One of the best weekends combined with a top 5 week of the year is coming up! E3 and the final 4 games of the NBA Finals are all going to happen at the same time over the next 9 days and I cannot wait!
E3 often feels a lot like Christmas in June to me as we get the reveal of games we have been waiting for and others that we couldn’t even imagine. Every year I sit down to watch every press conference (yes even Ubisoft’s two hour ones) and I take notes on every single reveal so that I can keep track of all the hype and excitement I have!
Sometimes the hype leading up to the game is even more exciting that playing the game itself ironically.
E3 is a lot like NBA Free Agency in that way. Even though there are games out now and we love playing them, we always want the next thing to be excited for. Just like in the NBA, the Finals (the most important games of the year) are going on as we speak, yet we can’t wait for an unprecedented and chaotic Free Agency period that will begin on July 1st. Just like Free Agency, E3 is also going to be different than it has been in years past. Without Sony this year, a main staple of E3, Microsoft is filling their role and will be the headliner that we have to look forward to this year. Expect all of the major third party reveals to be on Xbox’s stage and for them to dominate the show. On top of that, we even have some new press conferences to be excited about. The Kinda Funny showcase will show often dozens of indie games including sequels, reveals, and ports coming to different platforms. Square Enix is revealing more about their Avengers game and both EA and Bethesda will try to win back fans who felt burnt by their major “games as service” releases earlier this year.
On top of all that, we are about a year away from the next console generation so we should be getting plenty of news and teasers about what comes next from Xbox about their hardware plans. Finally, all of the companies at E3 now have to think about how Stadia affects their gaming market-share as Google had their equivalent of an E3 press conference yesterday. This is a huge year for the gaming industry and could shape how the next generation plays out!
So with all of that said, I want to start my three pointers this week by predicting what I think and hope will happen this year at E3. I’ll go in the order of press conferences based on which ones I am most excited for. Also the more hype I am for a press conference, the bolder my predictions will get!
1) E3 Predictions
Ubisoft
We know at this point we’re getting a new Watchdogs game set in London, but I think this game will also have a much more gritty tone to it (similar to the first one), rather than the fun nature in Watchdogs 2. That’s all I have for Ubisoft. I was going to predict that this game would take place in DC, but then Ubisoft released the Division 2 and then Watchdogs 3 was confirmed to be in London.
Bethesda
This one is a pretty simple prediction as well. Bethesda will embrace their mess ups with Fallout 76 and they will unveil a new cheaper, version of the game along with a bunch of new features that will hopefully draw fans who felt burnt by them back in. Were also going to get a Doom Eternal date (November 15) and we will get a seasonal release for Elder Scrolls 6 (Fall 2021), along with a trailer similar to this Skyrim one.
This press conference will be mainly about Starfield and we will get a reveal date for that (March 20, 2020).
EA
My EA predictions are much more skeptical because I still don’t trust them after what they have done with the Star Wars IP. However, we will get a Fallen Order release date from EA and the game will be delayed (until early 2020). They will have an extended gameplay reveal though and it’ll look cool so we’ll forgive them.
KF Showcase
At the Kinda Funny Showcase, it’s harder to predict what will happen, but I mainly just want one big thing: Golf Story 2. Golf Story was one of my favorite games from the past couple years and I need another one.
Square Enix
We will definitely see more about the Avengers game. Square has already told us that via the countdown on their Twitter. The Avengers game will look good, but it will focus a lot on story and will not be open world which will disappoint a lot of people. I think the “games as a service” rumors will also be true and this will upset a lot of people too. Basically, people aren’t going to be too happy with this. We will also get a Final Fantasy 16 trailer which will win everyone over again.
Microsoft
Now more of the hype begins! The Microsoft press conference has the most potential to bring in some major surprises because of the lack of Sony this year. To start the conference I think we will get an announcement that Game Pass is coming to PC and it will feature mainly Xbox 360 games. They will end their conference with the reveal of the next generation Xbox console and it will stream games in an attempt to compete with Stadia.
In between those two moments, we will get news from WB Montreal regarding what they have been working on for the past couple of years. I think they have been working on that Harry Potter game that leaked a year ago. We know Rocksteady won’t be at E3 so I think Montreal will be instead because one of those two studios have to have been working on something over the past few years.
