Sticking to the holiday mantra of “’tis better to give than to receive,” this Christmas Day column I would like to “give” fans of our Bay Area NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL and MLS teams some gifts that can better help them in the new year.
I think what Golden State Warriors fans want more than anything heading into the new year is for shooting guard Klay Thompson to find his 3-point stroke. Thompson got off to a slow start, which most chalked up to a small sample size. But now as the season closes in on the halfway mark, it’s apparent Thompson is buried in a deep funk. He is shooting right around 30 percent from behind the arc in the month of December, well below his career average of 42 percent. The Warriors, who many anointed a three-peat champion at the start of the 2018-19 year, have struggled more this campaign than any other during this run of unprecedented success. The rest of the NBA is catching up. Double-digit 3-point games from the rest of the association is no longer the sole domain of the Warriors. As every team gives Golden State its best shot every night, the Warriors will need a resurgent Thompson to ensure those back-to-back-to-back predictions come true.
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On paper, the San Jose Sharks appear to be one of the premiere squads in the NHL. In reality, they are the most maddening of all the teams in the Bay Area. The only thing consistent about the Sharks is their inconsistency. So this year, I want to give the Sharks fans the gift of calm this holiday season. What’s the old saying? You can only control what you can control. This isn’t the first time the Sharks have played an up-and-down regular season. Heck, you can say that it’s the club’s modus operandi.
So, just stay calm during the next four, five months. The Stanley Cup playoffs are the biggest crapshoot in professional sports. Nowhere is it more important than in hockey to just get into the playoffs and then take your chances.
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The obvious gift for the Oakland Raiders in a new home. Well, a new temporary home anyway. The lawsuit the city of Oakland brought against the Raiders effectively doused any negotiations to stay at the Coliseum for their penultimate, lame-duck season in “The Town” before they blow town and open up their new city-sponsored, state-of-the-art stadium in Las Vegas.
Maybe the San Jose Earthquakes can step in and offer the Avaya Stadium facilities. Sure, it’s much smaller than anything else available in the Bay Area, only 18,000, but Avaya is a beautiful sports park by any measure. The NFL has already set the precedent by housing two teams in a soccer stadium in Southern California as the Los Angeles Rams erect their new palace, that they will share with the L.A. Chargers.
“It’s only temporary,” is the refrain. Ditto for the Raiders. Plus, it keeps the team in the Bay Area for one last season and as much as Raider haters say, “good riddance,” Raider Nation says, “We can’t quit you!”
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For the San Francisco 49ers, I wish for nothing more than good health for the 2019 season. This season became mostly wasted once franchise quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo went down with a knee injury. It was followed by a steady succession of injuries to nearly all the key components of the offense.
While a lot of young guys got tons of important playing time, I know 49ers fans would just love to see their team at full strength. Head coach Kyle Shanahan seems to be the real deal at play calling, so it would be nice to see what he could do with first-string players and not backups or backup backups.
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San Francisco Giants and Oakland A’s fans want the same thing this Christmas: hope.
Giants fans are hoping new head of baseball ops Farhan Zaidi can turn around the team’s fortunes that saw then drop from one of the best to one of the worst in baseball. The hope is the man who helped turn the Los Angeles Dodgers from underachievers to one of the best teams in baseball can do the same in the City by the Bay. There is one caveat, however: it’s not going to be this year. Just look at it as one of those delayed-gratification gifts. Like, you’re going on a summer cruise as your Christmas gift.
Oakland A’s fans have to hope the team can duplicate 2018 — not so much in wins, but making the playoffs. 2018 saw the A’s make their first postseason appearance since 2014. It’s hard to duplicate seasons that seem to have that extra something to it, so don’t expect to recreate 2018 in 2019. But it’s certainly OK to hope for another playoff appearance in the coming year.
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Like Macaulay Culkin’s Kevin McCallister character from “Home Alone,” the San Jose Earthquakes, the Bay Area’s only professional soccer entry, is the forgotten team. My gift to Quakes fans is success under (another) new head coach Matias Almeyda, a former midfielder for Argentina as well as former manager for Mexico’s legendary Chivas-Guadalajara.
It’s been a series of lost seasons since the “Goonies” squads of 2012-14, the “Cardiac Kids,” if you will. Since 2012, the Quakes have cycled through seven head coaches, with Almeyda being the eighth. There have two playoff appearances over the span. Almeyda took a moribund Chivas side, which had been riding on reputation for years, and built them back into a Mexican league power, winning a pair of league cup titles and capping his three-year run with a 2017 league crown — its first since 2006.
Here’s hoping Almeyda can be bring the same result to the Bay Area.
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Keep the discussion civilized. Absolutely NO personal attacks or insults directed toward writers, nor others who make comments.
Keep it clean. Please avoid obscene, vulgar, lewd, racist or sexually-oriented language.
Don't threaten. Threats of harming another person will not be tolerated.
Be truthful. Don't knowingly lie about anyone or anything.
Be proactive. Use the 'Report' link on each comment to let us know of abusive posts.
PLEASE TURN OFF YOUR CAPS LOCK.
Anyone violating these rules will be issued a warning. After the warning, comment privileges can be revoked.