Home cooking for game sevens

Two game sevens tomorrow. I expect the home teams to come through though I wouldn't be surprised if Magic wins and if Houston makes it close. I am proud of what Houston is doing, but I would be shocked if they win in LA. I just hope for a close game. LA has looked shakier and shakier as the playoffs have progressed. More and more people are now jumping on the Denver and Cleveland bandwagon and Mark Jackson says he is done picking the Lakers to win another series in these playoffs. So expect a lot of experts to pick Denver in the next round. Denver has looked awesome, but I am not sure if they match-up against the Lakers as well as Houston. We will cross that bridge when we come to it.

The Rockets have 2 things that are killing the Lakers. The Lakers have absolutely no answer to Aaron Brooks and they have Shane Battier (and Ron Artest) to keep a hand in Kobe's face all the time. A few years back I tuned in to a Pac-10 basketball game and was completely blown away by a player I saw in the Oregon uniform. That was Aaron Brooks and I have been his fan ever since. He was laser quick and unstoppable in college. I was sure he had NBA quickness, but I was not sure if he had the size for the association. Heck, he looked tiny even for college. I was happy when he got drafted and even happier when the Rockets traded away Rafer Alston and expanded Aaron's role. He has repaid them in full in this series.

Derek Fisher and Jordan Farmar are especially useless trying to defend Brooks. Phillip had to dig deep into his depth-chart and try Shannon Brown on Aaron Brooks for a few minutes. The dude is VERY quick. I don't expect anybody to stay in front of him. But he is exposing Lakers defensively and showing how soft they are in the middle. The Lakers team defense seems busted. Both Brooks and Scola killed them in game 6. Andrew Bynum can help defensively, but Phillip is not able to play him much for whatever reason. So Houston has shown us that the Lakers are still the Fakers and have defensive issues and are still soft.

The Fakers are at home and they can't lose this game. The other game 7 is even more interesting. Boston is at home and they have made a habit out of winning game 7's at home over the last 2 years. They play well during the regular season, get home-court and then use it to win game 7's at home during the playoffs. Like the Lakers against the rockets, they had no business even going to game 7's last year, but this year without KG, this is the best they can hope for. Magic are probably more talented, but they seem immature from coach on down. The Magic probably need Hedo to show up big tomorrow. Not sure what happened to Hedo this season. He has taken a step back from last year. The smart money should be on the Celtics in this one though I picked the Magic to win the series originally. I was not counting on this going 7. Ray Allen is due for a big one for the Celts.

Stupid Cubes

Mavs and the Nuggets played a great game tonight. Dirk Nowitzki came to ball today and singularly carried the Mavs to the finish line. He had a 44-13 night and hit 14/25 shots. Melo scored 41 in a losing effort and he was awesome too. It's interesting that both these guys had a rather quite season by their standards. Dirk is a former MVP and we are kinda used to his numbers and the Mavs were up and down this season. So there was not so much attention on him all season though he actually averaged more points per game than he did during his MVP year. In the case of Melo, I guess he has lost some of his sheen because of his suspensions and other extra-curricular activities. He was leading the league in scoring a couple of years back and was a MVP front-runner when he got suspended for a brawl. Plus he was always compared to LeBron until recently and now LeBron has taken off and separated himself. Melo's numbers were also a little down this year. But he has always been known for his 4-Th quarter heroics and even Kenny and Charles were talking about how pure a scorer he is. Kenny was saying he might even score easier that Kobe. Who knows - this year's finals might end up being all about LeBron-Melo instead of LeBron-Kobe.

But tonight, Dirk owned the 4-Th quarter. He was not going to let the Mavs lose. Dirk has had a great off-season so far. He has scored 31, 28, 35, 33 and 44 in the last 5 games. Those are legitimate superstar numbers. With all that said, the Mavs are not going anywhere unless they pair him up with another superstar. In other words, Dirk is much like KG or Pau Gasol. He is a better option 1-A than option 1. He needs that Paul Pierce or a Kobe around him. Thats what the Mavs are missing as far as winning a championship goes. Of course, Western conference semi-finals aint bad, but Cuban needs to get another guy to score with Dirk. Today was great for them, but Dirk can't do this every day. Speaking of Cuban, he is plain stupid and he was a big story today. Apparently he had a run-in with Kenyon Martin's mother on Saturday and referred to him as a thug and a punk. How classy! I do think Kenyon is a thug, but cubes had no bloody business saying that to his mom. Cubes is the wannabe thug himself who needs to be spanked by somebody and put in his place. I was hoping Kenyon would do it today since he wanted to meet him and deal with him face-to-face.

