Tag Archives: nba

Just another Monday

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This time of the year is a bit of a lull in the sports calendar, though college basketball continues its upward march toward March, and both Michigan State and Vanderbilt— two teams that have traveled in different directions a bit, mostly by virtue of their original positions this year– appear to be pulling it together when it counts.

After the Red Wings’ record-setting win on Valentine’s Day, they have extended their home winning streak to 23, now besting all such streaks (and not merely those within a single season).

Out East, the Linsanity rolls on. Out West, a rolling avalanche killed three skiiers, including the head judge of the Freeskiing World Tour, in Washington. (These, of course, are not the season’s first skiing deaths.)

Coming attractions here this week include my overdue report on the Kentucky-Vanderbilt game, bdoyk’s nod to Tim Wakefield, and a preview of the 2012 NASCAR season. Thanks to Jalen Rose and all the rest of you for dropping by.

Jeremy Lin: Knicks’ star is Warriors’ loss (via Yahoo! Sports)

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In 1965, the San Francisco Warriors traded Wilt Chamberlain to the Philadelphia 76ers for Connie Dierking, Lee Shaffer, Paul Neumann and $150,000. Chamberlain went on to win two NBA championships and three more MVPs after leaving San Francisco.

In 1980, the Golden State Warriors traded Robert Parish and a draft pick – used to take Kevin McHale – to the Boston Celtics for a draft pick. The Celtics landed two future Hall of Fame players who would join Larry Bird to form the franchise’s legendary “Big Three.” The Warriors used the draft pick they received in the deal to select … Joe Barry Carroll.

Chris Webber developed into one of the league’s better power forwards after the Warriors traded him for Tom Gugilotta and three draft picks. Tim Hardaway became an MVP candidate for the Miami Heat after the Warriors moved him. Mitch Richmond turned into a six-time All-Star for the Sacramento Kings after the Warriors traded him.

The list of players whose success grew after they left the Warriors is long and paints a not-so-flattering portrayal of the franchise. If you’re on the Warriors’ roster and seeking stardom, history suggests you should head elsewhere.

Like Jeremy Lin did. … Read More

(via Yahoo! Sports)

Monday child (slight return)

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Saturday night’s primetime college basketball matchups saw both visiting teams come away with victories. In the early game, Michigan State beat Ohio State, ending the Buckeyes’ thirty-nine game home winning streak with a comfortable ten-point victory. In the late game, Vanderbilt erased a thirteen-point halftime deficit but were unable to close in the final minutes, losing to #1 Kentucky 69-63. (More on this game later.)

We’ve so far resisted the seemingly linfinite opportunities to write about New York Knicks point guard Jeremy Lin– he isn’t even my favorite Lin brother— but his 38-point effort against Kobe Bryant and the Lakers deserves mention.

Finally, while MSU ended OSU’s home win streak, the cross-state Detroit Red Wings came from behind to beat the Flyers in Hockeytown for their twentieth consecutive home win, which tied the record set by the 1929-30 Bruins and matched by Philadelphia’s 1976 crew.

Super Monday

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Winner: The New York Giants. They scored first, with a technical safety on the Patriots’ opening drive, when Tom Brady stood in his own end zone and intentionally grounded the ball, and they scored last, when Ahmad Bradshaw carried a little more momentum than he probably expected on a largely undefended running play, to beat New England 21-17.

Loser: The New England Patriots. Despite going down 9-0 early in the game, they took a lead into halftime, thanks for a field-traversing drive on which Tom Brady was 10-10 in passing. The Pats suddenly looked like their old, domineering, mechanistic, enemy-vaporizing selves. And they got the ball to start the second half! I sent a text message to Bdoyk at halftime: “Tide has turned.” Her response: “Don’t say that.” To the hyperstitious greater Massachusetts sports community, I’m sorry if that in-game prediction of victory caused your players to develop stone hands on the final drive.  Keep reading…

Is Dwight Howard the new Big Baby?

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Orlando Magic center Dwight Howard and former Orlando Magic center Shaquille O’Neal recently had a public spat over the former’s claim to the Superman mantle (cape?), but Howard’s real nomenclature-based friction actually may be with current Orlando Magic forward Glen Davis.

There won’t really be any friction between those two, of course, because Davis doesn’t want to be known as Big Baby anymore (even though everyone, including him, still wants to call him that). But that’s exactly how Howard’s acting– large, immature, and lacking in foresight.

Back when the league-wide Chris Paul trade operations were in full force, Howard made sure everyone knew he wanted out of Orlando too, and even held in his hand a faintly McCarthyesque list of names of the teams where he would like to go. When he didn’t get moved around the time that Paul finally made it to L.A., Howard pulled back on his trade request, only to slowly walk back to it ever since. Every week, it seems like he adds a new team to his list, an act that garners him headlines for at least a couple days each time. The Lakers and Nets have been on the list since the beginning. Then he added the Clippers, and, most recently, the Bulls, a decision so newsworthy it has been on ESPN.com’s front page for two days:

Most agree that Howard is the best center in the game right now, and the Magic rightly would demand a king’s ransom to part with him. Orlando is willing to pay him, but Howard doesn’t seem to believe he can win there– his trade decision is about winning championships and boosting his personal brand more than it’s about pure dollar figures. Given this reality, many have pointed out that it makes no sense for Howard to demand a trade to a contender, because that team would have to gut its roster to get him, and his new situation would probably end up looking a lot like his current one. Instead, he should play out the year in Orlando and let one of these teams sign him when he becomes a free agent at the end of the season. Howard must know this, but he keeps talking and keeps his name in the news for little other purpose than that. At this point, I’m just waiting for him to add the Columbus Blue Jackets to his “list.”

