NBA Showdown - House Cup

 What happens when you have a long Labor Day weekend with a downpour and a Harry Potter Marathon on TV? Well for me, it led to me taking my original NBA Showdown cards, and drafting 4 teams, each named after one of the four different Hogwarts Houses. Each team played a 3 game series against the other 3 teams. I was excited to break these out as it had been a really long time since I had played with them. So here is a break down of the magical action that went down in the Hogwarts Basketball League. 

The standings from the league are as follows, Ravenclaw may not have had the best record, or won the Championship series, but they ended up with 9 more house points than Gryffindor, securing them a spot at the top of the standings. Gryffindor came in second behind and insane Championship series. The other two houses Slytherin and Hufflepuff didn't make the playoff series and stayed further down in the house standings.

Team Gryffindor: Led by MVP Candidate Alonzo Mourning with a top level 24.4 Points per game and 11.1 rebounds per game. The rest of his starting crew were no slouches either with David Wesley averaging 24-4-4. Michael Dickerson was a inconsistent scoring threat for the team, it seemed they would go as he did. Some games he would score 20, and others he would only score around 10 points. Wally Szczerbiak also impressed with some solid games and consistently scoring. Their final starter Raef Lafrentz was much like Michael Dickerson, ups and downs, not much consistency but came up big when they needed it. All in all this team was the first pick in the draft taking Alonzo Mourning with their first pick as he was the most expensive player in this league. 

Team Hufflepuff: Hufflepuff was Peters preseason favorite, sadly they didn't live up to it in their games. Clifford Robinson and Joe Smith led the way scoring and Joe Smith averaged a double double. Their lowest scoring starter was their first overall pick, Dikembe Mutumbo. He led the league in rebounding and put forth a double double effort. His lack of scoring makes him tough for a first round pick, but the lack of depth in my card collection makes it tough to find better options. 

Team Ravenclaw: The most dominant of the regular season teams, the lethal back court combination of John Stockton and Penny Hardaway scored a will, while also setting up teammates to do damage of their own. Owning the number 1 and 2 slots in the assists leader board league wide is a rare accomplishment. This team looked to be heading to an overall championship but stumbled at the end, having to settle for the house cup lead. Ruben Patterson was a good third scoring option, benefitting from the Penny Hardaway assists on his turn. Bo Outlaw was my favorite card to roll for, his max chart is 4 points 2 assists and 5 rebounds, and in this league, he had 2 games where he maxed every roll finishing with 16 points 8 assists and 20 rebounds. The fifth option on this team, carried them a long way when needed. Finally Hakeem "The Dream" Olajuwon turned back the clock and played phenomenal, when being the lowest priced center of the four teams. 

Team Slytherin: The team that managed to only have to use 1 bench player the whole time and only have to use him one quarter. This didn't help them as they fell just short of reaching the championship series, and were stuck at home watching as the final series went down. Eddie Jones and Latrell Spreewell were scoring machines for this team. Jones was more consistent, while Spreewell was more of the boom or bust type of scorer. 

League Leaders:

Championship Series

The Championship Series of the Hogwarts Basketball League came down to Ravenclaw vs Gryffindor. The house masters were in attendance for the first game Ravenclaw jumped them out the game, and outscored them in every quarter en route to a 110-90 victory behind one of those perfect 16-8-20 games from Bo Outlaw and 22-7-10 from Penny Hardaway. Alonzo Mourning put up 32 points and 13 rebounds in his teams defeat. 

Game 2: Ravenclaw kept up the momentum outscoring Gryffindor 45-17 in the first quarter. It felt like all gloom and doom but Gryffindor won every quarter after that. Sadly it wasn't enough and Ravenclaw took a commanding 2-0 series lead in a 95-87 victory, behind 22 points and 15 assists from John Stockton and 17 points and 12 rebounds form Hakeem Olajuwon. 

Game  3: Gryffindor had their backs up against the wall and came out fighting like it was. Winning three of the 4 quarters of the game and Gryffindor wins 97-81 finally slowing down the two headed guard attack. Alonzo Mourning also helped on the offensive end with a 33 point and 15 rebound effort. David Wesley added in 21.

Game 4: Gryffindor feels the opportunity to even things up and absolutely takes it, getting 20 points from four of their starters, Wesley 23, Szczerbiak 21, Lafrentz 21, and Mourning 28. 103-90 victory for Gryffindor has now tied the series up at 2-2,

Game 5: Now it is a best of three series to see who will win the house championship. Gryffindor led by 1 point heading into the 4th quarter looking to win their 3rd straight game. Alonzo Mourning carried the team on his back again late in the game, scoring 9 points and grabbing 5 rebounds in the 4th quarter to add to his total of 32 points and 14 rebounds. On the other side of the duel was Penny Hardaway scoring 35 points dishing out 8 assists and grabbing 12 rebounds. His effort was just short and Gryffindor squeaks out the win 93-86 and take a 3-2 series lead, WHAT A COMEBACK!

Game 6: We all know how this movie plays out, Ravenclaw wins a close game and we go to game 7 for an all out classic. Ravenclaw jumps out to a 41-24 lead after the first quarter. Penny Hardaway had 11 in the quarter. Gryffindor returns the favor in the second going into the half down 61-57 and we have ourselves a game going to the third. Ravenclaw dominates in the third and takes a 8 point lead to the fourth quarter. The all defensive strategy card pull for Gryffindor allowed them to wall up on Ravenclaw in the 4th. and they outscore Ravenclaw 24-11 and win the game 106-101 and WIN THE HOUSE CHAMPIONSHIP!!!!!! A dramatic 4 game win streak comeback after being down 0-2 in the series. Gryffindor had 3 guys score over 20 again, 25 from Wesley and Dickerson and 20 from Szczerbiak. Mourning had 19 and 14 and won the House Championship series MVP. Ravenclaw had 25 points from Penny Hardaway and 23 and 12 from John Stockton. It just wasn't enough in the 4th quarter to take home the victory. 

MVP Candidates:

This League has its fair share of MVP Candidates but these are the four that made the ballot (Twitter Poll I Posted Yesterday) 
1. Penny Hardaway, made it to the house championship and averages 23.5 PPG 6.2 APG and 8.7 RPG

2. Alonzo Mourning, the House Champion who had some very impressive wins in the finals, behind some huge games of his own. averaging 24.4 PPG 1.4 APG and 11.1 RPG Leading the league in Scoring

3. John Stockton, the second member of the backcourt from Ravenclaw. He led the team and league in assists, setting the tone early for his team. 18 PPG 12.4 APG 4 RPG

4. Dikembe Mutumbo, the leagues leading rebounder for the struggling Hufflepuff. he averaged 12.7 PPG 1 APG and 15 RPG. 

Those are the 4 candidates and based on the results from the MVP Voters your Hogwarts Basketball League MVP is ............

ALONZO MOURNING!!!!!!!!!

THE HOUSE CUP
As we saw earlier with the tallied house points, Ravenclaw was in the lead for the House Cup. As Headmaster Dumbledore was congratulating all the participants and going over the final house standings he had one more announcement to make. "What a tournament we all had, it takes a great deal of effort to win a house championship, but even more to come back from down 0-2. I therefore award ten points to Alonzo Mourning and Gryffindor." 

Gryffindor Winsssss the House Cup!!!!

This was a fun tournament to run, something a little different than usual. hoping to have some more fun stuff like this on the way. Let me know what you think.