The best part of the story might be Kenyon's great quote - "I don't back away from nobody except the law.” Nothing happened today, but apparently a few fans were ejected around Kenyon's mom and his girlfriend. Thats amazing to me. How retarded are these fans that they would abuse the family of visiting players! How can you be so mean to such guests, especially to visiting women. I don't get that at all. Anyways, the series now moves to Denver and the Nuggets should take care of business on Wednesday. In the East, the Cavs buried the Hawks today. LeBron had a sub-par shooting night, but his team came through. Even Wally Szerbiak and Delonte West had impressive dunks. To borrow Delonte's phrase, how player is that? That dunk was very player of Delonte! The best part of the playoffs so far might be the fact that "Derek Fisher" has become a verb. I played basketball at the park this weekend and guys were routinely joking and saying things like "pull a Derek Fisher on him" and "I almost Derek Fisher'ed him". Even Antoine Wright asked the reporters after that missed foul on Melo on Saturday - "What do you want me to do? Do you want me to Derek Fisher him?". I love it!

We are all witnesses!

Today was one of those "I am a witness" day. We watched absolute greatness in LeBron. He had a 47-12-8 night and was unstoppable. When this guy is on, he is just a treat to watch. Kobe is also unstoppable, but they are two very different players. It's a very interesting comparison. Kobe is still the best pure scorer in the league, but LeBron is quickly getting there. His jumper is getting better every day. But his strength, size, patience and passing ability make him a very different player than Kobe and probably a better player overall. We want to see them do it against each other in the same court at the highest level called the NBA finals.

The Atlanta Hawks had no defense for LeBron today. They let him connect on 15 of 25 shots. Their defense sucks and they have no size in the paint. They are clearly overmatched and they would be lucky to steal just one from the Cavs. They had big runs today and it seemed like they can keep it close. But the Cavs defense bottled them up for long stretches of the second half and LeBron was unstoppable on offense. It's time to bring on the Magic. May be they'll test the Cavs for the first time this off-season. A Boston-Cleveland series would have been great, but KG's injury seems to have killed the drama.

In the West, the refs blew a call and let Melo hit a game winning three against the Mavs. After calling all kinds of fouls and throwing people out for all kinds of offenses this post-season, the zebras failed to call a intentional "foul to give" hack on Melo. The defender stopped because he hacked Melo and was expecting a whistle and Melo continued the play and hit a game wining three. Very OUCH for Dallas. Apparently it was the same ref who refused to blow the whistle on Derek Fisher last year against the Spurs. Looks like this guy swallows his whistle at the end of games. One question I have is, did the coach screw up by not giving the refs the heads up? Coches usually do it just to be safe.

Here's a quick question for baseball fans. Who is the best pitcher in all of baseball? Not sure how many people will answer Zach Greinke. His ERA is a robust 0.51 and has 6 wins, both stats leading both the leagues. He has the KC Royals on top of the AL Central. Pretty impressive. He could be this year's Cliff Lee - a familiar, mediocre pitcher having an incredible season out of nowhere. But Zach didn't have too bad a season last year, though this year, he is gone out of control. Today he pitched 8 innings for a complete game, 0-1 loss to the Angels. Impressive, though I am sure it is frustrating for him to lose that way.

Again?

Brett Favre is in the news again. Give me a break! After all the waffling the last few years and the high-drama of last off-season, this guy is at it again. We thought he finally retired for real after a bad end to last season and the Jets drafted a QB and even cut Favre. It seems like Favre has been busy since the very next day. The Packers told the Jets they have to give them more compensation if the Jets ever traded him to teams like the Vikings and the Bears, but it's not the Jets problems if they cut him and he ends up resigning with those teams. Seems like Favre is taking advantage of this scenario now. He is supposed to meet the Vikings coach Brad Childress soon and we should all be prepared for anything.

The rumors first started when we heard that Favre has hired a personal coach and the obvious question was - for what? You don't have to be that fit to drive tractors around Mississippi. I think something is definitely cooking and I personally don't mind it. Yes, he is making a fool of himself and hurting his legacy and making new enemies in Wisconsin, but I don't care. As a NFL fan, I like the story-line and watching a good player like that play, that too for a good team like the Vikings. He is not as good as he used to be, but he is still decent and the Vikings are better than last year's Jets. I feel for Sage Resenfels. He probably thought he got a starter's job finally, but now he might lose it again to a big name, older player who may not even be as good as he is! Stay tuned I guess.

In the NBA, the Lakers and the Celtics are back in the series with wins. Kobe was unstoppable today. He dropped 40 on Battier and was jawing him all night. It should be a nightmare for people like Battier trying to defend Kobe. But the story was the physical play on both sides. Playoffs are beautiful. These guys are now literally fighting each other and the refs are busy just keeping things in check. I am happy the hatred is picking up in the second game itself. The rest of the series is going to be a war. The Celtics-Magic also had a small incident today as the Celtics won big. My man Eddie House scored 31 and got involved in some extra-curriculars with Rafer Alston. Things have been testy throughout these playoffs. Goes to show you how important the playoffs are and how hard the guys play this time of the year.

Ron Artest showed flashes of his tough, combustible and weird character both on the court against Kobe and after the game in his presser. Today he spoke about a friend who got killed by a flying piece of metal right on the court. Is he for real or is he cooking up stories to keep us all entertained? In either case, I love it.