Finally I think we will get Doug Bowser on stage with Phil Spencer as they announce a plan to bring Game Pass to Nintendo Switch along with more information about how Xbox Live will work on Switch as well!
I hope that is just the tip of the iceberg for Microsoft’s conference, though! It'll be about two hours long so I think we'll get a ton of news and reveals.
Nintendo
Nintendo has the chance to be filled with everything I hope for!
First off, they’ll open up with Animal Crossing including gameplay, a Pocket Camp tie-in, and that it will be available to play at the Nintendo Tree House this week. They’ll also give us a release date set for this Winter (December 13, 2019). It’ll be late in the year like SSB: Ultimate was.
Next we’ll get news that The Spyro Trilogy is coming to Switch like it should have a year ago.
Finally we’ll get a ton of Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 news along with the reveal that one Nintendo character will be playable in the game! I think it’ll be Samus because that is the easiest character to port over. I hope it’s Link or Fox though. Maybe we get all three!
In turn, Marvel will put one of their characters in Super Smash Bros: Ultimate! We’ll get a reveal that Iron Man will be the next playable character in the game and we’ll even get a very short (like 15 seconds) trailer of Iron Man kicking ass in the game!
There are other conferences, but these ones are the ones I care about most so I feel confident making these predictions as I over hype myself and predict things that will never happen! If they do though, I’ll be making a massive victory lap!
2) Are refs bad in the playoffs? Or are they bad all the time?
Last night, in Game 5 of the Stanley Cup Finals, the referees blatantly missed a tripping call on Bruins’ player Noel Acciari by Blues’ player Tyler Bozak.
This missed call ended up resulting in a Blues’ goal in the exact same sequence. The Blues went on to win 2-1 so obviously Bruins’ fans are livid. I’m not saying that the Bruins would have won if they got that call. The Blues were the better team that game and Jordan Binnington made 38 saves to limit the Bruins to only one goal. So both of these factors can be true at the same time. My issue is that this is just another blatant call that the NHL referees have missed in these playoffs.
A different call with ramifications similar to this was the five minute major assessed to Cody Eakin of the Golden Knights in Game 7 of the First Round against San Jose. Because of this Major, the Sharks went on to score four unanswered goals and kill any momentum the Golden Knights had. Should the Knight not have given up 4 goals in a 5 minute sequence? Yes. But I also know that the call was the wrong call and that the Knights shouldn’t have been in that position in the first place.
Another missed call was in the second round (also in favor of the Sharks) when the Sharks clearly scored off of a clear hand pass by Erik Karlsson. The Blues still went on to win the series, but that is no excuse for the refs missing another major call.
The NHL isnt the only one with this problem either unfortunately. In Game 3 of the NBA Finals, the referees missed two blatant goal tends that shifted momentum in the favor of the Raptors. It wasn’t the reason they won, but it also didn’t help the already short-handed Warriors.
In the NFC Title game between the Rams and the Saints, the referees missed a blatant head-to-head hit and pass interference call in the exact same play.
So there have been massive screw ups in the biggest moments by officials in three of the biggest sports in America and I just can’t believe that this happens.
This leads me to a few questions I have about this whole debacle. Do referees miss this many calls all the time in the regular season? Do we just not care because it’s the regular season and there are very little stakes compared to in the playoffs? Do we only care now because we are watching every second of these games? Or are they just choking in big moments like athletes sometimes do? Finally, is there a solution to this problem?
The NFL, NHL, and NBA have all tried to address the issue surrounding missed calls already by making their referees full time so clearly the issue isn’t that they can’t focus fully on this because it is their job to be the best since they can commit full-time to their profession.
Maybe the problem is something that we have to accept and admit going forward. Referees, just like players, are imperfect and they will all inevitably make mistakes at one point or another; they will even make them in huge moments. We just have to hope and pray that it isn't against out favorite team. I think it is as simple as the fact that referees just choke sometimes and miss a call because the pressure gets to them like it gets to players – especially inexperienced ones.
I think the best solution, despite its unpopularity, is just to embrace more replay. Maybe you can make it so that extra replay only comes up in the playoffs so that way regular season games get longer, but once the playoffs start I don’t think many fans care how long a game takes as long as its good and the outcome is fair (in terms of refereeing, fairness in terms of talent it entirely different).
