Sports Then and Now

Lebron James punctuated the series victory for the Heat over Paul Pierce and the Celtics.

For the last time in the 2011 NBA season, the Boston Celtics failed to close out a game they had in their grasps.

Lebron James and Dwayne Wade finally conquered their biggest test from the heavily stacked Eastern Conference Wednesday night in a 97-87 win over the Celtics to move forward to the Eastern Conference Finals series.

Lebron scored the final 10 points of the fourth quarter on his way to sending the veteran Boston team packing for the summer. While playing against the struggling Paul Pierce, five fouls entering the fourth quarter, James had space he normally wouldn’t to attack the rim and change direction at will. Pierce was forced to play off the athletic big man and allowed James to control the pace on the offensive end of the court en route to two consecutive dagger threes in the final minutes. Without their attacking captain, the C’s went scoreless for the last 4:15 of regulation as the Heat went on a 16-0 run to finish the original Boston Big 3 that has controlled the East for the last three years. Read the rest of this entry →

The dismal performance by the Los Angeles Lakers in the 2011 NBA playoffs was a surprise to everyone.

Even when the two-time defending NBA Champion Los Angeles Lakers lost the first two games of their Western Conference playoff series at home to the perennial underachieving Dallas Mavericks, most of the NBA “experts” still expected Phil Jackson, Kobe Bryant and the Lakers to eventually flip a switch and return to their dominating ways.

That prediction was officially proved wrong on Sunday afternoon as the Mavericks whipped the Lakers 122-86 to complete an improbable four-game sweep of the former champions.

While history and past success are as celebrated in the NBA as in any other major professional sport, there comes a time when banners and history are no longer enough.

Though still a very talented team with a Hall of Fame coach and all-time great superstar, the Lakers are starting to show signs of age and the difficulty of staying motivated at the highest level.

There was a lot of talk this season about how they could just “flip the switch” when it was time to play their best, but the reality is that in a league where the difference in overall team talent is rather minimal, it isn’t all that easy to just suddenly jump from average to awesome.

The question now facing the Lakers is whether they can rebound next year with the same cast of characters or if it will take a significant overhaul for the Lakers to return to prominence.

Of the top 10 players on the roster, only 25-year-old reserve Shannon Brown and 23-year-old starting center Andrew Bynum are under the age of 30. Read the rest of this entry →

In 1981 Julius Erving was at the top of his game and Larry Bird was an emerging superstar in the NBA.

Thirty years ago, the Boston Celtics and the Philadelphia 76ers faced off in the Eastern Conference Finals, which is quite possibly the greatest NBA playoff series of all time.

The series went seven games, had five games decided by two points or less, and featured the Celtics overcoming a 3-1 series deficit to win the series and advance to the NBA Finals.

1981 was the second year of the Larry Bird era, who had won the rookie of the year in 1980 and had lead the Celtics to the greatest single-season turnaround in NBA history, as Boston finished with a 61-21 record, before falling to the Sixers in five games of the Eastern Conference Finals.

In the offseason, Bird would be joined with center Robert Parish and rookie power forward Kevin McHale, in forming the “Big Three” of the Bird era.

To go along with this legendary frontline, was point guard Nate “Tiny” Archibald and starting forward Cedric “Cornbread” Maxwell as Boston went 62-20 in the regular season for the NBA’s best record.

The Sixers also went 62-20 in the regular season as they were led by forward Julius Erving,

who averaged 24.6 points and 8 rebounds per game, to win the MVP award for the regular season.

In addition to “Dr. J”, the Sixers’ lineup featured center Daryl Dawkins, known as “Chocolate Thunder”, defensive specialist Bobby Jones, a pair of point guards in Maurice Cheeks and Lionel Hollins, and a rookie guard off the bench, that would become known as the “Boston Strangler”, Andrew Toney. Read the rest of this entry →

Matt Howard and Shelvin Mack have led Butler to back-to-back NCAA Tournament Championship Games.

What happens when you get a second crack at a “once in a lifetime” moment? Well, the Butler University Bulldogs will find out Monday night when the unlikeliest of super teams returns to the NCAA Championship Game for the second straight year.