Special teams Monday

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On Friday night, the Minnesota Timberwolves hung around long enough and took advantage of a Los Angeles Clippers’ offense that, despite dominating most of the game even without Chris Paul, stagnated after Mo Williams, who couldn’t miss, got himself ejected. Minnesota won the game on a Kevin Love 3-pointer off an in-bounds play with 1.5 seconds remaining. The 101-98 game-winning margin was the T-Wolves only lead of the night after going up 2-0 to start the game.

In college action, Michigan State was all over Purdue in East Lansing, 83-58, the Boilermakers being a much better team in West Lafayette than on the road. Vanderbilt, meanwhile, hasn’t quite been able to right its ship, dropping a tough one in overtime to #15 Mississippi State, 78-77. Other notable games included Virginia Tech upsetting UVA in a low-scoring affair (47-45), Notre Dame upsetting previously undefeated #1 Syracuse, and Florida State salvaging its season with an upset of Duke in Durham just a week after it blew out free falling North Carolina. There also was this neat fact:

Sometime Saturday night or Sunday morning, former Penn State football coach Joe Paterno died after a battle with lung cancer.  Beyond the longevity of his tenure, recent information about his handling of the Jerry Sandusky situation has obscured and clouded Paterno’s legacy. One has to wonder, though, whether Paterno would be alive today if he had been allowed to remain in his post. It isn’t a sensational suggestion: he and others addressed this very question in years past (in an article, probably in Sports Illustrated, for which I spent a good amount of time unsuccessfully searching on Sunday). The other footnote on this story right now is the mishandling of the death announcement by the media– particularly CBS Sports, which lifted a premature story without attribution from Onward State, a PSU student site, and then attempted to blame that site when the error was revealed.

Sunday featured the NFL playoffs’ final four and saw New England and New York advancing to the Super Bowl. In each game, the losing team appeared to be in control at the end, only to commit crippling special teams errors that delivered the victory to their opponent. When the teams meet in the Super Bowl, Eli Manning will have the opportunity to double his brother’s championship total, while Tom Brady could join Terry Bradshaw and Joe Montana as the only quarterbacks to win four Super Bowls. Super Bowl XLVI will be a rematch of Super Bowl XLII, which the Giants won 17-14, thanks in large part to a fourth-quarter catch by WR David Tyree.

In the Australian Open, Serena Williams lost 6-2, 6-3 to Ekaterina Makarova. Williams was the last American alive in the tournament.

How bad are the Detroit Pistons?

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Nevermind the score or the number of empty seats at The Palace, it’s the occupied seats that were of note in last night’s Mavericks-Pistons game; specifically, two seats on the Dallas bench. I have yet to read any explanation of who these guys are, but apparently professional basketball in Southeast Michigan has become such a joke that two guys who look like Jersey Shore hobos can sit in the middle of the visitors’ bench without a second look from former Detroit coach/current Dallas coach/current Jim Carey lookalike Rick Carlisle. On the other hand, maybe it’s part of some sort of fan-player reintegration following the 2004 brawl with the Pacers. The Pistons should be demoted to the And1 Mixtape Tour and exchanged for a starting five of Half Man Half Amazing, Skip 2 My Lou, The Professor, Escalade, and Sik Wit It, with player-coach Main Event coming off the bench.

(HT: Deadspin)

(UPDATE: Deadspin has identified the jabronies as a suburban Detroit “fashion entrepreneur” and his friend.)

Kobe Bryant and PEDs

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The Orange County Register reports:

These days, over Bryant’s right wrist also rests a fat postgame ice wrap roughly the size of rookie guard Andrew Goudelock, Bryant trying in vain to minimize swelling after acting on the court as if there isn’t a torn ligament in there.

Bryant has been taking a numbing injection to that wrist before every game in hopes of performing normally. Yes, it’s that bad.

He does not want to publicize all the details of his wrist, which is usable only because the bones were not moved permanently out of alignment without the ligament to hold them in place. But it’s now clear just how problematic the wrist is, and it’s fair to wonder where all this will take Bryant.

Bryant walked out of Staples Center on Tuesday night with something that looked like an oven mitten over his right hand and wrist. He wears an immobilizing brace over the wrist when off the court, meaning take-for-granted parts of life such as texting on his phone or zipping his fly become rather challenging.

I’m not sure if the fly-zipping example was a reference to the alleged infidelities that allegedly led to his recent, actual divorce proceedings, and I also am not here to offer any speculation on what’s going on with the German doctor who treated Bryant and Alex Rodriguez.

My question has to do with the wrist injections, referenced above, that “numb the pain and allow Bryant to perform normal tasks, such as ball handling and shooting“: why isn’t this injected substance a performance-enhancing drug?

Keep reading…