The blog of the sports talk show 'Sports Action"

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Sports Action 5-27-12

On this week’s edition of Sports Action Mr. Motomochi and myself will be discussing the NBA Playoffs again as well as talking about the Lakers and what they need to do this off-season in order to get back to the top of the NBA. We will also debate about where the Orlando Magic go after firing head coach Stan Van Gundy and GM Otis Smith.

We will then shift our focus to the Oregon State Baseball team, talking about the Civil War with rival Oregon and previewing the college baseball post-season. We might even have time to make predictions and give our thoughts on the expectations for the Beavers in the post-season.

Finally we will start our discussion of “Best Athletes”. We will begin with our definitions of the word “athlete” then dive into which sport produces the best athletes. Then we will give our top-8 athletes in the sports RIGHT NOW, and preview a bracket of the best athletes that we will breakdown the following week.

Tune into 88.7 KBVR this Sunday from 8pm-10pm to hear all of this and more from Jonnie and myself. You can also stream the show live at kbvr.com/listen.

May 24, 2012 | Categories: Civil War, Jonnie Motomochi, KBVR, Los Angeles, NBA, Oregon State, Orlando | Leave a comment

Official NBA Playoffs Picks

Almost mid-way through the NBA Playoffs me and Jonnie Motomochi have gone back and forth on our picks and who we feel is playing the best. This week on the show I made my final picks for the rest of the playoffs. Here they are:

Conference Semis

Spurs already advanced
Lakers/Thunder- Thunder in 5 (ends tonight)
Celtics/Sixers- Sixers in 6 (hasn’t changed)
Heat/Pacers- Heat in 7 (had them in a sweep, didn’t happen that way I guess)

Conference Finals

Thunder/Spurs-Thunder in 7 (best series of the playoffs thus far)
Heat/Sixers- Heat in 5 (Philly doesn’t have the height of Indiana, but the Sixers will make the games close)

NBA Finals

Heat/Thunder-Heat in 6 (Bosh will  be back and finally at full strength, LeBron finally wins title)

The individual match ups in the NBA Finals will make it one for the ages. LeBron and Durant will battle, Westbrook and Wade will provide highlight reel plays, Bosh and Ibaka will bang down low and hit their outside jumpers. Spoelstra and Brooks are two of the best young coaches in the NBA right now. This will be the best NBA Finals since the 1998 Bulls/Jazz Finals.

May 21, 2012 | Categories: Boston, Chris Bosh, Dwayne Wade, Indiana, Jonnie Motomochi, Kevin Durant, LeBron James, Los Angeles, Miami, NBA, Oklahoma City, Philadelphia, Russell Westbrook, San Antonio, Serge Ibaka | Leave a comment

NBA Playoffs Begin

Blowouts, Bull injured, big comebacks, and bumping into referees. The NBA Playoffs have officially started ladies and gentlemen and through the first two days there has been more to talk about than there was the entire season.

