Saturday’s Slate of Sports Doesn’t Disappoint
Saturday’s slate of sports is one for the ages. We start in Women’s Tennis where Maria Sharapova will face Sara Errani in the final of the Women’s French Open. The action then shifts to the action in EURO 2012 and the Belmont Stakes. You can add the 3rd round of the St. Jude’s Classic on the PGA Tour where Rory McIlroy is in position to grab another win before heading into the U.S. Open at Olympic Club next week. Then , of course, we move to to Game 6 of the NHL Finals and Game 7 of the NBA Finals in Miami. All-in-all it is a great day to sit on the couch and watch a full slate of sports. To read more check this out: http://sports.yahoo.com/news/spt–lebron–pacquaio–maria-sharapova–stanley-cup–euro-2012-and-you–welcome-to-a-saturday-of-sports-bliss.html
LeBron Rises to the Occasion
For all the slack that LeBron James takes for not being “clutch” he sure does have a nag for showing up for the biggest games in the playoffs.
With the Heat down 3-2, facing elimination and playing in Boston James put up 45 points on 19 of 26 shooting, 15 rebounds and 5 assists when his team needed him most.
The array of shots that James hit all night were ridiculous! Turnaround jumpers, floaters in the lane, three pointers over defenders, and fast break lay-in’s, not to mention the put back dunk that basically broke the Celtics’ back’s (see below).
This isn’t the first time that LeBron has done something like this in the postseason. In 2009 against Orlando LeBron scored 49 points, grabbed 6 boards, and dished out 8 assists in a Game 1 loss. In 2007 against Detroit he dropped 48 points, 9 rebounds, and 7 assists on the Pistons in a 109-107 win in double overtime. He scored 29 of his 48 points in the fourth quarter and overtimes. He also scored 47 points, and added 12 rebounds and 8 assists in a 2009 playoff game against the Atlanta Hawks to move the Cavaliers to a 3-0 lead in the series. Even earlier in these playoffs James scored 40 points with 18 rebounds in Game 4 against Indiana with the Heat down 2-1 in the series.
The point here is that for all the criticism James takes for this and that, he is the most dominating player in the NBA and when he is called upon to carry his team he, more often than not, rises to the occasion.
"Best Athlete" Bracket Semis Announced
It’s time for the unveiling of the Sports Action “Best Athlete” Bracket Semi-Finals. For those of you who don’t know yet Jonnie Motomochi and myself are on a quest to find the best athlete in professional sports today. On our show, Sports Action on 88.7 KBVR, this past week Jonnie and myself debated about who should be considered the best athlete. We got nowhere so we decided to make a bracket with the top-16 athletes in professional sports today and break it down until there was only one athlete left standing. We have just finished the quarter-finals and here is how the bracket now breaks down for the semis.
LeBron James of the NBA‘s Miami Heat will face Calvin “Megatron” Johnson of the NFL‘s Detroit Lions in the finals of the Deion Sanders Bracket. James, the number one overall seed in the bracket, was able to beat out the UFC‘s Jon “Bones” Jones while Megatron, the number two seed in this half of the bracket, beat out the talented Carl Crawford.
In the Bo Jackson Bracket the number one seed, Blake Griffin of the NBA, will square off with Russell Westbrook of the NBA. Westbrook was the number two seed in this bracket and dispatched Cam Newton in the closest vote that the Bo Jackson Bracket has seen yet. Griffin was able to advance by beating out fellow NBAer Dwight Howard.
Again, the Finals of the bracket will be released at the beginning of our show, Sports Action, on Sunday when we first come on air at 8pm. Be sure to tune in to 88.7 KBVR or stream live at kbvr.com/listen. We will then announce the best athlete in professional sports today in the last half hour of the show.
"Best Athlete" Quarter-Finals
We have advanced to the quarter-finals of the first ever Sports Action “Best Athlete” Bracket. There were several upsets in the first round and could be many more before this bracket is all said and done. Here is how the bracket now breaks down.
In the Deion Sanders Bracket the top overall seed, LeBron James, moved on over Miami Heat teammate Dwyane Wade. He will face the only UFC athlete in the competition, Jon “Bones” Jones, in the next round after Jones upset fourth seeded Bryce Harper of the MLB‘s Washington Nationals. The Boston Red Sox’s Carl Crawford, a three-sport all-state athlete in high school and number six seed in this bracket, also pulled the upset over the Philadelphia Eagles’ DeSean Jackson and will face Calvin “Megatron” Johnson in the quarters.