These sports should also give coaches the ability to challenge any play on the field once per game. It can be a trip, a pass interference, a hold, a loose ball foul, or even an out of bounds ruling. Just give the coaches a chance to challenge something and give the refs a chance to fix a game changing mistake. I don’t think that’s too hard to ask for.
Or we can just embrace Jay Glazer’s idea and have all official be combat veterans. They perform better in the highest pressure situations than anyone else would and no coach could chew them out because they served out country. Problem solved!
3) 3rd Quarter Kawhi!
After Game 2 of the NBA Finals, when the Warriors walked off the floor in Toronto with a 109-104 victory, I had two big thoughts. How will the Warriors play Game 3 with all of their injuries? And, will Kawhi attempt to control the tempo of the game like he did in the second half of Game 2?
I really started thinking about that second question at the end of the third when Kawhi shot five free throws to slow down the Warriors’ run and prevent Game 2 from being a blow out. I knew that Kawhi was a good second half scorer (he had shown that all throughout the playoffs), but I wasn’t sure if it was mainly the 3rd quarter or not.
Then Kawhi had another great 3rd quarter in Game 3! He exemplified the meaning of a quiet 30 points as he poured in 15 of them in the 3rd quarter alone. So I started doing some research. My research confirmed my suspicion that the 3rd quarter of most games is Kawhi’s best quarter.
So why is that? I think there a combination of factors.
First, the third quarter is the most important quarter in basketball. It’s when both teams implement their first half adjustments, the game starts to slow down more, teams create leads, and teams cut into deficits. More often than not, how well a team plays in the third quarter, will tell you whether a team won that game or not. That’s why superstars usually end up scoring a good chunk of their points in the third quarter of a game.
Kawhi is no different in this respect. He has scored a total of 37 points in the 3rd quarters of these Finals (12.3 ppg in the 3rd). He’s averaging 53% from the floor and 44% from three.
He also has zero turnovers in each 3rd quarter during the Finals. The only other player close to matching him is Steph Curry who averages 11.7 points per game in the 3rd quarter.
This isn’t just a Finals thing either.
In the Conference Finals he averaged 10 points per game and scored 60 total. It wasn’t just because he played more games than anyone either. Steph scored 40 total at 10 per game and Giannis scored 37 total over six games. Kawhi blew both of these other superstars out of the water with his 3rd quarter scoring.
In the Semi-Finals against Philly, Kawhi shot 62% from three (that’s crazy) and averaged 10.7 points per game in the 3rd quarter! Overall, he’s averaging 10.8 points per game in the third quarter for the playoffs and he also averaged 7.6 in the regular season (5th overall).
If you look at the last 10 years of the NBA playoffs (’09-‘19), the superstars of the league led the playoffs in 3rd quarter scoring every postseason. Here’s the list of the leaders (minimum 12 playoff games):
09 – Kobe Bryant 8 points per game
10 – Kobe Bryant 9.1 points per game
11 – Derrick Rose 7.9 points per game
12 – Kevin Durant 8.5 points per game
13 – LeBron James 6.6 points per game
14 – LeBron James 8.8 points per game
15 – James Harden 7.5 points per game
16 – Russell Westbrook 8.5 points per game
17 – Stephen Curry 10.1 points per game
18 – Kevin Durant 9.3 points per game
19 – Kawhi Leonard 10.8 points per game
Here’s a graph of what that looks like and where Kawhi sits in comparison to everyone else.
Besides Curry in 2017, Kawhi is best scorer in the 3rd quarter by far and his team is winning as a result because of his ability to control the tempo and make the game be played at the pace that he wants to play at. An example of this is Kawhi’s free throw attempts. He’s shot a total of 17 free throws in the 3rd quarter and the next closest player is Steph Curry with only 9. This shows me that Kawhi is driving to the paint and getting stops in play in order to take his opponents out of transition and then force them into playing the Raptors’ half court defense which has been amazing during these playoffs.
Superstars all always have led the playoffs in scoring in the 3rd quarter so it's not just a coincidence that stars lead these scoring numbers. Usually superstars show out in the second half because they need to carry their team once opposing defenses starts to tighten up.
Kawhi also appears to be the best at it.
*E3 Images found via each company's website
*Assassin's Creed Odyssey photo found via IGN.com
*Stats and info taken from NBA.com
*Kawhi cover photo taken by Gregory Shamus/Getty Images