The Flippin' NIBL Playoffs™

NIBL Playoffs, Round 1

You can't beat the flippin' NIBL playoffs for excitement. Sunday night featured the last game 2 in the NBA playoffs: Minnesota at Seattle. The NIBL playoffs hung in the balance:

1. Walla Walla needs 24 points from Sam Mitchell to clinch a series sweep of the Women. Mitchell scores 27 and the Breakers advance!
2. Manila needs 62 points from Garnett and Schrempf to sweep the Thong. The tally from the top two DogEaters: 61. Aruba survives by a thread for a game 3 showdown.

   Eastern Conference: Manila knocks out the Thong

Manila spanks the bare-assed Thong with a 29 point game three victory to seq up the East. The Dogeaters are headed for the Championship round... the Thong are headed for the beach.

Here's the boxscores and highlights:

• Aruba's 110-109 victory in Game 2 was the first ever 1 point victory in NIBL history
• Michael Jordan leads all NIBL players with 91 playoff points in the first two games
• Manila hurt by Sam Cassell's injury in game 2 as he only scores 4 points
• In game 1, 4/5 Manila players score more than 25 point in a 37 point rout of Aruba
• Also in game 1, Michael Jordan outscores his 4 Aruba teammates 51-49; in each playoff game, no Thong player, other than Jordan, has scored more than 25 points
• Kevin Garnett leads the DogEaters with 71 points in the first two games
• Game 3, same story for the Thong... all Jordan, no one else.
• Manila record-beating playoff score of 144 with 3 players over 30 points each. Playoff draft pick V Lenard rocks with 35 points.

Western Conference: Walla Walla spanks the Women

The number one team in the regular season, the West Chicago Women, was rudely shown the door by Walla Walla in a two game sweep:

• Walla' total margin of victory in the 2 game: only 10 points

• Walla Walla has four players score more than 25 points in their game 2 clincher

• West Chicago can't blame their top two scorers. For the two games, Malone has 84 points and Duncan 80 points... that's a whopping 68% (164/241) of West Chicago's points in the series

• Walla Walla countered West Chicago's big two attack with awesome performances by three guys: Steve Smith, Kevin Willis, and Eddie Jones. The mighty three have 73, 63, and 58 points, respectively, for the series

• Smart move: Don't forget Walla Walla's playoff draft... Taking Sam Mitchell with the second pick, they get 16 and 27 points from the T-Wolves forward: the best performance of any NIBL playoff draft pick

• Not so smart move: Phil Jackson stayed with Dennis Rodman after a sluggish game 1... the Women did not, replacing him with Antonio Davis. Mistake. Rodman pulls in 26 points in game 2, 11 more than his West Chicago replacement... a total that would have given the Women a victory in game 2

Absolute Power Corrupts...

Due to his astounding performance in the regular season (and because he got Michael Jordan), playoff-bound commissioner (and Thong-master) Bill Krieger will be temporarily stripped of his (lofty) commissioner status during the playoffs. Therefore, Johnny Raimondo will assume the role as sole commissioner during the playoffs and will settle any disputes that occur during the playoffs. Bill will, however, still man the controls over the NIBL web site.

Playoff Draft - Done!

Each playoff team gets to select two players prior to each round of the playoffs. The players must have been undrafted in the NIBL draft. The draft order is determined by team rank, and the order for the first round of the playoffs is:

Here's the results of the first round playoff draft:

To assist you in drafting, here's a data file of NBA players that have not been draft by NIBL teams and therefore are available for the playoff draft. The file includes each player's NBA stats: NBA games played, NIBL points, and NIBL points/game.

Draftable NBA Players

This file is tab-delimited and can therefore be fed into most spreadsheet programs, like Microsoft Excel. Please remember that this data, as with any NIBL data, is generated by software known to be bug-ridden and unreliable. I am not responsible for any errors or omissions, and I present this information simply as a courtesy. If you have any questions, then email me.

Games are a Little Different

The playoffs work a little differently than the NIBL regular season. For you lawyer-types, the complete playoff rules are listed in the NIBL Bylaws. For the rest of us, it's not all that hard.

• Each NIBL playoff series consists of the scores from 3 NBA playoff games
• Each NIBL playoff game corresponds to a NBA playoff game; the first game in the NIBL playoff series uses stats from the first game in the NBA playoffs series, and so on...
• For each NIBL playoff game, each playoff team must submit a playoff lineup prior to any corresponding NBA playoff games.
• If you don't have any lineup changes for games 2 or 3, you don't have to submit a lineup after game 1.
• The winner of 2 or more of these playoff games is the winner of the series.

One last difference: I'm going to have to put in the boxscore game numbers for the playoffs by hand, so double-check the scores after they are published.

The First Round Schedule

Here's the schedule for the first round of the playoffs:

Monday, Apr 20 - I'll post the final standing and statistics for the regular season. I will also post a spreadsheet-readable stats file of NBA players that are still available for the playoff draft.

Tuesday, Apr 21 - NIBL playoff draft held by telephone at 8:00 pm. I'll post the draft results after the draft.

Wednesday, Apr 22 - All playoff lineups are due by midnight. As usual, visiting (or lower-ranked) team must communicate their lineup to the home (or higher-ranked) team. Both teams must communicate their lineup to the commissioner, in this case, Johnny Raimondo.

Thursday, Apr 23 - NBA playoffs begin...