Few things in American sports get the emotions bubbling quite like a sustained winning streak. Whenever one happens and especially when it continues thanks to some unforeseen confluence of events, we lose our collective minds a little bit, wondering whether magic is in the air, if something is written in the stars and daring to postulate about how long it can persist. Yet not all winning streaks are created equal, evidenced by the three significant ones that carried into Friday, with two of them guaranteed to last at least until the weekend. The New York Knicks have won eight straight in the NBA, the Oakland Athletics struck upon an 11-game run in Major League Baseball, while the Vegas Golden Knights are holders of eight consecutive NHL triumphs before they travel to meet the Anaheim Ducks on Saturday. It is always dangerous writing about winning streaks, given that they must come to an end eventually and when they do, the author risks being blamed from enacting the curse that curtailed things. Oh well. The A’s are the first team to put their streak on the line when they take on the Baltimore Orioles on Friday, having produced an insane ending to reach No. 11 against the Minnesota Twins on Wednesday evening. “It’s like the Bay Area wind,” outfielder Ramon Laureano told reporters. “It just smells like you’re going to win.” If you think that’s a bit melodramatic, you didn’t see the closing moments of Wednesday’s 13-12 nailbiter, where a 10th inning rally that featured two Twins errors on potential game-clinching plays was capped off when Luis Arraez threw away Laureano’s grounder. The reaction to the Oakland fun has been twofold, spawning both bewilderment and nostalgia. The surprise factor is because, just a couple of weeks ago, the only thing the A’s looked primed to do consistently was lose. After being outplayed in the first six games of the season, Oakland was predicted to finish at the bottom of the AL West, before a crazy turnaround that has brought the throwback part into play, conjuring memories of Moneyball, and the charmed 20 wins in a row from the 2002 campaign. No team has ever embarked upon an 11-game winning stretch at any stage of a season that they started 0-6, yet somehow the A’s have accomplished it before the end of the opening month. “At first, I was just hoping we’d get a win,” Scott Hatteberg, home run hero of the Moneyball movie and now A’s special assistant to baseball operations, told The Athletic. “Now, all of a sudden, we can’t lose.” Wins congregated together are, truthfully, far more interesting when they are unexpected and maybe most interesting of all when they’re being reenacted by Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill. Knicks fans haven’t experienced sustained victory for a long, long time, gritting their teeth through years of being one of the worst teams in the league. Movie material? One day, perhaps, and if so – you know Spike Lee is directing. Yet here they are, the Knicks, surging behind the excellence of Julius Randle, who is getting better and better before our own eyes and leading this charge. What a charge it is – into the fourth spot in the Eastern Conference and with a playoff position for the first time since 2013 close to fruition, complete with a level of defensive spark that could work well in the postseason. The Knicks surge is about more than numbers. It has brought some joy back to the franchise and opens the prospect of a thrilling time in Big Apple hoops, with the Brooklyn Nets – despite all their injuries – favorites to win the title. The Knicks, despite their form, are still +15000 to win it all, according to FOX Bet. “It is hard to imagine a time when we needed this more, frankly, this flabbergasting, dumbfounding, out-of-the-(orange-and)-blue surprise of a Knicks season,” wrote New York Post columnist Mike Vaccaro. “Let’s remember what these last few years have been like around here, an endless morass of underachievement and underperformance, summer to winter, fall to spring, one sporting calamity after another, an endless loop of failure, of frustration, of futility.” Then there are winning streaks that are a bit more of a slow burn. Eight wins was enough to light up New York but in Vegas it is only enough for a growing rumble. The Golden Knights have won consistently ever since their foundation season in 2017-18, which saw them reach the Stanley Cup Finals. The Golden Knights have big aspirations this season – they are +650 with FOX Bet to win it all – and currently the ongoing scrap for top spot in the West Division along with the Colorado Avalanche takes precedence over Saturday’s chance to set a franchise consecutive win record. “I like how we’re playing recently,” said Golden Knights head coach Pete DeBoer. “We haven’t played Colorado though, that puts a different type of pressure on you. But this is a hard league to win in, regardless of who you are playing.” The opportunity to play the Avalanche comes next Wednesday and it is safe to say that if the streak continues to a point where the Pittsburgh Penguins’ all-time mark of 17 comes into view, there may be a more frenzied reaction. Because winning doesn’t get boring. No matter how much a team, or a player, has already won, no matter how expected the latest success was, no matter how established the dominance has become. Not boring, not for those involved in securing victory. Not ever. It is special, at times it can be exhilarating. It allows the fans to dream. It can’t last forever, however much they wish it cold. But right now, especially in Oakland and New York, that doesn’t matter. Here’s what others have said … Dan Devine, The Ringer: “New York is the hottest team in the NBA, riding a league-best eight-game winning streak. … With 12 games left in the regular season, they have a 96 percent chance of making the playoffs, according to The Ringer’s NBA Odds Machine. … There’s more to feel good about than just the current streak, though. From the start of Tom Thibodeau’s first season on the bench, this iteration of the Knicks has repeatedly proved compelling and enjoyable to watch. For so much of this century, willingness to tune into New York’s games has doubled as evidence of a potentially dangerous predilection toward masochism. Now, though, the Knicks—the Knicks!—are a reliably refreshing and invigorating watch: a collection of reclaimed talents and improving youngsters that plays smart, hard, physical, and disciplined basketball.” Will Law, Sports Illustrated: “Oakland is the first team in MLB history to forge an 11-game winning streak at any point of the season after starting 0-6; and they did it in April. Can they also become the first team since the 2011 Rays to qualify for the playoffs after losing their first six games? … The answer will likely depend on if the Athletics stay true to the offensive formula they popularized during the Moneyball era: the three true outcomes. Though the sport has changed greatly in the nearly two decades since Oakland’s front office ushered in the sabermetrics era – largely due to that very act – the A’s are still heavily reliant on walks and home runs while not sweating the strikeouts. … The short-term goal will be to match the 2002 Moneyball A’s with 20 straight wins. The long-term goal will be to better them by winning a couple of playoff series.” Jesse Granger, The Athletic: “The shortened regular season is approximately three-quarters finished and, as of now, 12 teams are within six points of the playoff cutoff line across the four divisions. That means more than a third of the NHL will spend the final quarter of the season fighting for their playoff lives. … The Golden Knights aren’t one of those teams. … Vegas will host the Avalanche on Apr. 26 and 28, and travel to play the Wild on May 3 and 5. … How they perform in these four games will be more revealing than anything else that happens between now and the start of the playoffs. … If they are ready, it will serve as a nice confidence boost. If they aren’t, it will be a wake-up call while they still have time to fix things before the postseason arrives.” |
