Author: Kevin Kinsella (Page 6 of 9)

      Sans Yao Ming, Rockets blast sleepy Lakers

      May 10, 2009 /

      http://www.latimes.com/media/photo/2009-05/46813353.jpg

      Well, the Lakers are on their way to the NBA Finals to face Cleveland and give us a legendary match-up, oh wait a second…Seems the Houston Rockets, sans Yao Ming, weren’t quite ready to give up the ghost on this series. At least for one night, they showed the Lakers that they were able to step up their game when necessary. Aaron Brooks scored a career-high 34 points and Shane Battier drained 5 threes’ to lead the charge right over the dumbstruck Lakers. As quoted by the Associated Press on ESPN.com, Battier had some valid observations after the game:

      “I’m not surprised,” said Battier. “It almost sounds cliche, but we’re a resilient group. We talk about bouncing back. Through adversity, through lineup changes, through trades, through injuries, we’ve never quit and we’ve never stopped believing.”

      It was a serious spanking applied to the Lakers, and it’s something the Lakers need every few games or so. I don’t think I’m going out on a ledge here by saying that despite the loss, the Rockets don’t have a prayer of beating the Lakers in this series. The only real weapon Houston had that the Lakers seemed unable to fully counter, Yao Ming, is out with a broken foot.

      Besides, Yao Ming wasn’t the turning point anyway, it’s not like the Rockets had much of a chance even with him at 100%. Now that LA’s had this little slap in the face, they’re gonna get real mad, and the next game would be a triumph for the Rockets if they can even keep it respectable.

      That’s just what the Lakers do. They get lazy and get beat, then remember why they’re the most dangerous team in the league and win. It’s a lack of focus that may get them in trouble in the Finals, but isn’t going to be enough to worry anybody until then.

      Fantasy Basketball, NBA, Rumors & Gossip

      The Super Bowl in London?

      May 10, 2009 /

      http://en.ce.cn/sports/others/200802/05/W020080205557866161143.jpg

      Ross Tucker at Sports Illustrated has a new column up about the rumors going around about a London Super Bowl in the near future. He writes:

      For the loyal hometown fans, a regular season game is one of the eight glorious days that they look forward to and pay good money for every year. The Super Bowl, on the other hand, is already an outrageously expensive neutral site game. It is pretty much mainly high rollers paying top dollar for the tickets at this point anyway. How many true fans of the teams playing in the game really go to the Super Bowl? The vast majority watch it on TV and wouldn’t be affected at all by a move abroad, assuming issues like weather, field conditions and kickoff time can be worked out.

      I suppose it makes a lot of sense to try and create a more international market for the sport of American football. Mr. Tucker writes elsewhere in his article that basketball and baseball have had “exponential” increases in popularity overseas, and of course the NFL would want to cash in too. A few regular season games have already been held across the pond and the attendance has been pretty high, more than 83,000 for the Saints/Chargers game last year at Wembley Stadium, but the Super Bowl is another beast entirely.

      Having the Super Bowl in London give a lot of people a knee-jerk “the NFL is screwing me again!” reaction, but the truth is that this is capitalism straight up. Just because the NFL is on top in terms of popularity in America, that popularity does not extend to other countries in the least. In fact the London games thus far have seemed more like freak shows for people interested in seeing giant Yanks smashing each other for a few hours rather than opening people up to a new and intricate sport.

      Speaking from personal experience as an English teacher in Los Angeles, even those people living a few miles from any given USC game or a remote click’s distance from watching the sport have no interest in it. The reasons I’ve been given from my mainly Korean students (with some Japanese, Russians, Chinese, and Bulgarians as well) is that American football is not a sport that can be picked up from simple observation. The penalties can be very frustrating for them and the point values really throw people off too.

      I’m not saying it’d be impossible for them to learn the rules (I’ve taught classes proving the exact opposite), but it does show the inability to learn the game passively, or casually. Especially for people whose grasp of the English language is tenuous at best, the rules and intricacies of football seem nonexistent or indecipherable. It’d take one heck of a push by the NFL to break through that barrier. But if any league can become insinuated into a culture, I think the NFL can.