Anyone who follows college basketball even a little knows that the Bulldogs went toe-to-toe with Mike Krzyzewski’s Duke Blue Devils in the 2010 title game and came a rimmed out half court shot away from claiming the national title.

Now, after defeating another mid-major Cinderella in VCU in the national semifinals, the Bulldogs are back on the main stage. This time they face the University of Connecticut and two-time national championship coach Jim Calhoun.

Interestingly, what both teams have in common is that for portions of the 2011 season both squads were looking more like they might meet in the NIT than in the NCAA Championship Game.

After a hot early start, Connecticut lost four of their final five regular season games and sank to the bottom half of the Big East standings. As a result, they had to win an unprecedented five games in five days to win the Big East Tournament.

At one point during the season Butler was 14-9 overall and 6-5 in conference play and didn’t look like they would have any shot at another run to the title game.

However, the Bulldogs won their final seven regular season games and then claimed the Horizon League Tournament title to secure a return trip to the NCAA Tournament.

While the Big East Tournament run by Connecticut raised their tournament seeding to a number three spot and got them some respect in bracket pools across the country, the Bulldogs didn’t have quite the same experience. Read the rest of this entry →

Duke turned the basketball world upside down by shocking the Runnin' Rebels.

Today, it is hard to believe any victory by the Duke basketball team as a monster upset, but 20 years ago, the Blue Devils pulled off one of the biggest upsets in college basketball history when they knocked the unbeaten and defending national champion UNLV Runnin’ Rebels in the Final Four.

The Blue Devils entered that Final Four not as the team everybody loved to hate, but rather as a program that could not seal the deal when it came to winning the NCAA tournament.

Under head coach Mike Krzyzewski, Duke had made four trips to the Final Four in the previous five years, but came away with no national championships, as they lost their trips to the title game in 1986 to Louisville and in 1990 by 30 points to UNLV.

The 103-73 victory in the 1990 championship game was the first national championship for the University of Nevada at Las Vegas and first for head coach Jerry Tarkanian, famous for his towel-chewing in the middle of games

Tarkanian had built UNLV into a national power with his up-tempo offensive style that had led the Rebels to two other Final Four appearances prior to their national title in 1990.

But under Tarkanian’s leadership, the program had built the reputation as one that did not play by the rules as “Tark the Shark” was often at odds with the NCAA.

Three months after they won the national title, UNLV was put on prohibition and banned from postseason play for the 1991 season, meaning they could not defend their championship.

But after discussions with the NCAA, the ban was lifted and UNLV would be allowed to play in the 1991 NCAA tournament.

With that featured national player of the year Larry Johnson and first-round NBA picks Stacy Augmon and Greg Anthony, the Rebels breezed through the 1991 season as they entered the Final Four with 34-0 record and a #1 ranking the team had held all year. Read the rest of this entry →

Will VCU end up wearing the glass slipper at the 2011 NCAA Championships?

Bear with me. I’m mixing three metaphors but it all works out in the end.

We call it the Big Dance. We refer to the party crashers as Cinderella. No team is more of a Cinderella in this year’s March Madness than Virginia Commonwealth. And the pundits and purists who expressed their loathing of the Rams making the tournament at all, are the ugly stepsisters.

You can’t blame them. Like the stepsisters of the fairy tale, those who scorn the likes of VCU crashing the party are those who stand on convention. They are traditionalists. They perpetuate arranged marriage. If a prince seeks a bride, then she must have a pedigree. When the Fairy Godmother smiles on the upstart, they are beside themselves.

VCU has garnered more scorn than any team making the cut in recent memory. Thus they are the quintessential Cinderella. Metaphor number one.

Enter Kansas Jayhawks. A sign in the crowd at the Kansas/VCU game read, “You’re not in Kansas anymore.” That was obvious. Marv Albert said the Jayhawks looked “shell shocked” late in the first half. “Did you see the look in their eyes?” He exclaimed.

The only remaining number one seed was definitely not in Kansas any more, Call them shell shocked. Call them Dorothy in Munchkin Land. Definitely not in Kansas. Metaphor number two.

Except this Dorothy has no ruby slippers. And I guess you would call VCU the Munchkins. And they have the glass slipper. The only question remaining is will the slipper fit in the end. Read the rest of this entry →