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San Antonio Spurs

Around the Rim: Spurs take a pounding and a 2-0 lead


1. Suns set in second half
No lead is safe for Phoenix. For the second consecutive game, the Spurs erased an early double-digit deficit and went on to upset the Suns. On Tuesday, Tony Parker tallied 32 points and Manu Ginobili added 29, chipping away a 14-point Phoenix lead before grabbing a 2-0 series lead by winning 102-96. The Suns owned a nine-point advantage after the first quarter and a seven-point lead at halftime, but they could only produce 35 points (11 in the third quarter) over the final 24 minutes. The Spurs didn’t need another 40-point outing out of their MVP with Parker and Ginobili firing on all cylinders, but Tim Duncan still produced, scoring 18 points to go with 17 rebounds and three blocks. The Suns are probably feeling pretty low after losing the pair of heartbreakers, but the reality is the Spurs simply did what they were supposed to which is win at home. Sure, Phoenix would like to have stolen homecourt advantage early on, but as long as they win in the desert then they’ll still have a shot at the series. However, the Suns can not allow San Antonio to grab Game 3 and put a strangle hold on the series. You can expect Phoenix to improve on its home floor which is bad news for SA. Amare Stoudemire was superb again in Game 2, scoring from everywhere on the floor to the tune of 33 points while Shaquille O’Neal chipped in 19 points, 14 rebounds and four blocks. Steve Nash also had a double-double with 23 points and 10 assists.

2. Chris Paul ball

For the Mavericks, it was another playoff game and another tough pill to swallow. The disappointments continue to mount for Dallas after they fell into a two-game hole when Chris Paul and his Hornets set a new tem single-game record for total points in a playoff contest, whooping the Mavs 127-103 on Tuesday. Paul might stand just six feet tall, but he is overshadowing everyone else in this series. After posting 35 points and 10 assists in Game 1, Paul somehow upped his effort and dropped 32 and a franchise playoff-record 17 assists in the second game, becoming the first player to ever record 30 points, 10 assists and three steals in consecutive postseason games, which just happen to be the first two playoff games of his career. New Orleans as a team set playoff records with 39 points in the first quarter, 67 points in the first half and most treys made by a team with 10. The series now shifts to Big D where the Mavericks need some serious home cooking to get back into things. In Game 2, all five Hornets scored at least 10 points with Paul, David West (27 pts) and Peja Stojakovic (22 pts) all scoring at least 20 points.

3. Mr. 20-20
Dwight Howard loves the numbers two and zero. The youngster posted his second 20-point, 20-rebound game in as many playoff games, becoming the first player since Kevin Garnett in 2004 to pull off the feat. Of course, the most important reason he likes the digits is because with a slim 104-103 win over Toronto last night Orlando took a 2-0 lead in the series. The Raptors would not die on Tuesday, led by Chris Bosh they had an opportunity to steal one on the road, but Bosh missed a last-second jumper that could have won the game. Bosh dominated the game for his team, leading Toronto in all major statistics with 29 points, 10 rebounds, six assists, two steals and a block. But this series has belonged to Howard who will now take his show on the road where the Raptors are a much more impressive team, owning a 25-16 record in Toronto.

Tuesday’s Player of the Day: Chris Paul vs. Dallas 39 min, 32 pts (FG: 10-16, 3FG: 0-2, FT: 12-14), 5 reb, 17 ast, 3 stl

Buzzer Beater: Kevin Garnett ran away defensive player of the year honors, a feat he hopes to repeat when it comes time to hand out the MVP hardware. Garnett finished with 90 of 124 first-place votes and finished with a total of 493 points, beating out Denver’s Marcus Camby by a full 315 points. The Rockets Shane Battier finished with the bronze, totaling 11 first-place votes and 175 points overall. The Celtics were the second best defensive team in the league, holding opponents to just 90.3 points per game and a NBA-best 41.9 percent shooting from the field. And there’s no doubt Garnett is the driving force behind the dedication to D. Along with 18.8 points, Garnett averaged 9.2 rebounds (7.3 defensive), 1.4 steals and 1.2 blocks per game.

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NBA General

Soulja Boy meets Marv Albert and hilarity ensues

For some strange reason, we never figured the silky-smooth voice of the NBA would be into hip-hop. But you learn new and interesting things everyday on Inside the NBA and we’re not just talking about how many thousands of calories Chucky consumed during the taping of the show.

Finally, Marv has done something to make everyone forget about how he wore women’s underwear, bit a woman’s back and went on trial for felony charges of forcible sodomy. OK, never mind, nothing can top that.

