Sports Then and Now

The Miami Heat have spent a lot of money to have three superstars, but can that bring them a title?

The NBA offseason was dominated by discussions about the Miami Heat and their acquisition of LeBron James and Chris Bosh to go with proven star Dwyane Wade. Many have predicted that these additions have not only made the Heat the most talked about team in the NBA, but also a prohibitive favorite to win multiple championships over the next several years.

However, with the Orlando Magic, Boston Celtics, Atlanta Hawks, Chicago Bulls and Milwaukee Bucks all are aiming to spoil the party for the Heat.

On opening night the Celtics reminded the Heat that they are still the conference champions with an 88-80 victory over Miami. With a bulls eye squarely on their back, the Heat will face similar challenges every night as they look to build team chemistry and look to live up to the hype.

Below is a division-by-division look at the Eastern Conference: Read the rest of this entry →

Can any team in the West knock off the two-time defending champion Lakers?

As we start the long drive toward the 2011 NBA Championship, all the attention is on the Miami Heat. However, the question remains as to whether the NBA’s new super team can live up to the expectations and dethrone the two-time defending champion Los Angeles Lakers.

Once the dominant conference in the league, the Western Conference still has many formidable teams, but with the biggest names now in the East, the West seems to be flush with good teams, but is there a great team in the conference other than the Lakers?

We start our 2010-2011 season preview with a division-by-division look at the Western Conference:

Read the rest of this entry →

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 →