With all due respect to October, which features the World Series, beginning of the NHL and NBA seasons and the second-half of the NFL season, April is by far the greatest month of the year.
April has the first week of the baseball season (although Opening Day was actually March 31), NHL playoffs, NBA playoffs (also known as the Western Conference playoffs), the NFL Draft and the NCAA basketball and hockey championship games.
It's really a shame that the weather has to be so nice. I hope all of the people that aren't sports fans are enjoying it.
This April is one of the best we've had in a long time. Jim Boeheim of Syracuse won the first men's basketball championship of his long career, with his Orangemen beating Kansas 81-78. The Minnesota Golden Gophers won back-to-back hockey national championships for the first time in the program's illustrious history, knocking off my beloved hometown New Hampshire Wildcats 5-1... I guess it serves me right for cheering for a team called the Wildcats; it's bad karma around here.
There hasn't been a more intriguing opening to a baseball season in a long time. For two weeks, Randy Johnson, Curt Schilling, Pedro Martinez, and Greg Maddux had combined for an astounding zero wins.
The Detroit Tigers might actually be a little bit worse than everyone thought. No one in their right mind could have figured they would lose less than 100 games, but seriously, with a 1-16 start without having played the cream of the crop in the AL, perhaps there's a chance Tigers fans will see 120 losses this year.
The NBA playoffs have been riveting. How good is Allen Iverson? I know I ask myself that every postseason, and I assume I'm not alone. He scored 55 points on Sunday, a Sixers franchise record - a franchise that had Julius Erving and Wilt Chamberlain. Dirk Nowitzki (career-high 46 points), Tracy McGrady (43 points to help the No. 8 Magic knock off the No. 1 Pistons), and Paul Pierce (40 points, 11 rebounds and 21-of-21 from the line) turned in amazing individual games. But the highlight of the weekend was Amare Stoudemire and Stephon Marbury hitting ridiculous banked-in three-pointers to beat the Spurs.
If we ever needed a reminder of how great this time of year was, we've been getting reminded every day for the past few weeks.
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Reach the reporter at gregory.salvatore@asu.edu.
