Back-to-back titles, two completely different roads. Now he's chasing something nobody in this league has ever done.
Here's what I love about David Hurst, and I just really do: he has won this thing two completely different ways, and neither one of them was the easy way.
He's the four seed. That's it. Four. Nobody circles the four seed.
He handles San Diego in the quarterfinal, fine. Then he walks into a semifinal against the number one overall seed — the commissioner, ten and four, rested, waiting — and he drops a hundred and sixty-eight points on him.
And then he goes and wins the whole thing by forty-three.
So the next year he does the exact opposite, which is the part that should scare everybody.
No sneaking in. He leads the league in scoring — nineteen-oh-four — takes the one seed, takes the bye, beats Matt in the semifinal and Tola in the final. He is never really in trouble. Not once.
Give him a bad seed and he'll punch up. Give him a good seed and he'll close the door. That's not hot. That's good.
Because that's the difference, and it's the only difference that matters in a twelve-team league: a hot manager wins one of those. A good one wins both.
Two titles. He's the only person in this league with more than one. Everybody else is sitting on exactly one or exactly zero.
And I'm sorry, but I have to bring this up. The man who has won back-to-back championships is still spending his offseason running a campaign to remove the commissioner and install Chris Dambro.
He's won everything there is to win here. He's still organizing a coup. I don't know what to tell you.
Three straight has never been done in this league. He's the only one who has ever been in position to try it, and if he isn't the best manager in this thing, he's pretty darn close to it.