Lets start in Miami where, on Saturday night, Carmelo Anthony, Tyson Chandler, and Amare Stoudemire took their talents to South Beach to do battle with the Heat. This game was over from the tip as the Heat ran away with 33-point, 100-67, victory. Both teams were two of the most talked about teams all year in the NBA thanks to expectations, Lin-sanity, losing streaks, and in house drama. It seems as though the Heat have turned it up another notch to start the playoffs, but were they as impressive as New York was disappointing in Game 1? Yes, as bad as New York played throughout the game Miami played ridiculous defense, anchored by LeBron James holding Anthony to 11 points on 3-15 shooting, and was able to hit nearly 50% of their shots. I would look for this dominating trend to continue in this series and predict a sweep by the Heat.
The biggest news of the playoffs thus far has to be Derrick Rose going down with a torn ACL in Game 1 against Philadelphia, and Motomochi and myself talked about this heavily on our show this week. Last year’s league MVP has missed significant time all season and the Bulls have continued to win without him, but this isn’t the regular season anymore. In the playoffs it is my belief that to win a title you need a superstar on your team for those “big moments”. Chicago no longer has that option, unless you consider Rip Hamilton or Luol Deng a superstar, in which case you obviously don’t follow basketball all that closely. In my opinion the Bulls are done. Now they will win this first round series against the weaker 76ers, but that is as far as they make it. They are going to face either Boston or Atlanta in the second round, both of who I believe can beat the Bulls without Rose in a seven game series. It is sad that this happened to Rose who is such a special player, but with that said the Bulls might want to start making vacation plans after the second round.
Courtesy of afagen
Day two of the playoffs featured the red-hot Memphis Grizzlies and the Lob City Clippers. Long story short the Grizzlies entire team decided to do it’s best impression of LeBron. They dominated the Clippers in every aspect of the game for the first 40 minutes and at one point had a 27 point lead. The Clippers went on to finish the game on a 28-3 run and squeak out a 99-98 win over the Griz. I have to admit that I didn’t get to see the finish of this game, turning it off with the fourth quarter about to start, but this game has to go down as one of the greatest comebacks in playoff history. 
Finally the first weekend of the playoffs ended with Rajon Rondo being ejected from the Celtics-Hawks game in the fourth quarter for apparently making contact with an official after a foul call went against Boston. The Celts went on to lose the game 83-74, but the story afterwards was Rondo who could face a league suspension as well. Losing Rondo for even just one game would hurt the Celtics, whoa re also without sharp-shooter Ray Allen currently, tremendously. 
All-in-all it was an intense start to the 2012 NBA Playoffs. After the smoke clears I think that one thing will be able to be taken away from this weekend, and that is that fact that the Heat’s chances of getting back to the NBA finals just got a huge boost with Rose going out and the Celtics, the only other team who people believe can beat the Heat in the east, could be without two of their best players for at least one more game.

April 30, 2012 | Categories: Amare Stoudemire, Atlanta, Boston, Carmelo Anthony, Chicago, Derrick Rose, LeBron James, Los Angeles, Memphis, Miami, NBA, New York, Philadelphia, Tyson Chandler | Leave a comment

The Artest Formerly Known as Metta World Peace

By now all of you have probably seen the video of Lakers forward Metta World Peace elbowing Thunder sixth-man of the year candidate James Harden in the head after dunking on a fast break in the Lakers 2OT win over the Thunder recently. Yesterday the NBA handed down a 7 game suspension to World Peace, costing him more than $400,000 in pay over that span. This last week on “Sports Action” guest-host Alex Crawford and I discussed the incident and how long we felt a suspension should last.

For those of you out there who thought that World Peace became a new person when he changed the name on the back of his jersey, you might want to go back and re-evaluate that. This is not new for World Peace who has been suspended multiple times for incidents similar to this throughout his career.

On November 20, 2004 the NBA suspended World Peace, Ron Artest at the time, 86 games for his part in the “Malice at the Palace” incident in which he went into the stands and physically assaulted a fan. He has been ejected out of more games than I can count on both hands and in December 2009 he admitted to drinking Hennessy cognac at halftime of games during his stint with the Chicago Bulls in the early 2000’s.

When he signed with the Lakers in 2009 many people believed that he would change his ways with Kobe Bryant watching over him. Then  on September 16, 2011 the name change from Ron Artest to Metta World Peace came. There was speculation that the reason he changed his name was so that people could no longer say “I hate World Peace”.

With two years left on his current contract with the Lakers this latest incident raises questions about whether or not the Lakers will want to keep him around or try and find a market and trade him and the, almost, $15 million still owed on his contract away after this season.

All-in-all it has become apparent that no matter how many times World Peace changes his name or acts as though he is normal he will never be able to escape the person that he really is. Finally it is my prediction that if the Lakers are eliminated in the first or second round this year then World Peace will be shipped off for what he is worth, maybe a second-round draft pick. If that does happen do we possibly see a Chad Ochocinco move where World Peace changes his name back to Artest? Now that would be a story.

April 26, 2012 | Categories: Alex Crawford, Chicago, James Harden, Kobe Bryant, Los Angeles, Metta World Peace, NBA, Oklahoma City | Leave a comment