The Monk's Sports: two wrongs and a right

First, an error correction from my World Cup predictions, which are fatally flawed after the group stage.

The brackets for the knockout stages are like this:

A1-B2
C1-D2

E1-F2
G1-H2

A2-B1
C2-D1

E2-F1
G2-H1

This way, no two teams from the same group can meet again until the finals.

A second error, this one of opinion instead of fact = there is no question who the best player on the court is in the NBA Finals: Dw(ay)ne Wade. The Monk made the statement with full knowledge that the only reason Detroit beat Miami last year was that Wade was injured in game 6 of the Eastern Conference Finals and didn't play game 7. The Monk earlier said Dirk Nowitzki. That statement has been belied by reality. Simply stated, The Monk whiffed.

And here's what The Monk got right: my warning after game 1 of the NBA Finals when I said:

[I] had a deja vu feeling last night when listening to a local TV talking head.

In 1997, the Dallas Stars faced Edmonton in the first round of the playoffs. The Stars were a 104-point team, #2 seed in the West and had won all four meetings against the Oilers that year. After the Stars won game 1 of their series 5-3, a local radio chatterer said he didn't know how the Stars could lose because Edmonton had played a very good game the night before, "about as well as they can play" and the Stars had won. I said to myself in the car that morning -- that's a dangerous and dumb proclamation.

Final Result = Oilers in 7 and they won the remaining three games in Dallas.

Yesterday's nimrod said "the Mavs played about as badly as they can but they still won by 10" -- so if the Mavs improve, they should wipe out the Heat, right? After all, Howard and Nowitzki combined for a mere 26 points (less than Dirk's average) and shot horribly (combined 7-28), Stackhouse was pedestrian (13 points), Harris provided nothing (1 point), etc.

Wrong.

Consider how the Heat ran circles around the Mavs in the first quarter and looked like they'd shoot the Mavs out of the building. Consider the struggles Dirk had scoring on Heat forward Udonis Haslem. Consider how Dw(ay)ne Wade easily cut through the Dallas defense the whole night.

Seems The Monk caught a touch of Blind Squirrel Syndrome ("even a blind squirrel finds an acorn now and again") on that statement.