Sports Then and Now

You can’t blame LeBron James.

Seriously.

LeBron was born in December of 1984. Not two years later, Run-DMC covered Aerosmith’s 1977 hit, “Walk This Way.”

Those two facts are very much related.

See, everyone went up in arms when LeBron broke up the LeBronettes and decided to play backup guitar in Dwayne Wade’s band. But he really only did what successful athletes/artists/actors have been doing his entire life.

Prior to the mid-80s, it was rare to see anybody go to bat for one of their rival’s teams – figuratively or literally speaking. When DMC covered Aerosmith, suddenly collaboration became the thing to do. It was a surefire way of saying, “yeah, I know I’m good, but imagine how good I could be with somebody else whose talents equal mine in a complimentary manner.”

Bird never would have played with Johnson. Russell never would have played with Wilt or Kareem. But why would they? They were the best at what they did and who needed anybody else?

The Prince still has some work to do before NBA fans will anoint him King.

Elvis didn’t mix with anybody else, and neither did the Beatles or Beach Boys a decade after him. Steve Miller? Don Henley? Freddie Mercury? He shared everything else with the world, but not his musical talents. None of them collaborated.

What about Pacino or Stallone or Harrison? Or DeNiro? Not in the 70s, anyway. Ford and Stallone, now well aware that they’re past their respective primes, have done a great job in supporting roles in the last 15 years or so – the atrocious Rocky Balboa notwithstanding.

Not even in the 80s did movie stars go out of their way to collaborate. Bruce Willis, Nic Cage and Tom Cruise – all rising stars in their own right – carried their own films, some more admirably than others.

But around the mid-80s, right when Run and Aerosmith were changing the game for good, a young Michael J. Fox teamed with Christopher Lloyd for the trans-generational hit Back to the Future. Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman tag teamed on Rain Man. The rest of the 80s would see some classic teams produce epic hits: Kevin Costner and James Earl Jones in Field of Dreams (1988),  Costner and Tim Robbins in Bull Durham (1988), and Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally 1989).

It took longer for collaboration to catch on in music, primarily because there was such a divide in the 80s between the long-established Rock scene and the up-and-coming hip-hop genre. Ice Cube, Ice T, Eazy-E and Dr. Dre worked together late in the 80s in their N.W.A. project, but produced but one hit together, “F*ck the Police,” which earned a letter of warning from the FBI and will likely go down in history as the song that started the rap movement.

Dre and Snoop Dogg began the 90s by collaborating on a glut of hits that – mercifully – pushed MC Hammer and Right Said Fred quickly off the front pages of the Billboard charts. En Vogue and Salt-N-Pepa, two groups influenced by Dre, were no strangers to collaboration either. It was Tupac who made collaboration big in hip-hop, however, working with artists from different labels and pushing their careers forward. Read the rest of this entry →

LeBron James and Dwyane Wade will bring smiles to Miami, but frowns around the rest of the NBA.

LeBron James has gone over to the dark side.

In hindsight, those who said he had already left Cleveland in his heart by the last game of the semis against Boston were probably right. It seems he had already left. Perhaps he hadn’t chosen his new destination– hence the hyped courtship process he created– but it appears that he’s known where he wouldn’t be playing for several weeks.

Don’t believe what he said on ESPN, how hard it was to leave, how loyal he is. Those are the words of spin doctors. Spoon fed to him, no doubt, to try and soften the blow back in the Mistake by the Lake. To keep him from having to send for his things because it’s too dangerous to set foot back in Northeast Ohio.

I don’t care what anyone says. There are some things that are worth more than money and there are some things that are even worth more than championships. There are certainly things that are worth more than championships won by a team full of ringers. Read the rest of this entry →

LeBron’s last game in a Cavaliers uniform?

The Cleveland Cavaliers didn’t expect their season to end this early, but now that it has, the 2011 season is already beginning for teams in the NBA.

It hasn’t even been a week since the Cavaliers lost to the Celtics, and everyone is already mentioning LeBron heading out of town. Within a week we have heard different rumors about LeBron playing for teams like New York, Chicago, New Jersey, L.A. (Clippers), and Miami.

Now there is a new rumor that LeBron wants a packaged deal with Coach John Calipari in Chicago. Just like all the other assumptions, this is only a rumor. Calipari said on Twitter that the statement was not true, and he has told the media that he will stay at Kentucky.

“I want to address this with the Big Blue Nation one last time, I will be coaching at Kentucky next year. Now let’s finish what we started!”    - UK Coach Calipari

Not even a week and there are all these speculations on where LeBron will go. Technically, no teams can reach out to LeBron until July 1^st. So the media has until July 1^st to think about what is to come of LeBron James and the future of the NBA. Behind LeBron in the free agent market this year are superstars Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade. Both have been rumored to team up with LeBron for an NBA Championship in 2011. LeBron’s free agency journey has been the big talk for a couple years now, and it is still being analyzed more than the ongoing NBA Playoffs. Read the rest of this entry →

This is the first in a Satirical Series

If you’re old enough to remember Deep Throat (the Watergate figure or the movie) you’re old enough to get the allusion, when I identify the mystery man who’s been contacting me about a subject close to my heart. I call him Brave Throat.

