Sports Time Radio

On Friday’s in have a routine that I more or less follow after I get off work and here’s what I do.

I get done working at 8:15 a.m. and I head to the grocery store to do my shopping. I shop at two different stores for my items to save myself some money.

The first store I go to is the place where I buy my fresh items. I get my fruits, my vegetables, my meats and cheeses. This grocery store is already open by the time I’m off work; so I like to get that done and over with. Then I hit a delay.

The second store I shop at is what you could describe as a discount grocery store. I’m sure you’d know the name of this store, but since they don’t sponsor this blog or the Sports Time Radio podcast we’ll leave the name out.

This discount store has all the items you’re use to seeing they just have names that you’re not use to and they’re cheaper price wise. They do have some brand named items, but they don’t carry them on a regular basis. The issue I have is that they don’t open early like most stores and I have to find a way to kill some time in between stores.

To fill the time in between my shopping trips I’ll stop and have breakfast at this little café that I like. Now this is what I did yesterday. I’m sure you’re wondering how this relates to sports since this is a sports blog; well here goes.

Since I’ve been to this café multiple times they sit me at the same table and I have the same waitress. As I took my seat I noticed that there was an older gentleman sitting in the booth across from me. He finished his breakfast a little before I did and as he got up to leave he noticed the t-shirt I was wearing.

I just happened to have on my Hunter Pence t-shirt which is styled like a San Francisco Giants jersey. Since it just says Giants on the front this gentleman asked me if it was a San Francisco jersey. When I told him that it was he started to tell me about the greatest baseball player he had ever seen play Willie Mays.

Now this gentleman was probably 10 or 15 years older than I am and he was talking to me about how he saw Mays play live. We went on to discuss different aspects of his game. We talked about this for about 15 minutes.

After talking about Mays the player this gentleman went on to tell me the story about the two times he met Mays. He said that he was surprised to learn that Mays was just as nice in person as he sounded in his interviews. I could see the admiration in this gentleman’s eyes as he talked about meeting Mays for about 10 minutes.

Now I have a lot of sports t-shirts, most of them bought for me by Dan the Man, but that’s a different story. This however was the first time that anyone has ever stopped to talk to me about one of them and then shared their own sports stories with me.

Does this happen a lot? Or has this ever happened to you? I really enjoyed talking baseball with this gentleman and I’d be interested to know if you have a story similar to this. If you do feel free to leave it in the comments section.

In Wednesday’s blog I mentioned that the NHL playoffs where getting ready to start. Well today it’s the NBA’s turn to get their playoffs underway. There are four games today and four games tomorrow to tip-off the opening round.

At 2:00 p.m. my time the NBA playoffs start with a Western Conference match up as the San Antonio Spurs are at the Golden State Warriors. We Move into the Eastern Conference for the next two games starting with the Washington Wizards at the Toronto Raptors. The third game of the day has the Miami Heat at the Philadelphia 76ers. It’s back to the Western Conference for the final game of the day has the New Orleans Pelicans at the Portland Trailblazers.

If you’re looking for these games on television the first game is on ABC while the next three will all be on ESPN.

On Sunday the game start a little earlier with the first game tipping off at Noon. We have back to back Eastern Conference match ups today starting with the Milwaukee Bucks at the Boston Celtics. The second game of the day has the Indiana Pacers at the Cleveland Cavaliers. Then it’s over to the Western Conference for the final two games of the day starting with the Utah Jazz at the Oklahoma City Thunder. The final game one of the opening round has the Minnesota Timberwolves at the Houston Rockets.

As for the television schedule with these games the first one is on TNT. The second game will be shown on ABC, but then the final two games will be back on TNT.

Do you see any upsets in these first round match ups? The opening round of the NBA playoffs usually stay pretty true to form with the higher seeds advancing. Could this season possibly be different since there are teams that will be going into this opening round without their star players.

You have the Warriors playing without Steph Curry. While also in that series the Spurs will play without Kawhi Leonard. The Boston Celtics will be playing without Kyrie Irving and it appears that the 76ers will go into round one without Joel Embiid. While not considered a star player the Thunder will be without Andre Roberson. John Wall has also just returned from injury, but only played in consecutive games once since returning. Will Wall be at full strength for the Wizards?

Do you see any of these injuries having an affect on these first round playoffs series?

You can listen to the Sports Time Radio podcast live on BlogTalkRadio.com, but the podcast is also available for you to listen to any time you want at TuneIn.com.

Don’t forget to look me up on Twitter @Burketime.