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Open Thread: Game 3 of the Finals at 8:30 PM ET on ESPN2

Tonight, the WNBA Finals head to Duluth, Georgia because "Disney on Ice: Let's Celebrate!" is on at the Philips Arena. ESPN2, a network that is coincidentally majority-owned by The Walt Disney Company will have the game at 8:30 PM ET. The Minnesota Lynx look to win their second championship over the Atlanta Dream while the Dream looks to turn this series around and climb out of a 2-0 hole.

With Lynx owner Glen Taylor winning two WNBA titles, the pressure is going to ramp up on his Wolves NBA team this fall.
With Lynx owner Glen Taylor winning two WNBA titles, the pressure is going to ramp up on his Wolves NBA team this fall.
Kevin C. Cox

With this game at the Gwinnett Center instead of Philips Arena, some may be thinking that having this game outside of the real home arena could be playing to the advantage of the Lynx. While it may be the case if both teams are evenly matched, I don't think it will matter. After last Tuesday's shellacking, which was arguably worse than Sunday's, I don't see the Dream being able to do anything much to stop the Lynx, and unfortunately, I do believe that they will see a Western Conference team celebrate winning a title on their court for the third team in franchise history later tonight.

That said, the Dream and its fans are probably the people right now who believe that Angel McCoughtry can get past her foul trouble throughout this series and somehow will this team to a win. We'll see, though the mayor of Minneapolis thinks that any hope of Atlanta winning is just a dream.

Other sports will compete for your time

All four of the Big Four Leagues will have a game today and will compete for your time.

It's the playoffs in Major League Baseball! The Oakland Athletics will take on the Detroit Tigers in a winner-take-all Game 5 of the American League Divisional Series at 9:00 PM ET on TBS.

In the NFL, you can watch the Chicago Bears (3-2) host the woeful New York Giants (0-5) at 8:25 PM ET on NFL Network.

In the NHL, there are ten games on tonight! Some are in progress as of the time of this post. Here is the list below:

Away Home Time (ET) National TV in the USA
Colorado Avalanche Boston Bruins 7:00 PM
Columbus Blue Jackets Buffalo Sabres 7:00 PM
Carolina Panthers Washington Capitals 7:00 PM
Phoenix Coyotes Detroit Red Wings 7:30 PM NHL Network
Florida Panthers Tampa Bay Lightning 7:30 PM
Toronto Maple Leafs Nashville Predators 8:00 PM
Winnipeg Jets Minnesota Wild 8:00 PM
Montreal Canadiens Edmonton Oilers 9:30 PM
San Jose Sharks Vancouver Canucks 10:00 PM
New York Rangers Anaheim Ducks 10:00 PM

Last, but not least, in the NBA, four preseason games will go on. One game went on earlier this morning in Manila, Phillippines between the Houston Rockets and Indiana Pacers.

Houston won the game this morning big time, 116-96, as James Harden scored 21 points along with five additional Rockets players. For Indy, Paul George led the team in scoring with 17 points and while four additional Pacers players scored in double digits, the Rockets made over half of their shots, while the Pacers didn't even make 40% of theirs, and the Rockets also beat the Pacers in the assists battle, 27-16.

Of the remaining games, two of them will be at out of site locations. The Minnesota Timberwolves will host the Milwaukee Bucks in Sioux Falls, SD, but I'd expect that Wolves and Lynx owner Glen Taylor would be in Atlanta tonight instead. Then, the Lakers and Kings will play in Las Vegas, a market that has been longing for a professional sports franchise in the Big Four for quite some time. At any rate, here is the list of the games:

Away Home Time (ET) National TV
Miami Heat Detroit Pistons 7:30 PM
Milwaukee Bucks Minnesota Timberwolves 8:00 PM
Sacramento Kings Los Angeles Lakers 10:00 PM NBA TV

The last song of the WNBA season?

I have to think of a song that's a classic and tasteful and one, especially because this is could be it for 2013. So, my choice is Mariah Carey's "Fantasy." I wrote quite a bit of fantasy this year... Or could it be reality soon?

There is also a remix of this song featuring Ol' Dirty Bastard that's almost as popular as the original. Some like this one better.

Though I hate relating this season to the grieving process, I am more or less at the acceptance stage that it will end as early as tonight, and no later than next week, even though I probably have the worst predicting record of anyone on the SB Nation network.

After all, I thought that the Dream would be competitive in Game 2, thought the Mystics would win Game 3 of the Conference Semifinals against the Dream, and had the audacity to say that if the lottery balls changed another way in 2002, the Mystics would have won multiple titles by now though we can't predict that.

Concluding Thoughts

So there we have it. This season started with all the hype about the Big Three Rookies. While we all did appreciate their success, many of us rooted hard for other rookies in the class who made major contributions, like Layshia Clarendon of the Indiana Fever, Alex Bentley who's still playing ball tonight for the Dream, Kelsey Bone of the Liberty and of course, the Tayler Hill/Nadirah McKenith/Emma Meesseman/Tierra Ruffin-Pratt quartet for the Mystics among others.

Besides the Lynx continuing to win at a great clip, we also saw the Washington Mystics and Seattle Storm both make the playoffs though many, if not most preseason predictions had them in sixth place for the Eastern and Western Conferences respectively. That led us to our crow feast toward the end of the regular season. I'm even thinking that KFC actually stands for Kentucky Fried Crow now.

And we had plenty of great debates in the comments throughout this season regarding players, how draft picks could have panned out on other teams, and also creating a de-facto Swish Appeal glossary of terms by turning players' names into verbs and adjectives as they pertain to their evil, infatuated, and obsessed fans.

Enjoy the game tonight everyone! If it is the last one of this short season, then I hope you enjoyed this season as a whole. But if we do see the Dream extend the series, the party continues on Sunday!