the low-impact quality of it. Volleyball has taken a toll on my knees.

 

[Flintlock]

This post, and probably most of my posts in this thread from this point on, contain spoilers for recent sporting events. Just in case you're planning to watch highlights or something.

---

A Williams finished ahead of the Ferraris at the Canadian Grand Prix. It was quite a dull race, though. For a moment, I thought Rosberg would challenge Hamilton, because he closed the gap at the front to around one second, but it never happened, maybe because he had to cool his overheating brakes.

The men's French Open final (tennis) was much more interesting. Wawrinka had to play the game of his life to beat Djokovic - and he did. When Djokovic broke in the fourth set I thought he'd go on to win the game, but "Stan the Man" got two breaks of his own to win the match and championship.

Ireland played England in possibly the most boring football match I've ever seen... but it was only a friendly. The Champions League final was much more exciting, even if the winner was 90% certain before a ball had been kicked.

The Warriors took a 1-0 lead over the Cavaliers in the NBA finals after winning the first match of the series in overtime, but more concerning for the Cavs is the loss of their All-Star point guard, Kyrie Irving, to injury. With him out of the series, a Warriors win is almost guaranteed. I still think LeBron will pull a game out on his own for the Cavs to stop it being a sweep though. The next match is tonight.

Bradley Wiggins beat the one-hour cycling distance record by about 1.6 km. He fell a little short of his 55 km target, but that was possibly due to the high atmospheric pressure and the size of the crowd watching him set the record. Still an incredible feat.

Obviously there was a lot more sport than that over the weekend - the women's World Cup got underway in Canada, for example - but that's all I watched.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

I like all sports (seriously, all of them -- golf, tennis, hockey, football, baseball, basketball, the other football, roller derby, racing, wrestling, bowling, billiards, etc.), but don't really go out of my way to watch much. I especially love attending games/matches/races.


Seeing as I don't have much else to contribute, I'll just leave this:

 

[Carlie]

Sports events I'm currently watching:

NBA Finals - Look before Kevin Love went out, I thought if the Cavs made it to the finals they had a shot at winning. Once Love was out they had almost no chance of winning the finals. The Eastern conference for the past few years has been a joke. Teams are making it to the playoffs with records below .500 because of the conference's general mediocrity. So the few good teams that it does have, do not get challenge as much as the teams in the far superior Western conference do. Now that Kyrie Irving is also out, the best the Cavs can hope for is not to get swept by the Warriors. Which would be nice since this is only the second trip the Cavs have ever made to the finals and they've never won a game.

French Open - I'm actually quite surprised that Djokovic lost in the finals with the way he had been demolishing players lately. On the other hand no surprise Serena won in the finals after she willed herself to a win in the semi's with the flu.

FIFA Women's World Cup - It started yesterday, ya'll need to watch it. I much prefer watching the women play professional football than the whinny, overacting floppers that are most of the men. I really want a rematch between the USA and Brasil, and the USA and Japan. And I really, really want it to be as exciting as the 2011 World Cup was and that it will hopefully bring more attention to women's football.

 

[Alex Strife]

From the moment I said Ferrari ought to be stronger, I knew that would happen!! Seriously though, I still feel the red cars performed better; Vettel would have been third if he hadn't started from 18th. This is, partially, why I was not bored with the race. You had both Vettel and Massa charging through the field and that was quite good to see.

To be honest, the problem was (I feel) that this was completely different from what we have come to expect from Canada. There's always something happening there; safety cars, machine trouble... (tell THAT to McLaren!) and this year's was rather tame in comparison. It was still a decent race on its own right, if you ask me.

I admit I was also hoping Rosberg would manage to try and attack Hamilton. But I do not count since my hopes were for them to clash...

As for Räikkönen, he did the same thing as last year! Freaky, huh, spinning pretty much in the same spot and situation. Such a shame because I feel he lost the 3rd place there. Either way, 42nd fastest lap of his career and he's now 2nd of all time. Well done, man! Looking forward to places like Spa, where he always performs well...

 

[Keveh Kins]

I was actually quietly delighted that Raikkonen had that little hitch and only got 4th. Because I'm doing an F1 predictions league, sucking at it, and I really needed the ten points for predicting him correctly >___>

Sorry Kimi

 

[Kermitu Kleric Katie]

I don't really watch sports. I prefer playing them, with association football, shortened to soccer here in the U.S. but shortened to football pretty much everywhere else, being my favorite to play. I can watch pretty much any sport if I'm with friends, but I must say, I find more fast paced and intense sports like soccer and basketball more far more interesting than slow-paced sports like baseball and American football. My favorite sport to watch would probably be women's beach volleyball 'cause of all the women in bikinis. It's a completely shallow reason, I'll admit, but I have no shame.