Fakers take a step back

Houston showed us yesterday why they have to be taken seriously. They are good, they are on a roll and they might have a couple of match-up advantages over the Fakers. One game does not a series make, but the Lakers lost a big one yesterday. I still think they come back and win the series, but they lost some mojo especially if you compare them to their eventual nemesis Cavs. We all know the Lakers are good, but the question is, why are they good? They are good because they have talented big-men who are real big in size and they got Kobe. They do have good shooting, a solid bench etc., but those 2 above are the biggest reason why the Lakers are good.

Houston has an antidote to both. They got Yao, World's biggest basketball player period. And they have Ron Artest and Shane Batiier - 2 guys that can bother, if not stop Kobe. Kobe was sick yesterday and went 14/31 for 32 points, with some of the makes coming late in the game against a soft defense. He is going to be back sooner than later with or without Battier hanging all over him. I don't think he is going to stay down for long. The Lakers will win this thing, but it won't be a walk in the park like it was the previous series against Utah. Even in that series, they just didn't consistently dominate. The next 2 games will tell us whether this game 1 was just a wake-up call for the Lakers or if they are in for a real fist-fight.

Speaking of fist-fights the Boston-Chicago series ended on Sunday with a good, but not a great game 7. The Celtics are now in another struggle as they lost another game 1 - this time to the Orlando Magic. This series might be curtains for the Celtics without KG. We may get to see Dwight against LeBron in the Eastern Finals. Speaking of LeBron, the Cavs walked into the Q and spanked the Hawks today. I am amazed at how mature and solid this team is. No rust, no doubts nothing. Another 34-10 game for the newly crowned MVP and his day was done in 34 minutes. The juggernaut just keeps rolling and with every passing game, they look better than the Lakers.

I am always pulling for the Fakers to lose, but like everybody else, I also want to see a Kobe-LeBron finals. Of course I want the Lakers to lose the finals for sure. Even if they get through the Rockets, seems like the Nuggets would be good and ready for them. They are looking really impressive and are handling the Mavs rather easily. I am sure they will be challenged a lot more on the road, but they are playing with authority at home. The threes are falling, the crowd is hopping and big-shot Billups is always lurking in the background. It's amazing how much this guy has meant to this roster. What was Joe Dumars thinking when he traded him for AI? That one move might have negated all the good things Dumars has done up to this point.

Good times in the NBA. But the only think worse than not having the Suns in the playoffs, is still having Cuban and the Mavs and Joe Johnson and the Hawks around this deep in the playoffs. Of course it's not JJ's fault he is not in Phoenix. It is cheapo Robert Sarver's fault through and through. He has repeatedly refused to pay young talent any money and has even traded away draft picks consistently - guys who would have made next to nothing under David Stern's rookie scale. And then he goes and takes on Shaq's gynormous salary when he is clearly over the hill. Talk about being penny-wise and pound-foolish!

It's only getting better.

Just when you thought it can't get any better, the Bulls-Celtics series just did. The series went from featuring 3 OT games in the first 5 games to 4 out of 6. And this one was a triple OT beauty. The series has now featured 7 OT sessions. It's not just that the games have been close, the quality of play has been tremendous. The talent on the floor is spectacular and the series has featured everything. Ray Allen has just been clutch. He had a 51 point game shooting 18/32 from the floor and 9/18 from downtown. He has been strictly alternating between on and off - bad game 1, 3 and 5 and great game 2, 4 and 6. He didn't get any help from Rando today.

The Bulls on the other hand, got another great game from D-Rose and John Salmons gave them the 35 that they usually get from Ben Gordon, who had an off night. All in all, the two teams are evenly matched and there is no quit in either of them. Can't wait for game 7, though the home teams have a great edge in those games usually. We have seen a lot of blowouts in game 7's, but it's hard to imagine a blowout in this series. The edge definitely goes to Boston and there are even some rumors KG might suit up. That would drive the home crowd nuts. Either way, it should be a fun one Saturday.

Orlando put the Sixers to bed today. I was kind of concerned that this series might go 7. Every year, you see a bad series or 2 go to 7 and you are like, why can't the other fun series go 7? That might still happen with Miami-Atlanta, but so far, we only have one quality game 7 lined up. All of the Western series are over. Houston made it to round 2 by beating the young Blazers today. The Blazers are probably disappointed, but they are a young team and they can learn from this. The Rockets were a tough matchup for them and the Rockets may even cause the Lakers some trouble. They have a huge guy in Yao to cause some issues for the Lakers in the paint and they can throw a couple of good defenders at Kobe in the form of Shane Battier and Ron Artest.