In the Bo Jackson half of the bracket the second overall seed Blake Griffin advanced easily, and now will face Dwight Howard who beat out the Atlanta Falcons’ Tony Gonzalez, who has been called one of the best athletes in NFL history. Finally Cam Newton of the Carolina Panthers upset fellow NFLer Jimmy Graham of the New Orleans Saints, who played both basketball and football at The University of Miami, and will be facing Russell Westbrook of the Oklahoma City Thunder who dispatched the only soccer player in the bracket, Christiano Ronaldo.
Here is how the quarters look:
Deion Sanders Bracket
1. LeBron James vs. 5. Jon “Bones” Jones
2. Calvin Johnson vs. 6. Carl Crawford
Bo Jackson Bracket
1. Blake Griffin vs. 5. Dwight Howard
2. Russell Westbrook vs. 6. Cam Newton
We will post these on social media so people can vote, or you can vote by leaving a comment on this page. Voting will close tonight at midnight and the results will be announced in the morning tomorrow.
Sports Action "Best Athlete" Bracket
Here it is sports fans, the Sports Action “Best Athlete” Bracket! Jonnie Motomochi and myself have narrowed down our list of the best athletes in professional sports today to 16 individuals. We set up two sides of the bracket which are named the Deion Sanders bracket and the Bo Jackson bracket, two great athletes who played multiple professional sports in their days. Over the next week Jonnie and myself will be breaking down the match-ups and declaring winners of each round via social media, Facebook and Twitter. We will take all input into consideration so leave comments on this blog, on our Facebook‘s, or out Twitter accounts. Below are the match-ups/seeds for the first round.
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.
Unfair Suspension Mar’s Heat/Pacers Game 6
The Miami Heat‘s starter, and top “enforcer”, Udonis Haslem has been suspended for tonight’s game 6. For any of you who watched game 5 you have a pretty good idea about why he was suspended. Early in the second quarter on Tuesday Indiana forward Tyler Hansbrough committed a flagrant foul, later moved to a flagrant two, on Miami star Dwayne Wade. Later on in the quarter Hansbrough was driving to the basket when Haslem came in from the left side of the key and laid a hard foul on Indiana’s enforcer.
Now if both players had been suspended I would have no problem with it at all. But the NBA came out yesterday and announced that Haslem had been suspended for tonight’s game, and Hansbrough had not.
Now I understand that, for the most part, the person who acts in retaliation for an act like the one that Hansbrough committed is usually the one to get the technical in the NBA. But this is a special situation because the NBA went back, looked at the replays, and then based it’s decision for suspensions on that.
It is a travesty that the NBA, after looking at the replays, came to the conclusion that it would suspend only Haslem and not Hansbrough simply because Hansbrough’s foul was a more blatant flagrant, it LED to Haslem’s retaliation, and Hansbrough’s foul on Wade resulted in a cut on Wade’s face while Hansbrough popped right back up after being fouled by Haslem.
Another Michael Jordan? Don’t Bet On It
I recently took to my Twitter account, @RealKigerPlews learn about it, to post about an interview that Jonnie Motomochi and myself were doing with an Oregon State baseball player when I saw a picture that really caught my eye (see below).
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| Courtesy of @KobeLogic |
The picture sums up just how great Michael Jordan really was, and how less and less recognition he is getting for it.
All I hear from people now-a-days is who most closely resemble Jordan, Kobe or LeBron. Now to be fair LeBron and Kobe are two of the greatest players that the game has ever seen, but they are no Jordan.
Jordan is the undisputed king of basketball, but to understand just how great, and why Kobe, LeBron and all others aren’t even in the same class as him you need to dig a little deeper.
Jordan won 6 NBA titles, the 10th most of all-time by a player, Bill Russell has 11. Jordan won 5 MVP awards during his career, second to only Kareem Abdul-Jabar’s 6. He is one of only four players in the history of the NBA to win both the MVP and Defensive Player of the Year Award during their career. MJ is also the only player in NBA history to win NBA Finals MVP six times!
This is just a small sample, but it accurately shows just how special Jordan was and how he will, in all likely hood, never be surpassed as the greatest player in NBA history.
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.
Sports Action: 5-13-2012
This week “Sports Action” returns with a slate of topics to throw around. We will be talking about the Junior Seau suicide and what it means for the NFL‘s problems with bounties and player safety, the NBA playoffs, recapping The Players, and doing a rundown of OSU athletics. Plus in the always popular Finishing Strong segment I will explain how fashion can, or cannot, help your golf game. Tune into 88.7 KBVR at 8 p.m. PT on Sunday or stream live on KBVR.com.
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.
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| Courtesy of afagen |
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.
Sports Action Blog 