They are who we thought they were…

So the NBA season is over for another year with the best team winning in the Golden State Warriors. GSW had a historically good regular season, in terms of games won and their point margin. There’s been plenty written about how teams as good as that usually go on to win the title.

Andre Iguodala was the pleasantly surprising winner of Finals MVP.

I also had money on Lebron, who everyone would consider being “the best player in the series”, but as he played on the losing team he didn’t win “Finals MVP”. Interesting that Curry didn’t receive a single vote for MVP despite being the slight odds on favourite going into game 6.

Throughout the rounds of the playoffs I’ve been posting up some recommended bets here on the blog, we’ve had:

• 5 wins
• 3 loses
• Total profit of +3.17 points 

If anyone’s been able to retire to the South of France on the back of those tips, at the very least, send your new best mate Flash a postcard, eh?

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Something else…during the playoffs you may have seen a graphics on TV saying the David Blatt has won 16 titles in Europe. I’ve seen people on Twitter saying things along the lines of “See. I knew he was a great coach!” and “only a coaching expert from the highest echelons could win 16 titles in Europe”.

I’ve been overly critical of Blatt man, but I still think this 16 titles needs clearing up, or the biggest asterisk known to man next to it.

11 of those titles were in Israel with Maccabi Tel Aviv: 5 League titles & 6 Cups. Maccabi are by far & away the biggest basketball team in Israel. There’s been 60 league championships in Israel over the years and Maccacbi have won 51 of them! Out of the 9 times they didnt win, in 7 of them they finished runner-up. As for the cup they’ve won it 42 times out of 55 years!  Accumulatively, out of 115 trophies in Israeli basketball, Maccabi have won 93 of them, that’s 81%!

In conclusion, professional basketball in Israel could be politely described as a joke. As long as you remember to turn up & have 5 guys on court, you could most likely ‘coach’ Maccabi Tel Aviv to a trophy.

If you want to talk about Blatt’s European record as a indicator of coaching prowess, then mention winning EuroBasket 2007 or an Olympic bronze medal in 2012, both with Russia. Or maybe winning the Euroleague (although the final 4 format is a total crapshoot)…

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Finally I’m going to add a new little feature to the blog, a Trivia question of the week. Who likes sports and doesn’t like trivia? Not me, nor the good souls reading this. So feel free to think about it, use the Google machine if you cant wait for the answer next week, and later impress work colleagues and ladies at the bar with your new found knowledge:

Who are the two golfers to have contested and lost playoffs/extra holes in all four of the major championships?