Speaking of Ron-Ron, a great series for him. T-Mac has never gotten out of the first round and this year, he gets injured and Ron and Yao get tot he second round. How ironic is that? T-Mac should be pissed. Of course it's not all his fault and T-Mac thinks they have a great team this year. But still, there is something about the overall toughness and the complete game that Artest brings. Overall, it probably helps a team more than T-Mac's offensive powers. Ron Artest now says Brandon Roy is the best player he has ever defended. He adds that he is the only guy to have scored 40 on him. He ranks him higher than even Kobe and that should be interesting to watch next series. He is essentially challenging Kobe to score 40 on him.

It was funny listening to Ron. The guy says Roy is the best player and refuses to acknowledge anybody else. Then he says somebody from his hood who is in jail used to be the best player he has ever played against and now Roy is the best. You can tell the dude is a little out there in the left field. Not that we didn't know it already, but who talks like that? But he looks genuine and sincere. There is something genuine about this guy. He is genuinely nuts and what can you do? He speaks his mind and does his thing. Plays hard and the fans love him as long as they are winning and he is reasonably under control. But then he can flip out anytime and go completely bonkers. An interesting character for sure.

Thanks KG

The NBA playoffs can sometimes feel too long, especially during the early rounds. But thanks to KG, we have a great first round series. The Celts-Bulls series is just awesome. 3 of the 5 games have gone to OT and we have seen some macho performance from D-Rose, Ben Gordon, Rando, Ray-Ray and today, the Truth. With KG, this is probably a easy score for the Celts. But without him, these team are pretty well-matched and they have been going at each other pretty ferociously. D-Rose has slowed down since that ridiculous first game, but Rando has been consistent. This is becoming a breakout series for both these guards, though both of them had a great regular season. Can't wait for the next game on Thursday.

The Cavs and Lakers are done for now. Cavs were realy impressive sweeping the Pistons. The Lakers have been a little less impressive, but still they won the series 4-1 rather easily. The surprise so far has been the early elimination of the hobbled Spurs. A new challenge for their stellar front-office. I am very curious to see what they do and how they rebuild. This series could have been very different with Ginobli and a healthy Duncan, but they are getting old now. Except Tony Parker, everybody is old and even if they had won against the Mavs, they were not going too far anyways. So they got to make some changes. As for Dallas, they are looking good and may even make it to the Western Finals.

I was thinking about Dallas. Cuban looked stupid when he let Nash walk and Nash killed them the very next playoffs. It was BEAUTIFUL to watch! He also let Finley walk soon after. But a few years later, the Mavs are still playing and Finley and the Spurs are eliminated and the Suns are not even in the playoffs. Cubes should be happy. But it was still a mistake to let Nash go and by trading for Kidd and paying a steep price for him (Devin Harris), I guess he accepted it. I hope Nash and the Suns do better than the Mavs at least next year. I hear some interesting rumors involving Shaq and Tyson Chandler. Not sure why the Hornets will do it, but it's all about money these days and Shaq's salary comes off the books after next year. Chandler might be an interesting center to pair up with Amare and Nash.

I heard something I couldn't believe. The Yankees have seats that cost $300+ per for season tickets. Thats around 25K for a 81 game season. Damn expensive for a baseball ticket. Apparently they are having problems selling their seats and are giving "half-off" deals. That I can believe in this economic climate. I hope you all saw the 23-V-24 ad from Vitamin water. Genius timing for this AD. Not sure how much they are paying LeBron and Kobe for this AD. We are going to see this Kobe/LeBron hype all spring and it's going to be awesome if they both make it to the Finals. Kobe's nickname "Black Mamba" is getting popular these days. I think it's a cool nickname to have.

Day of the Stafford

The Lions picked Matthew Stafford with their number 1 pick and signed him to a 78 million dollar deal of which 41.7 mill is guaranteed. Amazing, considering how bad the economy is doing. We always knew top athletes made boatloads of money and I personally had no issues with that. I am not one of those guys who begrudged these guys making a lot of money or said things like "I can't believe he makes 16 mill for throwing a stupid ball around". In fact, I sometimes argue that top-notch athletes like LeBron or MJ during his peak were grossly underpaid if you consider their overall impact on the business. But even I look at this 78 million differently in the light of today's economic climate. It sounds too high and kinda wrong that a kid out of school is making that kinda money, especially Stafford who was not that big a name in college football and especially in a town like Detroit which is in economic shambles. I have not even heard of this guy until the draft-hype kicked in.

Two interesting points to note here. One, looks like the economy has had close to zero impact on the NFL. We all know the NFL is the king in our culture and I don't think they are going to have any issues selling season tickets. They may lose some money on TV ads from businesses, but I guess thats more of a problem for the TV channels who have already signed long-time contracts with NFL. I see a lot of reports about how the NBA is going to be in trouble because of the economy and I see some impact on MLB too early this season. This Stafford contract is another proof that NFL is just different. Secondly, timing is everything in life. We see this time and again with QBs in the draft. You can make 10 times more than what you deserve if you enter the draft in a year with not too many good QB options and if the team at the top needs a QB. The Niners and Alex Smith are a good example of this from a few years back. I don't know how good Stafford is going to be, but he is pretty lucky to be where he is today. This is not a loaded draft and the Lions were desperate.