It all started with the demolition of Buffalo’s old “Aud” (Memorial Auditorium) and the death of one of its greatest tenants, Randy Smith, coming up on a year ago.

After being away from the area for most of my adult life it happened that I was spending significant blocks of time back in Buffalo on business. I had the opportunity to walk up to the Aud while demolition was in progress, a gaping hole on one end of the building allowing me to look in at the rest of the building, eerily still intact. I felt like Moses at the burning bush. It was holy ground.

Not long after that, when there was little left of the Aud but a pile of bricks, I found myself standing in the same spot, this time on command. I was meeting with a man in a trench coat, big shades, and a Buffalo Braves cap, who refused to identify himself. I had received a mysterious text message an hour earlier to meet him there in 60 minutes sharp. Alone.

“The time has come,” he said. “The Braves must come home.”

“Say, what?”

“Yes, we realize it will be hard enough to keep the Bills from leaving without trying to bring back a franchise that has been gone for thirty years, but we think both are not only possible but necessary to fix the sports karma in Buffalo.” Read the rest of this entry →

Wilt Chamberlain scored 100 points in a game on March 2, 1962.

Given his larger than life personality and talent, it is very possible that were he playing in today’s modern media era, Wilt Chamberlain would dwarf Kobe, LeBron, D-Wade, Shaq and the rest both on and off the court.

At 7-foot-1, Chamberlain was a scoring machine like no other. For much of his career, scoring as many as 50 or 60 points in a game wasn’t a “special” night, it was a routine. During the 1961-62 season, Chamberlain averaged 50.4 points per game and became the only NBA player to top 4,000 points in a season.

In fact, his career scoring average of 30.1 points is actually higher than the 2009-10 average of the NBA’s current leading scorer (LeBron James averaging 30.0).

It was 48 years ago today that Chamberlain had his finest offensive night and one that will certainly never be duplicated.

As a member of the Philadelphia Warriors, Chamberlain scored 100 points on March 2, 1962 against the New York Knicks in a game played at Hersheypark Arena in Hershey, Pennsylvania.

The late season game wasn’t expected to be overly exciting and in fact there is no known video from the game. There is a radio broadcast that I have included below.

Chamberlain scored 41 points in the first half, which wasn’t overly exciting considering he had topped 60 points 17 times already during the season and 32 times in his three year NBA career.

However, Warriors coach Frank McGuire instructed his players to keep feeding Chamberlain the ball during the second half and the points started to pile up.

As he neared 100 points, the Knicks started fouling the other Warrior players to keep Chamberlain from getting the ball. The Warriors then started fouling the Knicks to slow down the game and give Chamberlain more chances.

He finally reached 100 points in the final minute and the game was halted for nine minutes as fans ran onto the court to celebrate Chamberlain’s milestone.

What made Chamberlain’s 100 point game possible was his uncanny free throw shooting for that game. Chamberlain converted 28 of 32 foul shots (.875), which is far greater than his career average of .511 from the line. He also connected on 36 of 63 field goal attempts in the 169-147 victory.

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Below are some audio and video clips that remember Chamberlain and his record setting night:
Read the rest of this entry →

Despite flying under the NBA radar, Joe Johnson and the Atlanta Hawks are challenging the top teams in the Eastern Conference.

Considering that the Cavaliers, Celtics and Magic have dominated the headlines in the Eastern Conference of the NBA, you might be surprised to discover that following their win Friday night over the old men from Beantown, the Atlanta Hawks actually have the second best record in the East and the fourth best record overall in the NBA.

They punctuated that fact against the Celtics with their fourth victory over Boston this season to register an improbable season sweep over the squad many just assume will be facing Cleveland for the right to play in the NBA Finals in June.

After the continued performance of the Hawks, basketball experts might have to rethink that assumption.

Though they don’t have the household names and marquee superstars of the Cavaliers, Celtics and Magic, the Hawks are quietly going about their business of creating a consistent team that could be a threat come playoff time.

While it may appear to the casual fan that the Hawks have come out of nowhere, in reality this is not an Atlanta team that suddenly has risen from the dredges to become a surprise contender. In contrast, the Hawks have actually been building to a crescendo over the last couple years.

It started during the 2007-2008 season when they finished with just a 37-45 record, but still took the eventual champion Boston Celtics to a seven game series in the playoffs.

Last season Atlanta improved to 47-35 and advanced to the second round of the playoffs before being unceremoniously swept by the Cavaliers.

The Hawks appear to be ready to make more noise this season as, in addition to the sweep of the Celtics, they have wins over the Phoenix Suns, Dallas Mavericks and Utah Jazz. Read the rest of this entry →