Thursday Grab Bag: NBA Finals

Everybody asks me how I like Farmington.

I'm not sure why. I don't really get the sense that people are self-conscious about their town, it's more curiosity. But I explain that I'm not a picky person, and for the most part there's good and bad things about every area.

That's prompted a version of this response at least four times: It's a great place if you like to be close to a lot of outdoors, but not so great if you're young and single. (I'm just the messenger here.)

There just doesn't seem to be a wealth of attractive early 20s transplants that have just graduated college.

All this to say I went up to Durango yesterday to hike the Haflin Creek Trail. I have to say driving through downtown made Farmington look worse. There were several pretty girls.

The hike was great. It's purportedly 7.6 miles round trip with 3,000 feet elevation gain (the highest point up over 9,000 feet). I bested my goal time by 12 minutes and it turned out to be a good training session, but mostly it wet my appetite to summit something bigger. The snow on those 14ers can't melt fast enough.

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PV softball ranked No. 40: The Piedra Vista Lady Panthers climbed one spot to No. 40 in the latest ESPN Rise national high school softball poll.

It's the second poll since PV won its fourth straight 4A championship. Other schools are still playing, so it's possible the Panthers could move up another spot or two in the final poll.

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NBA previews: I thought about writing a feature-length Finals preview myself, only there are a gatrillion other media outlets that already have, and many of them cover the NBA day in and day out. And they have a lot more time than I do on one of my days off.

So I've put together links to some of the most prominent NBA Finals previews:

* ESPN.com has a full-fledged preview page with some good info, including a helpful "Player Matchups" box with a stats comparison for the starting five.

For the record, the Lakers have 14 NBA championships. The Magic are one of two teams (with the Cavs) that have been to the Finals but never won a game. Phil Jackson can overtake Red Auerbach for most career NBA titles as a coach if the Lakers win. They're tied at nine right now.

* All five listed CBS experts picked the Lakers, most in six games. I like how their predictions are front-and-center on their home page along with a more in-depth breakdown. 

It's old school. Now most sites drown you in the analysis and bury their predictions. CBS' coverage mirrors their NCAA Tournament run-up, and it's a simplified, concise format. I like it.

* The featured preview on Yahoo Sports picks the Magic in six. A cursory glance and their coverage seems weaker. They do produce a nice feature on Phil Jackson's legacy.

* It's been a while since I've visited SportingNews.com. I used to blog about Samford University for them, and I like what they've done with their site. Lots of intriguing content.

They pick the Lakers in seven in a chunky breakdown. Here's a Q&A with Rashard Lewis, who I thought was the biggest dagger to the Cavs all series. Lewis talks about how the dumb Nike and Vitamin Water campaigns motivated the Magic.

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NBA refs biased: The bandwagon option last playoffs was Chris Paul's New Orleans Hornets. This year? It's criticizing the referees.

The Oregonian published an academic study that found the NBA refs favor home teams and also favor teams trailing in the game or series. It's based on turnover statistics in "discretionary" situations. I'm just glad someone took the time to procure hard evidence in an academic fashion. With all the blowhard discussion it's about time someone published a factual argument.

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Twitter: I admit I've cracked and become a Twitter dufus. I know, right? I never joined MySpace and I'd probably still not be on Facebook had my ex-girlfriend not asked me to join while we were dating.

But this one's all on me. I feel like a nerd, but I like it. It's the ultimate exclamation point on society's shift to 10-second attention spans. And tweeting is a good way to practice being concise and clever, or identifying the important information.

For those interested, you can follow me by searching for the username TopherRunner. I'm following a random Greek businessman named Dennis Zacharopoulos. His tweets are hilarious.

And Ashton Kutcher. (OK, yes, I've reached a scary level of goober.) He did, however, turn me on to this site, a collection of the day's most entertaining and fun tweets.

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Links of the week: Air France Flight 447 went down this week in the Atlantic Ocean with 228 people on board and presumed dead, one of the biggest airline disasters in history. Unless the black box is found -- the debris covers a gigantic area of ocean that's three miles deep -- we may never know what happened.

But this article by pilot Patrick Smith explains the (non)dangers of turbulence and lightning strikes, two speculated causes. His explanation of turbulence may be the most articulate, well-spoken version I've ever read.

* For those interested in survival/endurance contest stories, which happens to be my favorite genre, this will be interesting. It's about a 260-mile canoe race in Texas where the participants make their own boats.

* The guy in this video is officially the man. He started a huge mosh pit dance party at a music festival. At first he was the only person dancing on the side of the hill and everyone ignored him. One guy joined and within a few minutes everyone was sprinting to join him. Pretty funny.

Goes to show you sometimes you just have to keep dancing even if nobody is joining you.

Stay true and keep pounding,
Christopher