This week's voting has concluded, and we must bid farewell to the two finalists who had the lowest-rated blogs this week:

joshhoskins55

nappytemple

Voting for Week 4
1. HiPlainsDrifter -- Avg rating this week: 3.16
2. MooreSports -- 3.12

Eliminated:
3. nappytemple -- 2.79
4. joshhoskins55 -- 2.65

Here's the fourth assignment/topic for our finalists, and the one with the tightest deadline to date:

Game 3 or Game 4 of the NBA Finals

Basically the finalists can choose which game they want to write about, but they must choose one game specifically and the deadline will be decided by which one they choose.

If they choose Tuesday night's Game 3, the piece must be posted on their blog no later than 9 p.m. ET/6 p.m. PT Wednesday night.

If they choose Thursday night's Game 4, the piece must be posted on their blog no later than 9 p.m. ET/6 p.m. PT Friday night.

This format is meant to allow the writers a little flexibility while also testing their ability to write a timely piece in what amounts to basically a 24-hour deadline.

What to write about? Again, it's relatively open-ended, but it must be about specifically what happens in one of those two games.

Good luck to our four remaining finalists.

-Tom

Here are the comments for the last assignment on the NBA Finals, and as you can see in some of the comments, there was a little disagreement among the judges this time.

And as the field shrinks, there is less difference between the highs and the lows as well.

Received highest scores from judges

HiPlainsDrifter
Peter: Wow! Brilliant. The writing, which as always was fabulous, paired with the incredible concept, and the awesome photos (Love the Cage character in "Adaptation") -- made for quite an enjoyable reading experience. HiPlains -- you took this competition to the next level this week.
Dime: Good stuff; very creative. A nice break from all of the other Finals breakdown pieces that are all over the web.
Tom: Very original and very enjoyable. HiPlains has yet to disappoint in any assignment.

joshhoskins55
Peter: Pretty clever. Was dragging a bit until I got up to the acronym signs, and then I lost it. Hilarious. Way to incorporate the immortal Yasmine Bleeth. I also thought the Kareem to Kareem line was quick, witty, and exemplified that you know the team front and back. I liked your other two posts a little more, but this one still was head and shoulders above most of the competition.
Dime: Just awesome. Got my highest score this week.
Tom: I thought this one was just average; decidedly a step down from his previous two assignments. Misspelled both the first and last name of Gheorghe Muresan. The signs were very creative though.

MooreSports
Peter: Would have been an interesting angle had you stuck with the Nielsen Ratings stuff and broke down the highest rated/lowest rated, and reasons why. Instead, you went from the interesting start to a standard NBA Finals preview that you can read anywhere. The writing doesn't dazzle, but it's also not hard on the eyes. All in all, "eh".
Dime: Solid piece. Well-written and not too long. I liked the contextual links and the reference to one of the all-time great smack-talking moments in NBA history with Scottie Pippen's classic "The Mailman doesn't deliver on Sundays."
Tom: Great lines in this one ("We are all Nowitnesses" for example). A nice improvement from last week's entry.

Received lowest scores from judges

Dudski
Peter: I really like this! Instead of offering your own long-winded preview, you took a humorous tone and attacked the mainstream media's stale, even primitive, style of analysis. This was really good. The writing was tight, it didn't drag on, and you carried a voice throughout. You took a stab at something new, and you struck gold.
Dime: Repeatedly misspelling Dirk Nowitzki's name at this point in the contest is totally inexcusable.
Tom: I agree about misspelling Nowitzki. He's just too high-profile and we're too deep in the contest to botch this so many times. (Jennifer Aniston also misspelled for what it's worth.) I also thought the intro was a little long-winded, and the piece seems to take a lot of time basically blasting unfounded predictions and then the author offers up his own at the end. If this was meant to be ironic, it was lost on me.

Gbrent
Peter: Standard NBA Finals preview. The World Cup thing at the end was an interesting angle to this year's Finals that no one's really written about. I wish THAT was the focus of your article.
Dime: A little long, with a few grammatical errors, but otherwise it was good.
Tom: This just read like one cliche after another. Spent a lot of words basically saying nothing.

DrMidnight
Peter: This writing looks rushed. In the same sentence you, said "to their credit" and "to his credit". With a simple read-through of this, you could have avoided such repetition. The focus -- this marked a new era of international flavor -- was good in concept. I just wished you posed that from the start of this article instead of the wholly unnecessary three-paragraph intro. The thoughts are there -- but the organization, structure, and writing isn't.
Dime: Definitely average. It was a little all over the place. If there was more focus to the piece and the writing was tightened up a bit, it could have been much stronger.
Tom: There are times that this does read like a first draft of a story; something that has plagued the author throughout the competition. The transitions are seriously lacking as well, from the intro to the list of old "Next Great Eras" to out of that list and into the current scenario. Interesting paragraph comparing the influx of global talent to the influx of black players decades ago, but I'm not sure this is backed up enough; this could have been an interesting piece by itself. Dwyane Wade misspelled too. But only writer to use a Sade reference this round; not sure if that's a good or bad thing.

Other comments

nappytemple
Peter: Solid article. Really strong. If any criticism -- maybe a little long. An interesting part of this would have been analyzing Johnson and Riley as players as well.
Dime: Solid post, if unspectacular. It was a little long, but it works.
Tom: Quite good. Agree that the most relevant critique is that it's a little long.

tjw118
Peter:  You went with the TV angle and did more research, and ran with it. Good work. Lots of research in here, and the analysis works well. When you put good data together with good writing, the reader really feels like he/she is digging into an expert's work.
Dime: Good post. You can tell that tjw took a ton of time researching and you come away having learned something after reading the post.
Tom: Gets bogged down in the numbers a bit much. Also don't misspell "Nielsen" ratings in a story all about TV ratings. Also don't quite understand the invitation format at the beginning.

This week's voting has concluded, and we must bid farewell to the four finalists who had the lowest-rated blogs this week:

DrMidnight

Dudski

Gbrent

tjw118

Voting for Week 3
1. HiPlainsDrifter -- Avg rating this week: 4.33
2. MooreSports -- 3.70
3. joshhoskins55 -- 3.29
4. nappytemple -- 3.02

Eliminated:
5. tjw118 -- 3.01
6. Dudski -- 2.77
7. Gbrent -- 2.72
8. DrMidnight -- 2.44

Here's the third assignment/topic for our finalists:

The NBA Finals

Now this doesn't specifically have to be about this year's Heat-Mavericks matchup or any aspect of this series, but it certainly can be. Next week, there will most likely be an assignment dealing specifically with this finals matchup.