Speaking of the Lions, they changed their uniforms recently and I thought that should fix all their problems after their 0-16 season! Why even spend time and money on the draft? Anyways, they had 3 drafts on day 1 and I hope they do better in their first, full, post-Matt Millen year. The draft this year was not too interesting. Not many big-time names. Not many offensive stars. Very few explosive running backs in this draft. Mark Sanchez was probably the most popular name and he went to the Jets. Thats a good match for now. The Raiders as usual shocked everybody with their 7-Th pick by drafting somebody who is tall and runs very fast. I think that dude might have been available on Monday post-draft! Thats how much of a reach that pick was. The Niners picked the bigger-named WR in Michael Crabtree, who for some reason had fallen down the draft-boards. At the end of the day, this draft was kinda boring with very little action and recognizable faces.

In the NBA, Kobe killed the Jazz. As simple as that. After missing 19 of 24 shots in game 3, he come out today and made 18 of 24 shots. I don't remember seeing anybody look that unstoppable. He was just scary-good today. If I am LeBron, I hate what I saw today in Kobe and I hope he doesn't pull something like this against the Cavs in the finals. He rarely even hit the rim today with his jumpers. It seems like the Spurs are done. Timmy is not healthy, Ginobli is out and the rest of the Spurs are too old. Parker can only do so much and his 43 was not enough against the Mavs. Like I had predicted, dope-head Josh Howard is killing the Spurs and when he is on, the Mavs are not easy to deal with. We might have a 6 over 3 upset here and a Denver-Dallas semis in the future. Thats not too bad because the Spurs can be boring at times. It might be rebuild time for the Spurs and Timmy might be slowing down finally.

You can hear the draft

This weekend is the NFL draft. So tread carefully around the sports TV channels. This is the week you brace yourself for some serious information-overload. You will hear irrelevant details incessantly about dudes you have never heard of and some of whom, you may never hear about again. This is the week when ESPN will pimp Mel Kiper Jr. more than it does Derek Jeter, MJ and LeBron combined. And the draft day is Christmas and New Years rolled into one for Mel Kiper Jr. Luckily for us, there is some NBA playoffs for a little distraction if these guys start going nuts on us.

I know that NFL is king and it has become a year-round sport for ESPN. They could probably telecast a live show just showing all the 60 year-old assistant coaches in the NFL shaving their grey beards, and it'll outdraw most other sports on TV. But still, ESPN can get on your nerves with how serious they take this draft stuff. It's almost like they are running a never-ending half-time show since the last Super Bowl. It's like the season never ended for these guys. Even the GMs take a few days off from football, but ESPN doesn't. Now, they have also started following college football year-around. It's hard to decide what's worse - watching Auburn offense play against Auburn defense in Mid-April or watching Mel Kiper go on and on about a place kicker.

So If you hear stupid terms like "high-motor" and "4.4-40", don't think they are talking about some washing machine. They are indeed talking about real and rather large human beings. If you see a giant table with 16 guys sitting around and talking about a 20 year-old, you know you are where you want to be - or where you don't want to be, depending on where your head is. Don't be surprised that Mel Kiper keeps saying "he is 5-Th on my board". Yes, nobody cares about Mel's board, but ESPN has convinced him otherwise. He seriously thinks the GMs are drafting straight out of his draft-board. So sit back, relax and be prepared to hear Mel Kiper Jr speak without breathing for 5 straight minutes about an outside linebacker who may or may not be drafted in the fifth round.

Rose rocks

The NBA playoffs are underway and the weekend featured a bunch of games - some of them good, some of them bad and few of them great. There were also some great personal performances from some names old and some new. LeBron and Kobe didn't do anything to change our opinion that they are on a collision course. LeBron had a 38-8-7 game on Saturday and Kobe was Kobe on Sunday - nailing ridiculous jumpers to kill Utah runs. They both won without being really challenged. There were also some strange results as a bunch of road teams won. Philly beat Orlando and Dallas beat San Antonio on the road. Rockets beat Portland which had no answer for Yao Ming. I thought Portland was the team thats supposed to be loaded with young, big bodies, but seems like none of them are big enough for Yao as Yao didn't even miss a shot.

The guy who was really impressive and who served me a plate of crow for lunch was Derrick Rose. I love his game, but he had a big-time coming out party on Saturday against the Celtics. I was dogging the Bulls and saying how the Celtics can beat them with or without KG, but Derrick Rose was so awesome he showed me why and how the Bulls could beat the Celts with or without KG! Dude had 36-4-11 and shot 12-19. Numbers that are some kind of rookie records at various levels. I think nobody except MJ has scored like that in a playoff debut. The Celtics clearly missed KG and both Ray-ray and Pierce went AWOL. Rando was the only guy who showed up, but his 29-9-7 was not enough as the Bulls took it in OT.