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All Other Sports

Chuck "The Iceman" Liddell needs an icepack…or two


Sorry Iceman fans, but there will be no Chuck Liddell at UFC 85. The former light heavyweight champion of the world was forced to withdraw from his June 7th fight against Ultimate Fighter winner Rashad Evans because of an injury. Liddell tore his hamstring (which looks pretty damn painful) while training for the bout and there’s no telling how long he’ll be out of action. After all, would you put a timetable on something as nasty as that?

“Unfortunately, Chuck Liddell tore his right hamstring during training last week, and being the warrior that he is, he still wanted to fight, which is the reason why everyone in the world loves him,” said Dana White, UFC President. “But I wouldn’t let anyone fight with his leg looking that way. Let him heal and come back and fight when he is 100 percent.”

The UFC is going to find another main event for the London pay-per-view and, personally, we’re hoping Mr. Roboto can make a quick turnaround.

Links:

[UFC.com]: Chuck Liddell Injured; Forced To Withdraw From UFC 85

Categories
Utah Jazz

Around the Rim: Utah takes a deuce on Houston


1. Houston’s choking away a great season
The Jazz got slapped in the face when they were forced to open their series against Houston on the road despite owning the fourth seed in the West. But it didn’t end up mattering because Utah stole both games in Clutch City to take a 2-0 lead back home where they went a league-best 37-4 during the regular season. Kyle Korver helped to seal a 90-84 victory for Utah when he opened a five-point lead with 20 seconds remaining and the shot clock expiring. The shot ensured Deron William’s team-high 22 points and Mehmet Okur’s 16-point, 16-rebound double-double were not in vain. Tracy McGrady had a spectacular outing with 23 points, 13 rebounds and nine assists, but once again appears poised to be one-and-done. With about a minute left in the game, Bobby Jackson hit a 3-pointer that would have tied the game, but Luis Scola was called for an offensive foul when he shoved Andrei Kirilenko away from the action and, in essence, shot his team in the foot.

2. Cleveland is rocking

For the second consecutive game, the Wizards wore their awful gold and black uniforms and for the second consecutive game, they scored 86 points and lost. Only this time, the score was actually uglier than the apparel. Cleveland pounded Washington 116-86 on Tuesday, taking a 2-0 lead in the series behind 30 points, 12 assists and nine rebounds from LeBron James while Wally Szczerbiak added 15 points. Zydrunas Ilgauskas just missed a double-double with 16 points and nine rebounds. On the other side of the court, Washington’s wiz kids were nowhere to be found. Antawn Jamison, Caron Butler and Gilbert Arenas shot a combined 10-of-33 for 28 points in 94 minutes. The series shifts to Washington for Thursday’s Game 3 and it can’t come a moment too soon for road weary Wizards. Washington is a much better team at home, but at this point, LBJ has his hands around its neck and knows a third win means the squeezing begins.

3. Ask a stupid question…
As the Western Conference’s top seeded Lakers are sitting on a 1-0 series lead over Denver, en route to what could be the team’s first playoff series win since 2004, MVP candidate Kobe Bryant was asked if he wants to stay with the organization for the remainder of his career. After all, now does seem like a great time to bail out, right?

“Absolutely,” Bryant said the day after the Lakers beat the Denver Nuggets 128-114 in their playoff series opener. “I’ve always wanted to be here. I just felt like I was in a position where I didn’t really have a choice. They wanted to go in an opposite direction. My legs aren’t as young as they used to be. Just let me know.

“I love the weather. I love my ’63 drop-top Impala. I love the 405 [freeway]. I love my guys.”

Monday’s Player of the Day: LeBron James vs. Washington 39 min, 30 pts (FG: 9-19, 3FG: 2-6, FT: 10-17), 9 reb, 12 ast, 1 stl, 2 blk

Buzzer Beater: Unlike the MVP award, there was no doubt about the sixth man award. Manu Ginobili won the honor in a landslide, taking 123 of 124 first-place votes for 615 total points, leaving Leandro Barbosa (283 pts) and Jason Terry (44 pts) sitting on the bench. Ginobili came off the pine in 51 games, averaging a team and career-high 19.5 points, in addition to 4.8 rebounds and 4.5 assists. The last time a sixth man award winner led his team in point production was in 1990 when Ricky Pierce averaged 23 points for Milwaukee. And think, Manu was a steal at the 57th overall pick back in 1999. The Spurs shooting guard has proven worthy of the award thus far in the postseason, hitting the game-winner of Saturday’s double-overtime instant classic against the Suns.

