E.K. NATION

Some things for a Friday:

• The NBA playoffs are upon us. With that, I offer my completely useless predictions:

• Every single series in the West, through the conference finals, will go exactly six games. Dallas will beat Golden State, Utah will beat Houston, Denver will beat San Antonio, and Phoenix will beat the Lakers. The Mavericks will take down the Jazz while Phoenix will beat Denver. Dallas will beat the Suns to advance to the Finals. Over in the East, the Pistons will take down Orlando in five, Miami will beat Chicago in six, Toronto will beat New Jersey in seven, and the Cavaliers will beat the Wizards in seven. Detroit over Miami in five, Cleveland over Toronto in seven. And Detroit returns to the Finals for the third time in four seasons, taking down LeBron and Co. in seven. In the Finals, Dallas will sweep Detroit for its first-ever NBA title. For the record, I chose Miami to beat Phoenix in the Finals in the pre-season predictions. Yeah, those are abandoned.

• The University of Oregon is offering a Keanu Reeves film and lecture series. Take one step forward if you understand why this is happening. Not so fast, me.

• On Bill Simmons' ESPN blog, he offers up a suggestion from a reader that the 1985 NBA draft lottery was fixed in order to give Patrick Ewing, the draft's marquee player, to big-market New York. And you know what? It's not out of the realm of possibilities. I'll quote a bit of it right here, because I don't think there's a link yet to the actual page of this entry:

[W]hen an accountant from Ernst & Whinney throws the seven envelopes into the glass drum, he bangs the fourth one against the side of the drum to create a creased corner...At the 5:23 mark of the clip, Stern heads over to the drum, unlocks it and awkwardly reaches inside for the first envelope (the No. 1 pick). He grabs three envelopes that are bunched together, pretends not to look (although he does) and flips the three envelopes so the one on the bottom ends up in his hand. Then he pulls that envelope out at the 5:32 mark ... and, of course, it's the Knicks envelope...

A reader named Greg K. from Fair Lawn, N.J. (I'd give you his whole name, but I don't want him to be randomly found dead in his bathtub tonight), pointed this out to me: If you look closely right at the 5:31 mark, right as the commish yanks that Knicks envelope out, there's a noticeable crease in the corner of the envelope. You can see it for a split-second -- as he pulls the envelope up, it's on the corner that's pointing toward the bottom of the jar.

There's a giant crease! It's right there! The same one the accountant created as he was throwing the envelopes into the drum!

Here's the clip:

Vehhhh-ry interesting...

• Finally, I try not to dwell on tragic things on this blog. Up until now I have intentionally avoided discussing the events at Virginia Tech, because to be honest, things like that are not what I want this blog to be about. But I figure if somebody who has not yet seen this uplifting clip from a rally on the Virginia Tech campus might feel better about the whole thing after seeing it, then there is no reason not to link him or her to it.