Sports fodder for a Friday morning . . .
Nevada Wolf Pack men’s basketball fans breathed a sigh of relief this week when Cameron Oliver announced he was withdrawing his name from the NBA draft. There was always little or no chance that Oliver would be drafted next month so the announcement is hardly stunning. But you never know what might happen when you jump into the cesspool that is professional sports. Oliver said this week that he learned that the NBA sees him as a jump shooting power forward and wants to see him learn how to dribble the ball for a few steps without bouncing it off his feet. Again, that is also not stunning news. It is, after all, a soft, jump-shooting league now. So expect to see a lot of Oliver shots from 10-20 feet next year as he conducts his year-long NBA tryout. We’ll find out if that is a good thing or not for the Wolf Pack.
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Oliver, if all goes well, will be the Mountain West’s Player of the Year next year. Expect him to average 15-plus points a game on 50 per cent shooting (a ton of threes and dunks) to go along with 10-plus rebounds and three-plus blocks. If he gets his 3-point shooting at 38 percent or higher (it was 33 percent last year) and free throws at 72 percent or higher (66 percent last year), well, look out. We might be looking at a lottery pick. Oliver probably should have won the Mountain West’s top player award last year when he was named Freshman of the Year. A Player of the Year award, a Mountain West title and a trip to the NCAA tournament should be enough to put the 6-foot-8 Oliver firmly on the NBA draft’s first-round radar next summer.
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If you are an opposing center in the Mountain West, you see Oliver and you start shaking, sweating and faking injuries. Mountain West centers (or guards and forwards) can’t guard Oliver because he makes them play the entire floor. You have to go out beyond the 3-point circle and if you take your eye off him he is exploding behind you for an alley-oop dunk from Lindsey Drew. The one area, though, that we will likely see the greatest improvement from Oliver next year is going to be his passing. It is the skill that will make NBA scouts drool. Oliver didn’t really have anybody to pass the ball to last year so we didn’t see it that often from him. That will change this year. He is a very smart and unselfish player (he doesn’t take bad shots) and could develop into an excellent passer for a big man. We might see Oliver average four assists a game next year.
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Don’t be shocked to see the Wolf Pack baseball team playing in the NCAA regionals next week. This team is as hot as any team in the country right now and last year’s postseason disaster is quietly motivating the entire program, even though a lot of them weren’t even here a year ago. There hasn’t been any pressure on this program all year, thanks to a ton of turnover off of last year’s 41-15 team and a slow start this year. The Pack has been under the radar since late March and is now playing free and easy and full of confidence right now. And that is always a recipe for success (see Oliver and friends last March) when it comes to Wolf Pack sports.
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The Pack baseball team seems to be doing what the Pack men’s basketball team did this past winter. It is peaking at the right time. Oliver and his teammates turned into a different team in the postseason in the CBI under first-year coach Eric Musselman and won the school’s first postseason tournament title. First-year coach T.J. Bruce just might lead the Pack to the school’s first-ever Division I conference baseball tournament title this weekend and get the program back to its first regional in 16 years. And, by the way, the success of men’s hoops and baseball will lead right into football in the fall when Brian Polian’s team is likely 8-1 heading into a Nov. 12 matchup with San Diego State at Mackay Stadium.
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The 1995-96 Chicago Bulls are, once again, the greatest team in NBA history. That was confirmed by the Golden State Warriors’ fifth loss of this year’s playoffs in Game 4 against the Oklahoma City Thunder. The loss was the Warriors’ 14th of the year. The Bulls of 1995-96 lost just 13 games in the regular season and playoffs combined and their .870 winning percentage (87-13) is still and will likely always be the best in NBA history. The Warriors’ 73 wins in the regular season were impressive but the argument that those 73 wins makes them the best ever is hollow. The Bulls won only 72 games in the regular season 20 years ago because the record they beat was 69 games. If the record was 75 they would have won 76.
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The NBA has to be scared out of its mind about the possibility of a NBA Finals that doesn’t have either the Warriors or LeBron James. An Oklahoma City-Toronto title series would turn the NBA into the NHL or WNBA. It would officially be football season everywhere south of Toronto (where it is always hockey season) if the league is shuttling back and forth between Oklahoma and Canada in the Finals. Charles Barkley would just go play golf and Shaq would simply start selling non-stick frying pans on late-night television. It can’t happen.
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The Bay area must have sold its sports soul to the devil. The San Francisco 49ers were a Colin Kaepernick bootleg away from winning the Super Bowl a few years ago. The San Francisco Giants have won three World Series in recent years. The Golden State Warriors won the NBA title a year ago and kept the league in the national spotlight this year with a 73-win regular season. And now we have the San Jose Sharks in the Stanley Cup finals. It took two dozen years but the Sharks finally have gotten over the hump and will play for the Cup. This is what can happen when a team plays without pressure. Nobody expected anything out of the Sharks this year, not like past years when they were as talented as any team in the league and always disappointed in the playoffs. Low expectations (right, Wolf Pack?) are wonderful.
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One team that is thriving under high expectations, though, is the Giants. It’s an even-numbered year so everyone in the Bay area expects the Giants to win the World Series and the Giants just might prove them right. The team was an uninspiring 17-18 just two weeks ago but is now 30-19 after winning 13 of its last 14 games. They have allowed just 22 runs in those 13 wins and the free agent additions this past winter of pitchers Johnny Cueto and Jeff Samardzija look like brilliant moves right now. Cueto, Samardzija and Madison Bumgarner are a combined 20-5 this year with a 2.37 earned run average. It’s the best Big Three in the Bay area since Joe Montana, Jerry Rice and Roger Craig.