ELISSA NADWORNY, HOST:
Now it is time for sports.
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NADWORNY: The NBA and NHL playoffs heat up. Plus, remembering a basketball pioneer. Joining us to talk about all of this is sports writer Howard Bryant. Good morning.
HOWARD BRYANT: Good morning.
NADWORNY: OK. Let's first do Stanley Cup playoffs. So the Western Conference finals are set. We've got the Colorado Avalanche and the Las Vegas Golden Knights going at it. And then in the East, the Montreal Canadiens and the Buffalo Sabres are still battling it out. That winner will face the Carolina Hurricanes. Howard, which team has impressed you the most?
BRYANT: Well, the most impressive teams have got to be Colorado because they barely lose. I think the Hurricanes are undefeated. But the team that I like most is Montreal. They're the sentimental favorite for me. They haven't - you know, Canada it's - is hockey, and the Canadiens haven't won the Stanley Cup since 1993. It's weird to think about Montreal and the Canadiens and one of the great dynasties in North American sports as an underdog, but that's how it's been economically for hockey. It's a Southern, Southwestern sport now, and to have the old-guard Montreal Canadiens win is kind of interesting. Although, people in Buffalo don't want to hear that. Great series.
NADWORNY: (Laughter) Fair. OK. So let's do NBA playoffs. We've got five teams left. What should we know? Any big surprises there?
BRYANT: Well, it's really funny because the playoffs started with the Sturm and Drang of the Boston Celtics falling apart, and the New York Knicks were down two games to one, and it was like, whoa, what's happening here? But now that we're nearing the end, everybody is where they're supposed to be. We expected a great San Antonio team to sort of emerge the way they did. We expected the defending champion, Oklahoma City, to be where they are. We expected the Knicks to be near the championship or at the Eastern Conference finals, where they are. And now we'll find out if it's going to be Cleveland or Detroit, the team that they play in Game 7 to see who's going to face the Knicks. So it's been a great postseason, but it really has, in a way, shaped - kind of fallen out the way that we expected late in the summertime.
NADWORNY: Let's go now to horse racing. The Preakness Stakes take place today. It's second of the Triple Crown races. But Golden Tempo, the winner of the Kentucky Derby, will not run. Can we call this an exception, or has the Triple Crown just lost its shine?
BRYANT: It's really funny. It's, like, when you think about what sports has become over the years, it's so generational. If you talk to me - if you talk to 10-year-old me, there was the Triple Crown and the Preakness and the Belmont and the Kentucky Derby - huge, huge, huge news. Now, not so much. People don't pay much attention to it. It's still - I think we think about the pageantry of the Kentucky Derby simply because of all the mint juleps and the outfits, but the sporting piece of it has lost its way. But the Preakness and the Belmont are still to come, and they're still fun to the people who love it.
NADWORNY: And finally, another big story this week in the NBA - Jason Collins, who in 2013 became the first openly gay NBA player. He died Tuesday from brain cancer. He was 47. What's his legacy?
BRYANT: That's a terrible story. It's such a shame. Jason Collins was a great, great guy. He was a great basketball player, really courageous, you know, pioneer. I think when you talk about legacy, obviously, anything when we're talking about first or especially openly gay male athletes - you know, requires an enormous amount of courage. There's no area in, I think, you know, in our culture that is probably more homophobic than male sports. And so for him to do what he did required a great deal of courage. And it also showed how much respect that the league had for him because so many of his teammates, so many opponents came out in real support, not forced by the league to go be nice, but truly, Jason Collins had an unbelievable amount of respect by all of his peers.
NADWORNY: Thank you so much, Howard Bryant. Appreciate you.
BRYANT: My pleasure. Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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