I still think Boston takes this series, but nothing is going to be easy without KG. You realize how important he is on both ends of the floor when he is not playing. They came back and won today's game behind some solid shooting by Ray-ray. We can't over-analyze 2 close games, but if I have to put some money, I'll still put it on Boston. But Rose had 36 the other day and Ben Gordon dropped 42 today - another MJ type performance and apparently he is only the second guy outside of MJ to score 40+ for the Bulls in the playoffs. Of course MJ did it 38 times or something. Ridiculous! So lets see what they do the rest of this series. It should be a good one.

San Antonio came back and won against Dallas at home today as well after losing to the Mavs on Saturday. I expect the Spurs to win too when it's all said and done. Tony had 38 today and he needs to play at a high level to get the Spurs through. Manu is out and Timmy is hurt. But Timmy holds the cards for the Spurs and the dope-head Josh Howard is the key for the Mavs. That guy is hard to handle if he is doing good. This should be an interesting series too. Orlando lost at home to Philly and I still think the rest of that series may not even be that interesting if Orlando wakes up, which I expect them to anytime now. Denver blew out New Orleans as Chauncey went nuts with 36 points. He has been a God-send for the rich-and-creamies and lets see where they end up. At the end of the day, this playoffs is about 3 teams - Lakers, Cavs and may be the Rockets. Denver and Magic have an opportunity to step up and fill some of the void especially if Duncan is ineffective. But will they ? We will know over the next few days and weeks.

Playoff time

The NBA playoffs are starting tomorrow. First and foremost, I have to mention that the Phoenix Suns won't be in it. I was watching their last game against the Warriors and was wondering if anybody thought at the beginning of the season that this would be a game between 2 lottery teams. But here were the Suns, just finishing their slide down the down-slope and closing shut the proverbial window of opportunity. It was amazing to see how the Suns looked like a championship caliber team against the Warriors and even the Warrior announcers talk about the Suns like they are so much better than Warriors. But the bottom-line is, they are both lottery teams. Thats how crazy the West is. The Suns are 10 games over 500 and 17 games over the Warriors and they both looking in from the outside. Some people say the Suns are old while the others say they under-achieved big-time. I think the truth is somewhere in-between. Thats life in the West I guess.

The playoffs should be good, though it's gonna be long and slow as usual. With KG being questionable for the playoffs, I think we might as well cancel the Eastern playoffs and send the King to the Finals. The Orlando Magic can make some noise, but I think the Cavs are too tough and too legit for the Magic. There's no point doing any in-depth analysis of the Eastern playoffs, but it'll still be fun to watch because of the great talent on display in the form of LeBron James and Dwayne Wade. I am sure Wade will give us a highlight reel or three before it's all said and done. The Cavs-Pistons first round series will be mildly interesting because of the history and the rivalry, though these Pistons are not the same. It's too bad that KG's injuury alters the Eastern landscape. The Bulls still think the Celtics are lying. Two things. First and foremost, how the hell did the Bulls make the playoffs? What kind of conference is this stupid L-East? Secondly, why would the Celtics lie to beat the lowly Bulls? The Celts can probably beat the Bulls without KG, Pierce or Allen and with Eddie House's right hand tied up.

The real games are going to be in the West, though even the Western contests are not going to be as good as in the past. Couple of reasons for that. The Lakers are too good and they are going to go all the way to the Finals anyways. The other teams may be very good, but they still don't have a chance against the Lake-show. Secondly, the Spurs are not as strong as they used to be. Duncan is hobbled, Ginobli is out and the team is glacier-old. I can't believe they were one shot away from ending up 5-Th and starting the playoffs on the road. But the Mavs-Spurs series should be fun though. I will watch it for old time's sake. Utah would have been a challenger, but they have been injured all year and they have to deal with the Lakers in the very first round. New Orleans and Portland are still too young and Denver is Denver. I can't believe that Denver finished second in the West. That proves my point about how West is not "THE WEST" anymore. That leaves Houston. I think Houston is a sleeper and we will see how they do. They can cause some trouble even to the mighty Fakers.

One thing is for sure though. The NBA badly wants a Lakers-Cavs finals and it wants the Cavs and LeBron to win it all even worse.

NC stands for No Contest

North Carolina showed us all how superior they are to the rest of the competition. They put Michigan State in it's place just minutes in to the game. It was obvious that there was a huge class difference between the two teams. It was like a Ferrari racing against a Geo Metro. The Spartans could not match Carolina's size, speed or shooting. They proved Tom Izzo right since he had said earlier that if both teams played well, Carolina will win for sure. I was expecting Izzo's coaching to be the great equalizer, but there was just too much talent differential for him to make a difference.

Too bad Michigan State couldn't hang with the Heels. There was a lot of talk about how the state of Michigan was battered by the economic downturn and how this teams kinda brought them together and provided some distraction. I was not there to see the communal impact of this event, but from all accounts, it sounded like it had some potential to be a feel-good story. But it was not meant to be. Unfortunately the Spartans ended up spoiling the finals because I am sure UConn would have given NC a much better fight. But then again, we can't blame the Spartans for UConn's under-achievement.

