This is an interesting look at the top plays from Game 2.
Category: External Sports (Page 124 of 821)
Who can blame Giants general manager Brian Sabean for being a little sensitive these days when it comes to the topic of Buster Posey? A little over a week ago he lost his star catcher for the season when Scott Cousins blew him up during a collision at the plate. From the GM down to the fans, many folks are a little touchy right now in ‘Frisco.
But Sabean seems hell bent on making the situation worse. His club is coming off a successful road trip – one that saw the Giants take three of four from the first-place Cardinals – and yet all anyone can talk about today are the comments Sabean made on KNBR radio.
On Thursday, Sabean said that he didn’t blame Posey for not wanting to hear from Cousins following the play. Then he got personal.
“I don’t blame the kid,” Sabean said of Posey on his weekly KNBR radio program. “Why not be hard-nosed? If I never hear from Cousins again, or he doesn’t play another day in the big leagues, I think we’ll all be happy.”
Ouch. At first, you almost can’t blame Sabean for protecting his young player. But suggesting that “we’ll all be happy” if Cousins doesn’t play another day in the big leagues is a bit much. When asked if he was being harsh with his comments, Sabean didn’t back down.
“No,” Sabean said. “He chose to be a hero, in my mind. If that’s his flash of fame, that’s as good as it’s going to get, pal. We’ll have a long memory. We talked to (former Giants catcher) Mike Matheny about how this game works. You can’t be that out-and-out overly aggressive. There’s no love lost and there shouldn’t be.”
Cousins’ agent Matt Sosnick was quick to respond to Sabean’s criticism of his client.
“What Cousins did was not malicious,” Sosnick said. “A statement that anyone makes implying that he did something on purpose to be hurtful or malicious to Posey is untrue. Those people are misinformed. You can’t determine on a replay if there was a sliding lane for him to get into. It’s impossible.”
Something that always happens in situations like these is that fans choose sides. There are many people who believe Posey was trying to block the plate and therefore was fair game. Furthermore, it wasn’t Cousins’ hit that caused the injury, but Posey’s improper footing. (There are also many people who feel as though this wouldn’t be a story if it didn’t involve Buster Posey and they’re probably right. But it did involve Buster Posey, so discussing whether or not it’s a story is a waste of time.)
Full disclosure: After Dwyane Wade hit a corner three to give the Heat a 15-point lead with 7:13 to play, I sat down at my computer to write the recap. I had a nice little angle about how Game 2 felt like a trip to the dentist. You’re dreading the entire experience knowing that it’s probably going to end with the dentist drilling into your teeth (a Heat win), because you like candy way too much (turnovers). But there’s a moment or two during the examination where you think you’re going to get a clean bill of health (Mavs go on a run). In the end, you have a couple of cavities and the dentist is pulling out the needle (a 2-0 series deficit) getting ready to do some serious drilling.
Well, the X-rays are in, and the resilient Mavs have just tied the series. After turning the ball over five times in the first minutes of the final period, leading to nine Miami fastbreak points, Dallas outscored the Heat 22-5 over the final seven minutes. Miami stopped running offense and the Mavs locked down defensively, forcing the ball into Udonis Haslem’s hands or forcing LeBron James and Wade into tough threes when they were up against the shot clock.
On the other end, Jason Terry, Jason Kidd and Shawn Marion combined to score the first 13 points of the run before Dirk Nowitzki took over by scoring the final nine points for the Mavs. He hit a huge three to give the Mavs a 93-90 lead with 0:26 to play, but a miscommunication on the other end of the court enabled Mario Chalmers to tie the game up with a wide-open three. With time running down, Dirk then took the ball to the hole with a nifty move on Chris Bosh and scored the game-winning bucket with a left-handed kiss off the glass.
As Mike Breen said, it was one of the greatest comebacks in Finals history, and I almost compared it to a trip to the dentist.
Just try and halt my enthusiasm after reading about this little clandestine meeting that took place between union officials and NFL owners on Wednesday. The moment I heard about the news I ran up and down the streets screaming, “DING DONG THE LOCKOUT IS DEAD, SNITCHES!”
All right, so I’m not that excited. But the fact that DeMaurice Smith and other NFLPA union officials (or whatever they’re calling themselves these days after decertifying back in March) met with top NFL owners and commissioner Roger Goodell can only be viewed as a positive sign when it comes to the current labor strife.
The details are murky and it doesn’t appear that anything imminent is about to happen with the lockout, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that progress wasn’t made. The fact that the two sides are even talking is good enough. It may mean that they’re laying the groundwork for a new CBA deal and while the lockout may not end soon, the two sides have to start somewhere.
Look, there’s still a lot of work to be done. There’s still a lack of trust on both sides, there’s still the small matter of the owners wanting the players to take a paycut and the players wanting the owners to fork over financial statements from the last X amount of years, and there’s still billions of the fans’ money that needs to be fought over. But again, I’m encouraged.
Personally, I think the best piece of news that has come out of this is that Panthers owner Jerry Richardson was one of the five owners who attended the get-together. If you remember correctly, he was the one that ticked off many of the players early in the negotiations by treating Peyton Manning like a man who couldn’t even figure out which one of his shoes belonged on which foot. When ESPN’s Adm Schefter tweeted Thursday morning that the meeting was so secretive that there were other NFL owners “that didn’t even know about” it, I thought for sure Richardson was left off the invite list. But maybe his heart is starting to thaw, too.
So where do we go from here? The two sides will now head down to St. Louis where their lawyers will argue in front of a three-judge panel on Friday. The NFL is appealing an injunction that was grated by Judge Susan Nelson to block the lockout and the appeals court has already granted a full stay of that injunction. Thus, the owners are expected to emerge from this round of court-related nausea as the victors.
But maybe after their trip to the Eighth Circuit, the two sides will reconvene again and start actually making progress on the CBA. It’s frustrating to think that during this time, the owners and players could have been working on a new labor deal instead of fighting in courts about the lockout. But in the end that doesn’t really matter. What matters is that the two sides actually start to make productive strides to ending this charade so that everyone can enjoy professional football come fall.
It has been a long time coming, but Spanish guard Ricky Rubio has reportedly agreed to play for the Minnesota Timberwolves in 2011.
Apparently, the uncertainty of the NBA labor situation prompted Rubio to lock in his guaranteed salary under the current rookie wage scale instead of waiting to see what kind of concessions the owners were able to get from the players under a new CBA.
I’m sure that GM David Kahn feels some vindication, but he should wait until Rubio pans out as a good NBA point guard before he starts patting himself on the back. Let’s not forget that he passed on Stephen Curry and Brandon Jennings to draft Rubio and Jonny Flynn.
Rubio’s prospects aren’t as bright as they were two years ago. He’s been dealing with a foot injury and has been coming off the bench for Regal Barcelona.
Kevin Love responded to the news with some disbelief, but then started thinking about running pick and rolls with Rubio.
It will be interesting to see how this affects the T-Wolves’ draft. They have the #2 overall pick and the top point guard in the draft, Kyrie Irving, may be available if the Cavs decide to take forward Derrick Williams of Arizona.
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