All posts tagged Basketball

NBA Championship: Anyone’s Game?

By | April 7, 2011 | Basketball, NBA | 1 Comment

Take a little LeBron James, some Kevin Durant, some Derrick Rose, a little Dwight Howard, a touch of Kobe Bryant and you have the awesome NBA Spread that I put on both pieces of bread for my entertainment sandwich. The NBA has never been more interesting, and the game is as exciting as it ever has been.

It’s much of the same in the West, the Spurs and the Lakers dominating. When will it end? When Kobe retires? When Jackson retires? And the Spurs are like the Patriots, a genius coach, a changing supporting cast and an enduring legacy that seemingly will never die. Some might say they are bi-winning.

In the East Derrick Rose is the one now being compared to Michael Jordan (at least for his leadership qualities). The Bulls have won over 50 games and are leading the Eastern Conference with the Heat and the Celtics steaming up their tail.

Probably the most interesting story of the year is when LeBron James signed with the Miami Heat along with Chris Bosh to create a new “Dream Team” within the NBA.  What we’ve seen so far is flashes of brilliance incorporated with monumental squirrel-brainedness and inexplicable happenings like their defeat at the hands of the Cavaliers not long ago. One wonders whether they will be able to remain consistent throughout the playoffs.

With only a handful of games left, most of the playoffs are set and while there are a lot of the same names around, everything is very much up in the air. The Lakers will probably be there in the end. At this stage, it seems like it would almost be weird to not have them there. It’s not a foregone conclusion, but it will be surprising if they’re not fighting for the ring at the end.  Might we see a Bulls/Lakers rematch? I hope so.

The Magic could surprise everyone. Dwight Howard has been on fire this season and poised to assert his role at one of the greatest players in NBA history. There’s a lot going on right now. There are a lot of great stories and stories behind the stories. I have no idea what’s going to happen when the championship run begins, but I do know I’ll be glued to my television set and the results will be nothing what I expected.  That’s one of the reasons I love it, and I simply can’t wait.

And the Draft Day Suit Bracket Winners Are…

By | April 5, 2011 | Basketball, Contest!, NCAA, Site Business | 1 Comment

…clearly not Butler. Whoops.

Yes, UConn won the National Championship, but more importantly Erin B (a.k.a EzzaBee) won the Draft Day Suit Bracket Challenge and  $200 in merchandise from the Yahoo! Sports Shop.

In second place, winning $100 from the Yahoo Sports Shop, is my neighbor, Rick. Now, I’m really happy that Rick won something because 1) he is a really nice guy and 2) sometimes he feeds my cats when I go on vacation but – BUT! I would like to point out that I picked HIS college to win the whole thing and Pitt and Louisville are what wrecked my brackets.

I tell you that partially to share the injustice, but also to explain why I was out yelling in my street yesterday, just in case you were wondering.

So congratulations to Erin, Rich and the University of Connecticut Huskies.

Erin, I need your e-mail address.

Swoopes Signs with Shock

By | March 30, 2011 | Basketball, Serial Retirers, WNBA, Women's Sports | Comments Off

Whoa. Say that 5 times fast.

Sheryl Swoopes, a WNBA pioneer, has rejoined the league, signing with the Tulsa Shock for the 2011 season. She turned 40 this week.

Swoopes retired after the 2008 season after two seasons of back problems. She has played in Greece for the last 2 years and says that “I can honestly say physically my body feels better than it’s probably felt in the last two or three years I played in the WNBA.”

The Shock is hoping that her all-career averages of 15.8 points, 5.0 rebounds, 3.3 assists and 2.2 steals will help the team after a dismal 6-28 season last year.

Swoopes has a storied career in basketball including playing on three gold-winning Olympic teams.

[Image courtesy of Lucas Swoopes Basketball]

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Draft Day Suit March Madness Bracket Update

By | March 28, 2011 | Basketball, March Madness, NCAA | 1 Comment

How are your brackets? Yeah, mine are totally screwed too. I suppose this isn’t too surprising. I mean – how many people had VCU in the final four? Not very many. In fact:

Yeah, two out of almost six million.

Not too surprisingly out of the 64 brackets filled out for Draft Day Suit, none of us correctly picked the final four. The good news is that if you have one or two of the right teams in the final four you still might have a chance at winning.

Here are the top teams as of this morning.

It is looking good for you if you are MAJOKADABA.

So yeah, my brackets might suck, but I am loving this tournament. Who do you think will take it home?

Why I Love March Madness: VCU Beats Kansas, Advances to Final Four

By | March 27, 2011 | Basketball, College Basketball, March Madness, NCAA | Comments Off

In the hour or so since Virginia Commonwealth University advanced to the Final Four and sent number one seed Kansas home, Shaka Smart probably  just broke Google.

Seriously, who’d have thought?  But rankings don’t matter when you check out this picture of the VCU bench emptying, just after the final buzzer. That’s some happiness, and a great big exception to the “It’s not how you win or lose” business. Here’s another one:

Talk about winning: VCU is the first team in history to defeat five schools from five different power conferences in the same tournament.

I was sad that the University of Maryland didn’t make the NCAA Tournament (or even the NIT, ahem) this year, but it’s freed me up to watch the action, root against our rivals, and cheat on them in the only acceptable way, which means pulling for underdogs like VCU and Butler.

Or maybe they’re the overdogs? Butler beat Florida, up is down, and Kansas, OSU, and North Carolina are done. ESPN tweeted that out of 5.9 million brackets in their Tournament Challenge, two — TWO! — predicted the Final Four correctly.

I usually don’t wish my days away, but is it next Saturday yet?

[Image: Mike Stone, Reuters]

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