WBC: Success all-around // NBA: Final Stretch.    

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.  .  .   SPORTS NOTEBOOK posts its columns Tuesday and Friday of each week. Ed. & Publ., Marvin Leibstone; Copy & Mng. Ed., Gail Kleiner.

WBC   ---    THE three World Baseball Classics held since 2006 have evolved without any serious setbacks; it’s really been growth all the way, the 2013 version capturing an audience greater than 750,000. Not even a single half-thought against occurrence, there’ll be a WBC-2016. Good news is that this year’s championship ball club, Team Dominican Republican, won as if changing a rigid paradigm, in that the last two WBC’s finished with the same club at the top, Team Japan. In effect, the wealth is being spread. This year, it was the DR and Puerto Rico vying for the top spot at San Francisco’s AT&T Park, after 26 other teams trucked forward in different venues, hoping to win big, thanks to follow-on games none slipping away hard and fast in winds of embarrassment.

Also of change leveling and broadening the so-called playing field, China and Cuba went down earlier than expected, and Team USA got to the second round though later dropped back; and, Taiwan and Italy made it to the second round for the first time, and Brazil and Spain rose to competitive heights, as well.

Also, never mind that MLB athletes filled rosters of foreign teams, those of their countries of origin. Team DR was certainly top-heavy with nationally known MLBers, for example, Miguel Tejada, Hanley Ramirez, Jose Reyes, Nelson Cruz, others. Fact: numerous other clubs included top MLB players, for instance, Miguel Cabrera for Team Venezuela.

Dominant throughout the WBC was the match between “intention” and “reality,” surely the expression of a grand theme, that baseball is indeed “international, a world sport.”

Too, there’s room for the WBC to grow and improve---the next WBC will probably include more nations sending teams to it, and perhaps installation of a requirement that’s been receiving new support by the day, maybe a bit superficially, one of the ideas for change being that the WBC Not be held at the same time as MLB Spring Training, which has many MLB players choosing training over being rostered for the WBC.

Proposals for change in WBC scheduling are in the mix now, and thus far none are without some negative trade-off with regard to subtractions of skill and power of U.S. MLB clubs. One proposal is that the WBC be held either at the end of MLB’s World Series, another that it be divided into phases during the regular season, with the longer phase following the All Star game, or that it parallel MLB’s mid-season in the manner that baseball was once scheduled within the summer Olympics. Yet a strong advocacy for keeping things as they are exists, for the WBC has grown and improved significantly since it began---A prevailing attitude, is this: If  it aint really broke, why fix it?

NBA (Final stretch---)   ON Monday, March 25, the NBA Western Conference’s Denver Nuggets sought a 50th season win and a 15th straight win, and day before the Eastern Conference’s Miami Heat reached a 56th win, the last 26 won consecutively. Without going into lots of stats plus the on-court nuances that are unable to be quantified precisely, such as speed and shooting-choices, from the moment that the Nuggets winning streak began until its Monday night 110-86 loss to the New Orleans Hornets (February 23 - March 25), the Nuggets and the Heat were unquestionably the two best teams within the NBA. This indicates that, in spite of higher records held by the Western Conference’s top two teams, the 53-17 San Antonio Spurs and the 52-19 Oklahoma City Thunder, and a record held by the West’s number four, the 48-22 Los Angeles Clippers, the West’s number three team, the 49-23 Denver franchise, still has a chance to face the now 56-14 Heat during the 2012/13 NBA playoffs.

Of its 10 regular season games left, the Nuggets will be challenged by the Spurs and Thunder, and the remaining eight will be against teams that the Nuggets have beaten in 2012 and 2013, in addition to the Nuggets having defeated the Spurs and the Thunder. However, an irony about the Nuggets is that some of the team’s regular season losses  have been versus franchises holding poor records, for instance, losses to the West’s southwest division last place team, the 25-46 Hornets (Monday’s loss was by 13 points) and a 119-113 loss to the East’s 26-44 Washington Wizards, February 22.

Some of the eight games cited here could therefore be Nuggets losses if the team fails to overcome the business of losing to marginal and less than marginal teams. With that cure, by mid-April the Nuggets could be seeded for more than that which in previous post-seasons held them back from second round play.

Among other of the West’s teams closing in on lock-in for post-season play (in addition to the Spurs, Thunder and the Clippers) are the 47-23 Memphis Grizzlies and the 40-31 Golden State Warriors. As we see it, from the East there is a wider range of both strong and slim playoff possibilities---the 44-27 Indiana Pacers, 42-26 New York Knicks, 41-29 Brooklyn Nets, 39-32 Atlanta Hawks and the 38-31 Chicago Bulls.

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