2017 is here, it has a tough act to follow as 2016 was pretty amazing! I thought it would be fun to write some predictions for the coming year for area that I have some interest/knowledge in:

NBA

Regular season award winners:

• MVP- James Harden
• COY – Mike D’Antoni
• ROY – Joel Embiid

The first hot-take is that I’m fully expecting the Cavs to meet the Warriors in the finals for the third straight year. Yes, that’s a bold prediction! The Cavs are getting back to the finals easily, beating Toronto in the EC finals. GSW also getting back to the finals easily, beating Houston in the WC finals.

So, GSW will beat the Cavs in the finals with Kevin Durant being named the Finals MVP.

Rugby Union

England will retain the 6 nations championship, but won’t get the Grand Slam.

While New Zealand had an impressive 2016, they took a step back as the New Zealand of 2015 is the greater team I’ve ever seen. As for 2017, they’ll win the Rugby Championship again easily and will beat the Lions 3-0. The Lions have a quick turnaround after the end of the season in the northern hemisphere, the Lions are never equal to the sum of their parts, and New Zealand rarely lose at home. The All Blacks haven’t lost at home since 2009 (v South Africa) and have won 45 consecutive matches at home.

A New Zealand series win is currently at 1.22, and 3-0 is 1.91…I don’t think there’s any value there, not yet anyway.

NFL

New England are justifiably the favourites to win Superbowl 51, but if you’re backing them around 2.80 then you’re a mug IMO. I don’t have any strong views on the Superbowl other than Lady Gaga is a dead cert to make an absolute tit of herself doing the halftime show.

UFC

Ronda Rousey won’t be back.

Jon Jones will be back and will reclaim his Light-Heavyweight belt.

Conor McGregor has had the best moment of his career. He’ll never top holding two belts at Madison Square Garden. By the end of 2017 he’ll be holding no belts.

Michael Bisping had an amazing 2016. Beat Anderson Silva, beat Rockhold for the title and defended it against Henderson. If he’s stupid enough to face Woodley, he’ll get destroyed. He’ll lose his belt this year and will retire.

World Events

People who don’t like Trump will continue to freak out even over the most insignificant things. People that do like him will be pissed off when nothing really changes.

In the UK there’ll be a stitch-up over Brexit. Article 50 will be triggered in March but the UK will still be in the EU by the end of the year as there’ll be a lengthy negotiating period and ultimately a “soft Brexit” (which isn’t a Brexit) in 2018/19.

In Europe anti-EU sentiment will inevitably rise even more, which will be reflected in the elections.

Here’s the end of year awards for this place, Winners Win: The Winnies! I started this blog back in March 2015, so this is first whole calendar year of the blog. With the final post of the year, here’s a rundown of the best moments from 2016:

Best Bet

I haven’t posted any massive long shot winners this year, not like the Steph Curry MVP win of the previous season. Backing Denver to win Superbowl 50 was one that springs to mind…but the “best bet” is going to go to backing the Portland Trailblazers to win over 26.5 games. They were the first team to hit their over in the 2015/16 season and finished up winning 44 games.

Worst Bet

My NFL bets have had a poor year. But the worst was going “balls deep”, as the kids would say, on Golden State in the NBA finals. I still think they were the better team, but Curry wasn’t 100% in the Finals, Draymond got suspended for game 5 and then they blew a 3-1 lead…which has since been memed to death.

Most Popular Blog Post

Last year the most popular post was Conclusion of a Short Story on Martingale. This year is the first part of that story that’s the most popular. A lot of people seem to find their way to this place by googling for Martingale systems. Hopefully they’ll learn that  Martingale is not a good idea with a real life example of how you’re going to lose a lot of money.

Best Search Term

Some people have used the following search term on Google and found their way here:

Whoa.

Using that search term will bring up a post a wrote about the BBC programme Britain at the Bookies. The main point of that post was that I didn’t think FOBTs should be banned. If someone’s googling that search term then this is serious business and hopefully they’ve been pointed to a website that can actually help them.

---

Hope you all have a Happy New Year, see you in 2017!