 

[Flintlock]

NBA Finals - Look before Kevin Love went out, I thought if the Cavs made it to the finals they had a shot at winning. Once Love was out they had almost no chance of winning the finals. The Eastern conference for the past few years has been a joke. Teams are making it to the playoffs with records below .500 because of the conference's general mediocrity. So the few good teams that it does have, do not get challenge as much as the teams in the far superior Western conference do. Now that Kyrie Irving is also out, the best the Cavs can hope for is not to get swept by the Warriors. Which would be nice since this is only the second trip the Cavs have ever made to the finals and they've never won a game.

Have you been watching after you wrote that comment? There have been some great games so far. LeBron James and Matthew Dellavedova managed to win games two and three almost on their own, but they looked exhausted last night against the Warriors' small-ball line-up. Also, LeBron showed his cock on national television. Oops.

 

[vaderSW1]

Have you been watching after you wrote that comment? There have been some great games so far. LeBron James and Matthew Dellavedova managed to win games two and three almost on their own, but they looked exhausted last night against the Warriors' small-ball line-up. Also, LeBron showed his cock on national television. Oops.

I must have missed LeBron showing off his sausage. Thank the Lord for small favors.

As for the NBA Finals, the series has actually been better than I thought it would be. I totally expected Golden State to just take it to Cleveland and that is not what has happened (with the exception of Game 4 last night). Cleveland looked completely exhausted last night. Especially James and Dellavedova.

I expect that LeBron will have a better game Sunday night. I think Cleveland will play better on the whole. However, I think it is going to be far more difficult for Cleveland to win 2 out of the last 3 than it will be for Golden State. I picked Golden State to win before the series began and I am sticking with them.

 

[Flintlock]

The Golden State Warriors are the new NBA champions after winning the finals 4-2 with one game to spare. Well-deserved, in my opinion. Sure, the Cavs were severely weakened by two injuries to key players, but the Ws had the best regular season record and dominated game after game.

 

[Carlie]

I was less than impressed with the Warriors during the finals. They won because they had the deeper team and the Cavs were completely depleted. Not because they played their hearts out like champions do, like the Cavs did, 5 against 1 wins every day. The other thing finals MVP should go to the best player in the finals regardless of whether their team won or not. Lebron outplayed everyone in the finals with historic numbers and after that the second choice should've been Curry. Iguodala had no business winning that finals MVP.

Women's World Cup: Please people watch it. The group stage finishes up soon. For the English your women's team actually scores and wins games. The defending champions are the Japanese who as an underdog in 2011 went and beat super power and the two time defending champion Germans in Germany. Then defeated a powerful Swedish team in the semi finals. And in the finals they defeated the other super power in the women's game and at the time number 1# ranked team USA in a penalty shootout.

These two documentaries are very good if you wanna know about the struggles women's game faced and the USA team of the late 80's and 90's that were a big factor in making women's football popular:

Spoiler

And then there's the 2011 quaterfinal between the USA and Brasil which helped bring back the sport into mainstream media. And quite frankly the greatest football game I've ever seen (and second greatest women's football game ever after the 99' World Cup final between the USA and China):

 

[Flintlock]

I was less than impressed with the Warriors during the finals. They won because they had the deeper team and the Cavs were completely depleted. Not because they played their hearts out like champions do, like the Cavs did, 5 against 1 wins every day. The other thing finals MVP should go to the best player in the finals regardless of whether their team won or not. Lebron outplayed everyone in the finals with historic numbers and after that the second choice should've been Curry. Iguodala had no business winning that finals MVP.

I agreed with you about the MVP decision until a couple of hours after the game, but after looking at some advanced stats yesterday, I became a bit more understanding of it going to Iguodala.

Amongst players with double-figure minutes in the series, he had the best offensive rating (most points scored per 100 possessions by his team when he was on the floor), the best defensive rating (fewest points conceded) and the highest effective field goal percentage with an amazing 62%. Curry was at 55% and James all the way down at 43% because he was forced into taking so many bad, contested shots. James' shooting percentage was even worse when Iguodala was guarding him. Iguodala also managed a better assist-to-turnover ratio than either Curry or James.

James is clearly the best player in the world and is unquestionably the most valuable player to the Cavaliers, but in terms of which of them had the biggest impact on the series, it's not so clear cut.

Oh, and I promise I'll watch some of the knockout matches at the Women's World Cup.

 

[Carlie]

Oh, and I promise I'll watch some of the knockout matches at the Women's World Cup.

Yay!

So the group stage ended yesterday and knockout stage begins on Saturday. Here's how the bracket looks like:

Spoiler

 

[Carlie]

Women's World Cup: Yesterday was great, Australia upsetting Brasil and winning their first knockout stage game ever in a World Cup, male or female. I'm not a fan of the Brazilian team but I do feel bad for them. It took till this year for their Country to actually invest in their team before that they're uniforms were old ones from the men's.

The Canada/Switzerland match was also very exciting. I was rooting for Canada because a lot of the tournament's success depends on the host nation getting far. Especially if football isn't very popular in the host nation.