Mars versus Earth

So, now that I went out on a limb in the first round to make predictions, how did I fare, particularly against the best of the best analysts? I checked out the predictions made by the analysts on Yahoo! Sports and ESPN, and am happy to report that I did quite, quite well. The Hawks' fourth and final dismantling of the Heat earned me a tie with ESPN's super-stat man Hollinger, Chris Sheridan, and Thorpe with 25-first-round points.

How did I score and rank these predictions, surely you'd have to ask. For each perfect prediction (series winner and number of games), you get 4 points. For each game a prediction is off by, you lose a point (e.g. if a series goes 5 games and you guessed 6, you'd earn 3 points; a 7-game series that you predicted would be sweep would earn you a single point). And naturally, predicting the wrong team to move on will garner no points.

So what did I learn from this little exercise? Well, for at least one round of the playoffs, I was every bit as good as the most-known analysts at ESPN (a nice achievement) and Yahoo! Sports (nothing to hang your hat on really). Jalen Rose (13 points) should probably stop predicting altogether (Cavs in 6? Celtics and Magic in 4?) Perennial shameless man-hater Adrian Wojnarowski (15 points) should join him (Nuggets in 7? Blazers? Celtics and Magic in 5?)

In any case, the latter rounds are certainly harder to predict; I almost don't expect to do nearly as well the next time around. So I'll certainly savour this "I'm as good as the best" for as long as I can.