Roy Williams now has 2 rings in 4 years. He has cemented in place among legends and in the hall-of-fame. He has probably replaced coach K as the premier coach in the Carolinas and might even surpass Dean Smith as a legend when all is said and done. Of course thats assuming he doesn't get caught pimping for one of his recruits or something crazy like that. It's amazing how he was considered incapable of "winning the big one" just a few years ago at Kansas. He moves to NC, wins the big one and all of a sudden he is now a genius among geniuses. His team was just to good and was never even challenged in this tourney.

North Carolina made this year's tourney a little uninteresting at times. I don't remember a NCAA tournament in recent years with so little drama. Ironically, the big-name schools seem to be getting bigger and better in the NCAA tournament which is supposed to be the great equalizer while the talk of parity is rampant these days in other sports like NFL and college football. The NCAA committee should screw up more to make the tournament more competitive. It seems like they are on-the-dot with their seeding and ranking of these teams the last few years.

In other news, the MLB season is off and running. How do you know it's early days yet? When you check the standings and see the Toronto Bluejays at the top of the AL East. Thats a dead giveaway that the season is still too young to matter. The World champs have lost both games to the Braves and Tim Lincecum didn't have a great start today for the San Francisco Giants. Neither did Brandon Webb for the Arizona Diamondbacks. I just thought those are some mentionable things from the first 2 days of the season.

Sunset!

The Suns finally are done for the season. They are still mathematically alive, but barely. After todays embarrassing loss to the hated Mavs, they are 4 games back with 5 games to go. Even the Mavs can't choke this one away orr can they! As a true fan, I am disappointed and would have loved to see them in the playoffs. Actually I think I am more disappointed just because they lost to the Mavs. I hate that. I want Nash to kick their butt every time. But part of me is happy that they didn't make it to the playoffs. They have no shot against the Fakers, especially without Amare and what's the point getting there and losing to the Fakers? Let the Mavs do the honors instead.

Also, making the playoffs gives the team and the management a false sense of accomplishment and pride (I never understood why) and I don't think Sarver and Kerr deserve it this season. In the NBA, 16 out of the 30 teams make it and it only means you are not in the bottom half. Big deal! If you don't make it to the NBA playoffs, it is an insult, but I don't think making it is any kind of achievement. Plus the NBA playoffs with it's 7 game format is probably the hardest to pull off any kind of upset. It's not a one-and-done deal like the NCAA or even the NFL playoffs and you don't have any specialists like a baseball pitcher who can swing a series one way or the other. I understand the playoffs are a lot of fun for the fans and the players and is more money for the owners, but if you are not a young team and you are not going to get out of the first round, it's no big deal.

But by missing the playoffs completely, Robert Sarver and Steve Kerr have to look in the mirror and come up with a plan. How do you fix this? Where is this thing going and who is going to stay, who's going to go? They can't hide behind the playoffs and they have to come up with some answers for these tough questions. Coach Gentry will be sold as one of the answers and to be fair to him, he is definitely improved the team, but it's going to take more than just him to push this team up the brutal Western playoff hierarchy. Suns may have to take a big step back and reload again. I don't think there is any quick fixes here. Shaq had a decent season thanks to the Suns training staff, but he is not the old Shaq and is grossly over-paid. Can the penny-pinching Robert Sarver deal with that in this economy without the playoff revenue?

Amare and Nash are still good, even great, but they are not the best at their positions anymore. Amare never got there though he looked like he could and Nash has vacated his top spot to Chris Paul. Nash is still awesome like he showed the other day against Houston with a 25-17 game, but he can't defend the young PGs anymore. Not that he was ever too effective stopping them. I think they need to hold on to Nash and try and move the other pieces for younger pieces. Nash is not getting younger and we shouldn't be rebuilding around him, but the dude is still good, he makes everybody around him better, he is fun to watch and good PGs are hard to find. Shaq and Amare can be and should be moved for younger pieces and/or cap space and we will go from there. That would be my recipe, but who knows what Sarver and Kerr will be cooking this summer.

Tomorrow is the NCAA championship game. North Carolina will win easily like it has done all season. I expect a rather lame end to the tournament much like most of the games have been. Too many blowouts all over the place on TV these days including the 2 NBA games today. Somebody from the Spurs stop LeBron James! It's a good time to welcome baseball back again. Philly lost to the Braves 4-1 today though I don't understand why the Giants and the Dodgers were still playing a spring training game today. Weird!

Happy Cutler

Jay Cutler is out of Denver and got what he wanted. He is now a Chicago Bear, though I am not sure if being the Bears QB is what he wanted. I feel like it's good for Chicago and not too good for Cutler. Chicago gets a proven, talented QB - may be it's first since the 18-Th century. Thats the problem for Cutler. I don't know if the coaches there, their system, the city, the weather etc. etc. know how to use and leverage a good QB. I think he would have fit well with the Jets, Vikings or even the Niners, though it might have taken longer with the Niners. But in any case he makes the Bears better for sure. Cutler is good.