      In fact, they may want to start with video games (that’s how I learned hockey). It’s easy to figure out a sport when you can repeat a specific action as many times as you want. Considering the popularity of gaming systems in Europe, it’d be an obvious step to get the next Madden game out there as prominently as possible. Just an idea…

      Bullz-Eye Sports Channel, General Sports, NFL, Rumors & Gossip, Super Bowl

      Saints players arrested for indecent exposure, etc…

      May 3, 2009 /

      http://photos.nola.com/photos/tpphotos/1cdcebe9e078641ed3b5ffc81162caba.jpg

      I get to report on athletes breaking the law and making poor life decisions for the first time today. In order to sanctify this inaugural post let me chant the greats for a sec: Please inspire my words to come ye great muses Pete Rose, Michael Vick, Mike Tyson. Oh, and there are so many more I could add, feel free to do so in the comments. Something tells me it’d be a good way to let off some steam.

      – Right. So whatta we got today? Well, YAHOO! SPORTS has an article up about the recent arrest of two New Orleans Saints players, wide receiver Biren Ealy and tight end Kolomona Kapanui:

      Two women, who weren’t identified, were riding in a vehicle when they reportedly saw Ealy and Kapanui urinating in the parking lot of an apartment complex around 12:42 a.m. Sunday, authorities said.

      One of the women told Ealy to stop. Authorities said Ealy turned around while exposing himself and began making lewd comments. Moments later, Kapanui allegedly exposed himself to the driver of the vehicle and made lewd comments, the sheriff’s office said.

      What? Oh man, I thought there’d be something a bit more severe than that coming. What gives here? Alright, I guess this has “intern” written all over it. So we got two professional football players peeing in public, alright I admit that’d get you a ticket. But at the same time, come on…I’m not alone in this am I? How many times have you peed in an isolated public area after a night of drinking? I see 3 guys doing that in downtown LA on my way to return books. I apologize if I’m thoroughly nonplussed by this.

      I suppose the real crime here, and the thing that makes this worse than writing your name in the snow, is the behavior of Ealy and Kapanui after they got busted. I don’t see the need for these two guys to get so sassy with the two people who were bothered by their illegal activities.

      Props to those ladies by the way. If I saw two drunk guys (who were both 6’3” and over 200 lbs) peeing in a dark parking lot late at night, I don’t think a confrontation would be my first instinct.

      Do I really need to get serious about this news though? If I fail to voice some personal rebuke of their behavior do I get in trouble too? I just don’t think it’d make any difference. There’s always gonna be morons out there that can’t behave beyond the level of a school bus full of kindergarteners (and no, that hasn’t happened to me while I was waiting for the light to change), I can’t expect every person who can play a sport to be a model citizen. But that’s certainly no excuse for the athletes who refuse to be one.

      In conclusion, let me just say this: In terms of athletes breaking the law, this incident gets filed under toilet humor and depressingly over-common. Though I can’t believe how hard I’d be laughing at the whole situation were I an anonymous passer-by.

      Bullz-Eye Sports Channel, Humor, News, NFL, Rumors & Gossip

      Ovechkin and Crosby begin playoff duel, two teams also play hockey

      May 3, 2009 /

      http://assets.espn.go.com/photo/2009/0224/nhl_g_ovechkin-crosby01_500x.jpg

      The NHL is banking a lot on the appeal of the series that started yesterday with a 3-2 win for the Washington Capitals over the Pittsburgh Penguins. The reason, of course, is the presence on the ice of the league’s two current marquee players: Alexander Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby.

      – Brian Anders over at THE LOVE OF SPORTS has an opinion a bit less excited than I think the NHL hoped to elicit:

      Look at the major sports. With the exception of the NBA, which has an infinitesimal roster, dream matchups involve teams typically in big markets. The NBA thrives on LeBron v. Kobe, because with only five on the floor and seven on the bench, the superstars will go mano-a-mano for the majority of the game.

      With 1:30 to 2:00 shifts and four forward lines, star hockey players go toe-to-toe a lot less often in the course of an NHL game. In fact, over the course of a seven-game series, the stars will actually face off less than the stars do in just one NBA game.

