When You're Hot, You're Hot

I believe it was San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich who last year remarked that he cared less about what seed his team earned for the playoffs and more about whether his team was hitting on all 8 cylinders when the playoffs arrived. True to form, although the Spurs did not earn the top seed in Western Conference for last year's NBA playoffs (the Oklahoma City Thunder did), the Spurs reached the NBA finals and almost upset the favored Miami Heat in the finals. (It is also worth noting that the Spurs have won four NBA championships and were only the top seed in two of those four years.) Put simply, in order to win a major professional championship, whether its the World Series, the Stanley Cup, the Super Bowl, or the NBA's O'Brien Trophy, not only do you need to be good (in order to reach the playoffs), but also you have to hot, you need to be peaking, as the 2008-09 San Jose Sharks (winners of the President's Trophy), the 2012 Texas Rangers (the best team in April and May), and 2013 Dodgers (who were virtually unbeatable in June and July) painfully discovered. Or as the late Jerry Reed put it, "When You're Hot, You're Hot, When You're Not You're Not!"