2024-2025 Playoffs

	1. Orange
	5/1/25 @ 7:00 PM
4. Yellow		1. Orange
4/24/25 @ 8:00 PM	4. Yellow
5. Purple
		5/8/25 @ 8:00 PM	1. Orange
3. Blue
4/24/25 @ 7:00 PM	3. Blue
6. Pink	5/1/25 @ 8:00 PM	2. Red
	2. Red

Round One, Game One: #3 Team Blue versus #6. Team Pink

-Sports can be a spiritual experience. So much of it is governed by simple physics, setting harsh limitations on how fast we can run, how high we can jump, how much energy we can exert, etc., that we intentionally delude ourselves that we’re capable of more than we are. It’s how we stay motivated in the face of predictable failure. We lean on unfounded belief to keep us going. Team Pink had, by most accounts, an awful year. They lost most of their close games, which isn’t a sign of bad luck, but rather a terminal weakness in your team. They lacked any sense of the tough physicality which is often required to excel in leagues like ours. And they never truly balanced the offensive attack, leaning on Ed way too much. This produced bad results in the regular season and bad results in their playoff adventure. Blue did nothing special other than continue to attack. They bodied up on defense. They drove to the basic expecting contact. They rebounded aggressively on both ends. This was a classic Carli performance, where his impact was not reflected in the box score. His work near the basket was tenacious and backbreaking for Team Pink. Jay and Rodney both were efficient in their opportunities and didn’t force anything. But Blue won this game on the other end of the court. Ed still racked up 31 points on almost 20 free throw attempts, but they surrendered no easy buckets to him or anyone else. Paul couldn’t get himself going and, as was demonstrated all season, Pink had no strategy to help Paul get involved. This team was never going anywhere with the offensive strategy of giving Ed the ball and getting out of the way. They were capable of much more and never brought it out of themselves. They can believe they were unlucky and that things could have been different, but in reality, this game went exactly the way you would expect it to. Blue advances to play Red in what should be a delicious fight to the death.

Round One, Game Two: #4 Team Yellow versus #5 Team Purple

-As the sun sets on Team Purple, they will forever go down as one of the better What If teams we’ve ever had. The split between what they were becoming before Justin went down and what they became after he did is jarring. They were on track to be something special in a year where there were extreme flaws on most other squads. We’ll never get to see what might have happened, but we did get to see Yellow send them off in style with a 30 point drubbing. I expect several of Purple’s players to be key pieces on title teams in the years to come, so at least they have that to look forward to. For Team Yellow, they look forward to a rematch with Team Orange in Round 2. A title run was always going to go through the Soczek Sisters. Will Yellow put them to bed? Or will they let them get a shot at a back-to-back title? Hold on to your butts.

Round Two, Game One: #1 Orange versus #4 Team Yellow

-Perhaps we’re overthinking the advantage the top draft picks have over the rest of the league. Sure there’s a skill gap. Sure there’s an athleticism gap. Talent also gives you more opportunity to gain experience in a sort of self-improving feedback loop. But perhaps the biggest advantage is simply endurance. The top guys can play harder and faster for longer. You can outplay them and exploit their team weaknesses, but they require that you do it for an entire 40 minutes. Chris, to his credit, can get hot and his shooting can dominate a game at times. But that isn’t all the time. It almost certainly a small majority at this point. But he keeps coming. He has the endurance to run be the primary facilitator for EVERY possession of the ENTIRE game. It’s hard to understate the advantage that provides his team. Compared to Mark or Rob, aging hoopers who can still compete, the primary difference is that those guys can only do it in small doses. They can’t just dominate wire to wire like they once could. Team Yellow led for most of this game, but the obvious handicap between their first two rounders was glaring. Mark scored easily in the first half, but delegated in the second half. Chris struggled at times to finish plays, but never stopped dictating the action. It wasn’t just that one played better than the other, it was simply that one player imposed his will on the game for much longer stretches. This gives an incredible advantage for these tight, low-scoring playoff games. Yellow was ahead and the game tightened up. Chris could pick and choose who got the ball and in what circumstance. Mark was often a spectator relying on his teammates to make the right decisions. Those small, play to play edges culminated in momentum that took Orange across the finish line and earned them a spot in the championship.

Round Two, Game Two: #2 Team Red versus #3 Team Blue

- We’ve noted all year how Blue’s offensive limitations made them a very inconsistent team. They played hard all the time, but never figured out a way to amplify their collective skills into a unified offense. Red won this game easily because Blue was never going to score enough points to keep up with them. As Blue got more desperate, Red used their depth to spread the wealth around and keep the game simple. Carli teams need to be more strategic in how they operate, as they will start with a massive deficit of ballhandling and shooting. Rodney and Jay both gave admirable attempts to cosplay as those types of high-end, dynamic offensive threats, but when the other team doesn’t over-react to your efforts, it doesn’t always have the team benefits you need to get the job done. Everyone plays those guys straight up. Everyone doubles the top end guys. This is an important difference. Red continues their charge to the championship.

Championship: #1 Orange versus #2 Red

-It’s a strange phenomena in life that people tend to perform worse when more is at stake. You’d think it would be an evolutionary trait that the genes that survive are those that do the best under pressure. But still, when everything is on the line, guys tense up and so much of what got you to the finish line seemingly goes out the window. Red had a great run this year utilizing their depth and being careful about matchups. They were selective in how they aligned and were careful in how they switched and cross-matched. This served them well, not over-extending any of their role players, allowing them to thrive in more manageable situations. Perhaps people just over-think it in the championship, but yet again we had a team making some strange matchup and substitution decisions that may have cost them the game. Red took a long time to get going, but you could feel a run was coming eventually. Unfortunately that run came up short, because of a lot of small defeats throughout the game that were probably avoidable. Steve getting stuck alone guarding Chris in the backcourt. TJ guarding Richie 50 feet from the basket. Freddy wandering around the paint losing track of everyone. The starters for Red probably only played a max of 10-15 minutes in this one. There are years where the champion team plays their starters only for 35+ minutes to get the job done. For Orange, they finally found ways to incorporate Stan into their primary actions and it paid big dividends. He scored in double digits in both of their playoff games, outscoring Richie and Carter in the title game. Their team scored exactly 57 points once again, basically winning this game on the defensive end. They continue to defend well near the basket and along the perimeter and it turned out to be just enough to secure a title. Hopefully the league resets a bit next season and we can get a reprieve from the plague of the Soczeks.