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All Other Sports

Talk about unorthodox; when’s the last time you saw the reverse sprinkler during a fight?

If you’re like us then you didn’t shell out the $49.95 UFC was asking for its pay-per-view over the weekend. It was disappointing to read about Matt Serra losing his gold to George St. Pierre instead of seeing it, but it turns out the main event wasn’t even the best part of the evening. The “Are you kidding me?!” moment of the night came earlier when Nate Quarry and Kalib Starnes slugged it out. Of course, that was only when Starnes wasn’t running away and Quarry wasn’t practicing his dance moves.

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All Other Sports

Bantams seek first perfect season in college baseball history. Wait, what the hell is a Bantam?



I’m a miniature chicken, you moron!

Everyone thought they were going to see a perfect season in the NFL, but the Giants kept the Patriots from putting the Super Bowl cherry on top of a 16-0 regular season record. Memphis was oh-so close to perfection in college basketball this season, losing just one regular season game and then making it all the way through the NCAA Tournament before falling to Kansas in a frantic final. Well, believe it or not, we’ve got another team looking at perfection: the Trinity College Bantams.

At 27-0, the small private college in Hartford is getting increasingly close to something believed to be unprecedented in modern college baseball.

No team has won a national championship without losing a game, to be sure; but Trinity, which competes in N.C.A.A. Division III, could become the first college of any size to finish its regular season and conference tournament having won every game. Such records are not officially monitored, an N.C.A.A. spokesman said, but an examination of previous top teams’ final records suggested it was unlikely that any had done that before.

Next month’s N.C.A.A. regionals and the Division III national championships could trip up Trinity. But if the Bantams win Tuesday night against Eastern Connecticut State, a perennial national power and their toughest regular-season opponent, running the table will be a step closer for a team that has throttled opponents by a combined score of 260-64.

Got that?! Forget the Spurs vs. Suns; Trinity against Eastern Connecticut State is where the magic’s happening tonight. There’s always Game 3, but you only get one shot at 28-0.

Links:

[NYTimes. com]: In Sport Filled With Flaws, a Chase for Perfection

Categories
Calgary Flames

Mikka Kiprusoff, meet the world’s youngest stalker

Most kids idolize a particular athlete and basically worship the ground he or she walks on.  When we were younger it was Magic Johnson, until that one fateful day when he took the microphone and said the words that shook us right to our cores: “Welcome to the Magic Hour!”  We still get shivers thinking about it.  For this kid, it’s Flames goalie Mikka Kiprusoff.

Categories
LA Lakers

Around the Rim: Gasol-ine Pau-ered


1. Pau, right in the kisser!
With so much talk about the “Big Three” from the Eastern Conference’s top seed, it would be easy to forget about the trio of superstars on the West’s No. 1 team, but they won’t let you. Even without their big man Andrew Bynum, the Lakers took a 1-0 lead in their series against the Nuggets on the slender shoulders of Paul Gasol, Kobe Bryant and Lamar Odom. Gasol was stellar in his playoff debut with Los Angeles, scoring 36 points on 14-of-20 shooting to go with 16 rebounds and eight assists, leading his squad to a 128-114 victory. Bryant finished with 32 points, including a span down the stretch when he scored 13 consecutive for his team, while Odom posted a double-double of 17 points and 14 rebounds. The Nuggets day started with a bus breakdown on their way to the arena and ended with an Allen Iverson meltdown that got him ejected with 2:10 remaining in the game. Before being tossed, A.I. scored 30 points to match Carmelo Anthony for team-high honors. Unfortunately, Denver was spelled with no `D’ on Sunday, especially in the third quarter when the Lakers posted 39 points. Guess the pregame slam dance didn’t do the trick for George Karl. As far as Bynum goes, his return continues to be delayed with the only certainty being that he will not play in this series.

2. Detroit’s detour

The road to the Eastern Conference finals got a bit bumpy for the Bad Boys in Game 1 as Philadelphia managed to pull off a shocker, winning 90-86 in Detroit. Philadelphia trailed 62-47 in the third, but then ripped off 10 unanswered points and limited the Pistons to only 35 points in the second half, allowing for the upset. Andre Miller put up a team-high 20 points while Willie Green set a personal playoff-high with 17. Rasheed Wallace led Detroit with 24 points, nine rebounds and seven blocks, but even his eavesdropping on the 76ers huddle late in the game couldn’t help his team’s cause. Everyone expected the Pistons and the Celtics to basically cruise to a showdown in the conference finals, but it is now obvious that Detroit has a ways to go before they are on Boston’s level. The Celtics took no mercy on their lower seeded foes, destroying the Hawks 104-81 in a contest where Atlanta never held a lead greater than two points.