      Well, I’d say that mathematically speaking, it’s true that face-to-face play time is greater in the NBA than a lot of other sports. But that’s certainly not true for individual sports like tennis or boxing, is it? There’s no way we can compare them to the NHL or NBA, they aren’t even team sports. It’s the nature of the beast that team sports don’t have common individual match-ups.

      And that statement right there is also why I’m not entirely comfortable with the comparison Mr. Anders makes. I can’t say it’s wrong, but I won’t say it’s right either. Sure, I gotta admit that some of my favorite basketball games have been duels between opposing players, Jordan vs. Magic or even Jordan/Pippen on Malone/Stockton (guess where my loyalties lie yet?) come to mind quite readily, but even those match-ups were won based on the performances of players in general, not entirely on their crushing of each other.

      The NFL’s most popular players, to draw on a new example, are by and large the quarterbacks. So it’s basically impossible for them to ever truly play facemask to facemask. We judge them on their individual stats and their ability to help their team win. Works pretty well for the NFL.

      I don’t see that hockey should be particularly different. As a team sport, its raison d’etre is pitting one team against another. I’m excited to see how this series continues because I won’t to know who’s going to help their team out more. Furthermore, the sport does allow for frequent individual acts of brilliance. Just because Ovechkin and Crosby might not both be on the ice at once all the time does nothing to detract from the incredible plays they are capable of making whenever they play.

      They both scored a goal in Game 1. Let’s hope that tally only increases over the course of the series. It’s a shame I can’t watch the game without some serious cable TV, but that’s another post by itself…

      Bullz-Eye Sports Channel, NHL, Rumors & Gossip

      Cars crash at Talladega! Oh, and Brad Keselowski wins

      April 26, 2009 /

      http://www.theage.com.au/ffximage/2008/04/27/svCRASH_wideweb__470x309,0.jpg

      With Talladega finished and Brad Keselowski the winner, people have started learning about the big crash, or the key term: “The Big One.” Take notes on that, there’ll be a quiz later. Of greater interest than the winner is of course the fact that a multi-car crash occurred. Jay Hart of Yahoo! Sports writes:

      Seven people were injured Sunday at Talladega Superspeedway, victims of the spectacular last-lap crash that saw Edwards’ 3,200-pound race car spiraling through the air, then slamming into the catch fence that separated him from fans only a few feet away.

      That, not Brad Keselowski winning his first Sprint Cup Series race, is what will be remembered about the Aaron’s 499. Most who were there left the track ecstatic, even if Dale Earnhardt Jr. did wind up second, because they got to see the best race of the season.

      But at what cost?

      The injuries to the seven fans were said to be only minor, reportedly a broken jaw being the heftiest price paid. But as Edwards said, it’s only a matter of time before the price of admission goes up.

      Since the instituting of restrictor plates at Talladega, each year has been one long wait for someone to make a mistake and send tons of shrapnel and drivers flying into the Alabama sun. The idea behind these restrictor plates is, obviously, to restrict the maximum speed available to those on the track. Since no one can maintain a clear mechanical advantage, it’s a race of pure skill, and luck.

      I can see the obvious benefits of this: it’s exciting, the media attention is always greater following a big crash, and it makes for great photos. NASCAR has been in some sore need of that attention lately. As gasoline prices have continued to rise and attendance has dropped, things have been getting tighter off the track too.

      But what’s the answer here? If the plates were taken off, though crashes might not be quite so large, they could be much more violent for the few involved. The idea behind of the specific speed calibration is to keep cars from sky-rocketing if turned sideways at 220MPH. I would not like to have a 3,200lb car land on me, potentially crushing my beer, pelvis, face, and corn dog.

      I suppose I’m not smart enough to revolutionize the sport today. It’s important that these kind of issues remain in the public eye though, because someone in NASCAR needs to start considering a third option not previously discussed here. Someone who’s not busy watching something else.

      Bullz-Eye Sports Channel, General Sports, News, Rumors & Gossip

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