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SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Hoops, pucks, playoffs, Howard Bryant at Meadowlark Media. Howard, thanks for being with us.
HOWARD BRYANT: Good morning, Scott. How are you?
SIMON: I'm fine, thanks, my friend. The NBA playoffs begin this afternoon in the West. Let us now pause to praise the Oklahoma City Thunder.
BRYANT: Who?
SIMON: They had one of the best regular seasons of all time - 68 wins, only 14 losses. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander has odds on favor to win the MVP. Are they on a glide path to the finals?
BRYANT: They're a great team, and I say who only facetiously because normally when a team wins 68 games, you can't stop talking about them. And when you have a player like SGA, it's just they usually dominate the entire conversation. And instead, this was the year of Luka Doncic being traded.
SIMON: Yeah.
BRYANT: So we're not talking about the best team. They killed everybody this year. You win 68 games. They win by a margin of 12 1/2, 12.9, I think, points per game. They are far and away the favorite to win the championship. However, the Boston Celtics are the defending champions, and Cleveland, your Cleveland - let's hear it, Scott.
SIMON: Cleveland rocks.
BRYANT: (Laughter) Exactly. So, the Cleveland Cavaliers were great all season. So you had a lot of good teams out there. But really, if history is a judge, Oklahoma City should be the favorite to get to the finals this year.
SIMON: Yeah. NHL playoffs also begin tonight, and for the first time, none of the four American teams of the so-called original six - that's the Chicago Blackhawks, Boston Bruins, Detroit Red Wings, the New York Rangers - are in the playoffs, and it's nothing to do with tariffs. Is Gordie Howe cursing under the ice?
BRYANT: Well, somewhere along the line, you got to rebuild and you've got to get better. And the bottom line is that, especially - and the Red Wings have been middling for a long time now. The Rangers were supposed to be better. You know, the thing about all of these sports is that every season you - it's not just what you're doing. It's what everybody else is doing, as well. And so you look at a team like the Bruins, who just a couple of years ago had the best team in the league, and everyone thought that they were going to be a perennial to...
SIMON: Yeah.
BRYANT: ...Get to the Stanley Cup. They're in last place this year. And so the teams that you're watching out for that you think are the ones that sort of hang with you every single year, especially there with the O6, are the ones that we all think about. Not very good this year, get them next year. But you still have two of them up in Canada. You've still got the Canadians who are playing...
SIMON: Yes.
BRYANT: ...in Washington. And you have the strangest stat of all time for me, Scott Simon, which is the birthplace of hockey - Toronto. They've only got 13 Stanley Cups, but they have not been to the Cup Finals in my lifetime. They have not been...
(CROSSTALK)
SIMON: Well, you're a young man...
BRYANT: ...Been there.
SIMON: ...And vigorous, but yes.
BRYANT: I'm a young man. 1967, Scott, for a hockey team in Toronto.
SIMON: Yeah.
BRYANT: It's hard - that is simply just statistically hard to do. But they've got Auston Matthews. They're a 1 seed. Let's see what they do.
SIMON: Yeah. You know, I - has it just that the league expanded, and American teams were picking up better players? I mean...
BRYANT: Some of it is just luck, too. I mean, like, you know, we used to say this when we talked baseball. You know, you would talk about the star-crossed Red Sox, and how come the Cubs haven't won in a hundred and eight years.
SIMON: Yeah.
BRYANT: And it's just very difficult to do. I don't even think there is an answer, and it's really funny when you go up there and you talk to Toronto fans, I mean, they sort of roll their eyes, you know, at this - just the statistical impracticality, the improbability of it...
SIMON: Right.
BRYANT: ...Because everybody at least goes to the Stanley Cup Final. I mean, everybody gets to play - I mean, the thing about it is, for me, Scott, is that you have a whole bunch of different personnel. You have different generations. You have different ownership, and then this team keeps losing. It's like talking about the Detroit Lions. Nobody gets it, and yet, there you go. It's harder to do what they're doing than to actually win.
SIMON: Yeah, that's true. Howard Bryant of Meadowlark Media, thanks so much.
BRYANT: My pleasure, Scott. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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