This Season’s Warriors Are As Good As Advertised

Welcome to the latest episode of Hot Takedown, FiveThirtyEight’s sports podcast. On this week’s show (May 23, 2017), FiveThirtyEight’s Kyle Wagner joins us as a guest host. We talk about the Warriors’ 12-game win streak in this year’s NBA playoffs and bid a possible farewell to the San Antonio Spurs’ Manu Ginobili. Next, the Chicago Cubs broke their curse, but are they falling short of expectations this year? We investigate. Finally, NFL owners voted Tuesday to limit regular-season overtime to 10 minutes, ostensibly to protect players. ESPN’s Kevin Seifert calls in and argues that this change won’t really help. Plus, a significant digit on Tennessee.

Here are links to things we discussed this week:

• You can stay up to date with FiveThirtyEight’s NBA predictions, updated after every game, here.
• Kyle penned an appreciation of Ginobili, a true NBA unicorn.
• Neil Paine wondered why the Cubs defense is so bad this year.
• Seifert wrote that the NFL overtime rule change does nothing for player safety.
• Significant Digit: 1.7, the number of championships we’d expect teams from the state of Tennessee to have if every team in a league had equal odds of winning each year. Tennessee currently has three pro franchises (the Memphis Grizzlies, Nashville Predators and Tennessee Titans) yet has won zero championships in its pro teams’ history. It’s one of just six states that have ever had a major league franchise to never win a championship (joining Utah, Connecticut, Oklahoma, Kentucky and Iowa).