3. Raptors forgot to pack their kryptonite
Dwight Howard dressed up like Superman during the All-Star break then he went out and played a Man of Steel against the Raptors, leading Orlando to its first playoff victory since 2003. Howard was heroic with 25 points, 22 rebounds and five blocks in a 114-100 victory in front of a blue and white clad home crowd. It was just the 12th time in postseason history someone posted at least 25 points, 20 board and five swats. Orlando harpooned the Raptors early, scoring 43 points in the first quarter, including a playoff record-tying nine 3-pointers, to take a 20-point lead after 12 minutes. All five Orlando starters scored in double-digits with Jameer Nelson’s 24 and Hedo Turkoglu’s 21 taking a backseat to Howard’s quarter. Anthony Parker tallied a team-high 24 points in a losing effort while Chris Bosh struggled to connect on 4-of-11 attempts en route to 21 points.

Sunday’s Player of the Day: Pau Gasol vs. Denver 45 min, 36 pts (FG: 14-20, FT: 8-8), 16 reb, 8 ast, 3 blk

Buzzer Beater: Sunday’s action was great, but we all know the Spurs and Suns stole show during the postseason’s opening weekend. It took ten extra minutes for San Antonio to fight its way out of an early deficit, trailing for nearly all of regulation, but after an amazing series of shots from both squads, round one went to the home team by the slimmest of margins. Tim Duncan scored a game-high 40, including a double-overtime-forcing trey, and Manu Ginobili bounced around like a pinball for 24 points with the last two coming on the 117-115 game-winner. Many are calling this the greatest first round series ever and you won’t get any argument from us after watching Game 1. The blood isn’t flowing yet like it was from the nose of Steve Nash during the opening game of last year’s battle, but it’s defiantly boiling as both sides nearly went hoarse from complaining to the refs in a physical matchup tallying 57 total fouls. Expect another bruiser in Game 2 on Tuesday.

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All Other Sports

Backyard boneheads

Pro wrestling gets virtually no respect, constantly getting treated like a joke amongst the sporting spectrum. Hell, the potheads at the X-Games are given more legitimacy than wrasslers. But there is a group of guys who are undeniably more mentally challenged than pro wrestlers: backyard wrestlers!


http://view.break.com/489693 – Watch more free videos

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MLB General

A foul ball can be a great souvenir, as long as you see it coming


Baseball players are constantly trying to avoid injuries. Isn’t that right, Pedro? Well, so are the fans. According to a yet to be released book entitled “Death at the Ballpark,” over 75 deaths have been caused by foul balls at all levels of baseball. Yet, nets only protect a portion of patrons behind home plate. And if you ask the MLB, you’re watching at your own risk.

But in the big picture, baseball is ignoring those alarms – the big picture that includes all those fans in unprotected seats near the dugouts and the foul lines where line-drive foul balls can be lethal projectiles.

Baseball is hiding behind the 145-word “warning” on the back of every ticket that reads, in part, “The bearer of the Ticket assumes all risk and danger incidental to the sport of baseball … including specifically (but not exclusively) the danger of being injured by thrown bats, fragments thereof, and thrown or batted balls.” In other words, if you are injured by a ball or a bat, you can’t sue the teams, the players or Major League Baseball (or minor league baseball, for that matter).

You can go to the first-aid room or to a hospital, but you can’t sue. And you cannot know how many fans need first aid from batted or thrown balls. The commissioner’s office has no central file on injured fans.

Of course, there’s a contingency of fans who agree that it’s the individual’s responsibility to be aware of their surroundings, keeping their heads on a swivel at every crack of the bat. And those who are really in know make certain to keep one eye on the ball at all times, even if they’re watching the game on television because nobody is safe from a errant ball to the balls. However, there are plenty of other ways to get hurt at the ballpark without taking a knuckleball to the noggin.

Two fans injured at Camden Yards when a person fell from the club level to the lower deck were released from the hospital Friday, the Orioles said.

The accident happened Thursday night near the end of Baltimore’s 6-5 win over the Chicago White Sox. The fan who fell from the club level landed on another person in the seating area below.

Links:

[IHT.com]: When foul balls become lethal projectiles, fans are mostly unprotected
[SI.com]: Injured fans released from hospital