Opponent Injuries Give Miami Heat Cakewalk to NBA Finals

By Brian Phelps

The pressure is on more than ever for Lebron James to finally capture the brass ring... or is it? It looks more and more every day like the road to the NBA Finals is turning into a cakewalk for Lebron James and the Miami Heat. Think about it. One game into the playoffs and the Miami Heat's biggest rival, the Chicago Bulls, lose the reigning NBA MVP Derrick Rose to a torn ACL for the rest of the season. The 3-time reigning NBA Defensive player of the year Dwight Howard is out for the season which eliminates the Orlando Magic from serious contention. Ray Allen of the Boston Celtics is questionable for the playoffs with bone spurs in his ankle that will require off season surgery. All that leaves is the New York Knicks who are just as bad off as these other teams. Tyson Chandler is battling the Flu, Iman Shumpert got injured in game one, and Jeremy Lin is out too. So Derrick Rose, Dwight Howard, Ray Allen, Jeremy Lin, Iman Shumpert, and Tyson Chandler are all either injured or sick. The Indiana Pacers, Atlanta Hawks, and Philadelphia 76ers are not even legitimate threats to the Heat. With all these injuries the bar in the East has been set so low for the Miami Heat that you might as well go ahead and pencil them in for the NBA Finals. I mean, who is really going to stop them in the East?

It also helps when the referees coddle the Heat's stars at home games. The Knicks can't touch James or Wade with a feather without getting called for a foul. In the first 24 minutes of the game, the Miami Heat shot 28 free throws to the Knicks 5. The Knicks got called for 21 fouls in the first half alone. They ended up getting 3 technicals and a flagrant foul. 

The wild thing is that the Heat were penciled in for the NBA Finals BEFORE all these injuries happened to their rivals. The Miami Heat clearly have the most depth of any team in the league. No one can stop them in the East. 

Nit-Picking the 2012 PGA Masters at Augusta

by Brian Phelps

http://nitpickcritic.blogspot.com

Last week, Bubba Watson won the 2012 Masters tournament at Augusta. He won in a thrilling two hole playoff with Louis Oosthuizen which included an amazing shot out of the woods that put him in position to win. Now, I'm not taking anything away from Bubba Watson's win. He played a great tournament, but let's be honest. Phil Mickelson lost the Masters more than Bubba Watson won it.

Phil Mickelson began the final day only one shot off the lead until he triple bogeyed on the 4th hole. He ended up finishing the tournament losing by two shots. Had Phil Mickelson simply went Par on no.4 then he would've ended up winning the Masters by a single shot. Shoot, even if he would've single bogeyed on no.4 he would've ended up tying with Bubba Watson and Louis Oosthuizen at 10 under par in which Phil Mickelson still would have had a chance to win because there would've been a three way playoff to decide the winner.

Even Louis Oosthuizen beating Phil Mickelson was a fluke. I mean the guy Double Eagled on the 2nd hole. Why is that a fluke? Out of 76 Masters tournaments, that was just the 4th Double Eagle EVER. The math indicates that so far in the history of the tournament the odds of anyone hitting a Double Eagle at a Masters tournament is 5%. That means statistically if you lived to see 100 Masters tournaments, you would only see 5 Double Eagles in 100 years. A single individuals chance of hitting a double eagle at the Masters is less than 1%.

So, in conclusion had Phil went par on the 4th hole he would've won, and even if he single bogeyed on the 4th hole he would have still had a chance to win. That tells me that he lost the tournament more than Bubba Watson won it. I think Bubba Watson played a great tournament and deserved to win, but I honestly can't ignore the fact that the win was really more of a fluke and less that he outplayed Mickelson. 

Nit-Picking Home Alone 2

by Brian Phelps

http://nitpickcritic.blogspot.com

Home Alone 2 is tied with the original Home Alone and The Santa Clause as my favorite Christmas movies of all-time. The original Home Alone plot was an exaggerated but fairly plausible story. Now Home Alone 2 on the other hand my friends, was so over-the-top it wasn't even funny. I'm not going to nitpick the booby traps because we all know most of those traps would've killed the crooks, so I'm going to nitpick the plot itself. This movie takes so many leaps and bounds over logic it'll make your head spin. 

1) At the airport, what are the odds that after Kevin lost his dad that another man wearing the exact same outfit and haircut would run by? 

2) When Kevin bumped into the woman at the gate and spilled all the trip tickets on the floor... there is no way that they would've just boarded him anyway. At best, they would have the flight attendants come over the intercom and request Kevin's family to come up to the front to sort things out.

3) There is no way a hotel would let a child check in alone.

4) What are the odds that Kevin would "randomly" bump into Harry and Marv MULTIPLE TIMES on the streets of a city with over 7 million people (at the time)? 

5) The odds of a toy store in New York City bringing in as much revenue as Duncan's Toy Chest and not having a security camera even in 1992 is pitifully laughable. 

6) The odds of Kevin and his mother meeting at the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree at the exact time on the exact same day? I'm sorry, but this reaches other worldly levels of ridiculous. 

7) Just the odds of this situation happening to this same child twice is highly unlikely

8) The sheer number of adults that he came across that did not find it odd that a 10 year old boy is wandering the streets of New York City alone, and didn't bother to ask him if he needed help finding his parents is laughable. He came across hookers, taxi drivers, business owners, homeless people, etc and no one thought to ask him if he needed help finding his parents. That was the defining difference between this sequel and the original. In the first movie at the supermarket, the female cashier was asking him all about where his family was like a concerned citizen should. That didn't really happen in this movie. 

I'm sure there were many other things that I could nitpick about the movie, but this is just off the top of my head this morning. Have a great Sunday everyone! 

Nit-Picking The Hunger Games Movie

by Brian Phelps

http://nitpickcritic.blogspot.com

I recently caught the Hunger Games movie with my wife a couple of weeks ago, and I thought it was a pretty good movie. I didn't read the books, but my wife has read all three. There was one thing I noticed that really made me chuckle about the Hunger Games movie because it just didn't add up to me. Did anyone else notice that Katniss had like 5 or 6 arrows in her quiver, yet she shot like 50 arrows (exaggerating) during the movie? When I brought it up to my wife she told me that in the book they explain it because she retrieves the arrows. The way the movie did it didn't make sense though because there were many times where there was absolutely no way to get her arrows back.

There were SEVERAL situations where her arrows were unable to be retrieved. For instance, when she blew up the supply stand. In that scene I believe she shot at least 3 arrows in that scene alone (two to blow up the stand and one in the fight with the girl), and wouldn't have been able to retrieve them because she blew up the stand and then she got into a fight with that girl and had to run away before it was too late. 

Another instance is when she shot an arrow through that dogs head, and the several instances where she was shooting arrows on the run and would not have been able to back track to retrieve them because she would've been caught by the main gang of kids. Also, the grass and forest was so dense that there would be no way she would even be able to find some of the arrows after she shot them. 

Don't get me wrong. I thought the movie was pretty good. I just thought it was funny because it didn't quite add up.