Fun February & March

So the other day I sat down and decided I wanted to do a few things this winter in order to help the cold days go by a little faster. The first thing I had to lock down were my flights to Salt Lake City, UT, in preparation for my ski weekend in Park City with some great friends, and we will be partying away in the house shown below. The 5 day trip will be nice getaway from the flat streets of Chicago, even though there will just be more snow.

Next, I keep seeing all the great tributes to Kobe Bryant on his farewell tour of the NBA. I looked at tickets for the Bulls when the Lakers are in town and then saw that tickets were a third of the price in Milwaukee against the Bucks and I grabbed them up quick. I never got to see Jordan play but now I can add Kobe to the list.

I also am very excited about my sister's curator debut at the C.O.D. Cleve Carney Art Gallery. She selected and design this month's gallery arrangement. Make sure to check it out, it runs until Feb 26, with the reception on Feb. 11th.

Lastly, I saw the Northwestern Wildcat basketball team play a great game against a top ranked Maryland team, so I looked to see when my Gophers. Sure enough they still hadn't made their team down to Evanston yet, so I nabbed those tickets as well. Excited to see them play, even though this is one of the worst basketball seasons in my memory.

So now I have my eyes on a few more upcoming events like the Auto Show and the Flower and Garden show. Let me know if there is anything else worth checking out the in the next month and a half

LeBron wills a Win

Photo via ESPN.com

It was another legacy making night for LeBron James. He racked up another triple-double for his postseason career, as well as getting the 95-93 OT win over the Golden State Warriors. The series is now knotted up at 1-1 and headed to Cleveland, where we are all sure the fans will be rocking the Quicken Loans Arena. 

James had a game high 39 points, to go with 16 rebounds, 11 assists, 1 steal and 1 block. Overall, just an unbelievable artsy of basketball. LeBron has dominated both games and inflicts is will on the Golden State defense and keeps taking what they give him and trying to create the rest with his remaining healthy teammates. The only other players for the Cavs to reach double digits were Timofey Mosgov with 17 points and 11 boards, and J.R. Smith who chipped in 13 points. As most people are saying, if James can carry this team of nobodies to the promised land, it could easily be one of the greatest playoff performances ever!

Photo via ESPN.com

The Warriors live and die by the jump shot. Many could be claiming that Stephen Curry is choking here in the finals, going 5-for-23 in Game 2 with only 19 points to go with 6 rebounds and 5 assists. My gut says he will have much better games on the road without feeling the pressure from his home crowd. On the flip side of that Klay Thompson lead the Warriors with 34 points on 14-for-28 shooting. This team will not go down without a fight, that's for sure. Just look at what Draymond Green did yesterday, 10 points, 10 rebounds, 2 assists, 5 steals, and 4 blocks. He is without questions an defensive star.Luckily for all of us, with both games going to overtime, my wish of a 7 game series is looking more and more realistic!










Read the Game 2 review here

NBA Finals Preview

Courtesy of NBA.com via Instagram

We have quite a match-up for the NBA Finals, Cleveland Cavaliers vs. Golden State Warriors. The best player of the era, LeBron James vs the best player of the year, Stephen Curry. Both players can dominate a game in their own way. LeBron can force double teams and looks to find the open man, while Curry forces you to step a few steps farther away from the basket since you have to respect his deep shot, which then opens up the lane and other alleyways for teammates.

This is also about the coaches. This is the first time in Finals history that 2 first year head coaches are facing each other. As for how the public sees both coaches is about as different as it gets. Steve Kerr was the most wanted coach going into the off-season last year and everyone thought he was going to follow Phil Jackson to New York. Instead he took his 5 championship rings as a player, multiple years of experience in the front office and his exposure to the public as a TNT basketball color commentator. It also helped hitting a few jumpers for MJ, help make it easier to remember. Now going into the Finals, everyone has been singing his praises for molding this team and getting way more out of it then his predecessor, Mark Jackson, did.

As for David Platt on the other hand, has been fighting criticism ever since he was hired. Widely an unknown going into this year, since he coached the 2013-2014 season in Israel. Other than that, the only other way anyone knew him was from coaching the Russian national team in the 2012 London Olympics. After some bonehead coaching moves and dumb sound bites during interviews with the press, many believe he will be fired even if they win the championship.

No matter won eventually wins this series, we all I'm sure are hoping for an exciting challenge for both superstars and teams. I don't think anyone is expecting a quick series like what we got in both conference finals, but at least we all got the match-up, most of us wanted.

My prediction: Cavs in 7 games

Coverage begins at 8pm on ABC

NBA Finals Preview

The LeBron Effect

We were just talking here at work about what ifs. My favorite one from today was, what if Lebron wins the championship with the Cavs, and then decides to opt-out of his contract and becomes a rent-a-player each season for struggling teams with championship droughts. So let's say he plays in Milwaukee in 2016, Minnesota in 2017, New York in 2018, Los Angeles in 2019, come back to Cleveland in 2020, and so on. It would make him easily the all-time greatest if he was able to win at any stop along the way.

It makes sense for teams after the collective bargaining agreement to basically rent LeBron for a season at $30-35 million, with the chance to win the Larry O'Brien trophy. Just a thought i couldn't fit into 160 characters and wanted to share