Denver won out big in this deal too. The Broncos got quarterback Kyle Orton, two first-round draft picks, a third-rounder and a fifth-rounder thought Cutler was a known problem-child at Denver. Looks like somebody was DESPERATE. I wouldn't have given anything more than Orton and a first rounder. Some would argue even thats a little high. This might explain why the other teams couldn't pull it off. I do think draft picks are a little overrated when it comes to QBs because a proven QB is worth a first rounder for sure. They are not as easily replaceable as other positions through the draft. Finding "A QB" in the draft is easy. But finding "THE QB" is not. But still the Bears overpaid for sure.

The Broncos are screwed in the short run. No QB and a new coach. Broncos' kid-coach Josh McDaniels is the reason for all this mess. What was he thinking when he went after Matt Cassell in a trade? I mean forget the fact that he is a new guy in town and didn't establish any relationship with his spoilt-brat QB. Why did he even want Matt Cassell instead of Cutler in the first place? Just because he worked with him in New England and Cassell did well with Moss in that offense for one year? Cutler has his issues and he does behave like the 20 year old kid-sister of Paris Hilton, but Josh shot himself in the foot not knowing what he has in Cutler - both in terms of his football skills and his personality. I can easily argue Cutler is better than Cassell as a QB.

Now the NFL's only girl QB is in Chicago. She wanted out and she is talented. In some sense everybody won out in this trade.

Photo Finish

The Elite 8 today gave us the best game of the tournament so far after a bunch of blowouts in the sweet 16. Villanova and Pittsburgh played a beauty at Boston today. Nova won 78-76 after almost giving it away. The long-range, in-bounds play that Nova guy tried with the game on the line was one of the craziest things I have seen in a long time. Goes to show how these guys are still college kids who can do really dumb things. How do you throw that pass at the point in the game? Thats what makes up good drama I guess. So Pitt ties the game up with 5.5 secs to go. Nova then ran a great in-bounds play as if to erase the horrible previous effort and Scottie Reynolds drove all the way to the paint and hit a tough shot. Game over for Pitt and one more blow to my bracket.

Big East is dominating the elite 8 this year with 4 teams with the Big-12 sending 2 and one each from the Big-10 and the ACC. The Pitt-Nova game was a great advertisement for the Big East and U-Conn made it a great day for the conference when they handled Missouri. That game was close at times, but U-Conn really had this one covered for the most part. I am really excited for the NC-Oklahoma game tomorrow. What makes this game unique is that it has almost NBA-level star-power with Blake Griffin and Psycho-T and all the other Carolina names. Hope it lives up to the hype. Louisville on the other hand should handle Michigan state rather easily and send Rick Pitino to the Final-4 again. Speaking of Pitino, Kentucky apparently found out Billy Gillespie was not Pitino as they got rid of him amidst some weird drama after just 2 seasons. I was surprised how quickly this thing went south.

I was hoping for a photo-finish in the NBA playoff race, but the Suns are trailing Dallas for the 8-Th spot by 3.5 games with 9 games to play. Looks like it's over. I would have liked to have seen them play under the new coach and the old system with a healthy Barbosa and Amare. They have been playing better lately, but the Porter era put them in a big hole they couldn't get out of. Then the injuries happened and now I am not even sure if I want them to make the playoffs just to get eliminated by the Fakers. I would rather let some other team suffer that ignominy. At least if Amare and Bobo were healthy, we could kid ourselves that the Suns have a legitimate shot at an upset, but this group will have issues in the first round of the playoffs. Lets hope Dallas screws up the last 2 weeks, but at this stage it's nothing more than a hope and a prayer.

Good game tomorrow on ABC as the Mavs visit the Cavs and the King. Anytime LeBron is on TV, it's becoming must-see TV. He is fast becoming a phenomenon much like MJ was. LeBron had better numbers last year, but he is blowing up this season because of where his team is and how he is playing lesser minutes because of the blowouts and home dominance. In other news, Gilbert Arenas stopped blogging and started playing today after a year. He started off in style by hitting his first 3. But he needs to put in a couple of solid years to erase the last few to avoid being remembered as the next Penny Hardaway or Grant Hill. Both those guys played for the Suns well past their prime and I hope I don't see Gilbert Arenas in a Suns uniform in 2014 making 20 mill a year.

Bracket Break

The first weekend of the NCAA tournament is done and we are getting ready for the sweet 16 now. I started at the top spot after day 1 and in four days, slipped to the fourth spot in my bracket. Thats right on track for my bracket to end up 10-Th or so by the time the championship game is over. But the tournament itself had a decent weekend. No major upsets through this point though Cleveland state and Arizona both won in the same division as the 13-Th and 12-Th seed respectively. But then Arizona eliminated Cleveland state to remove a true cinderella. Arizona is technically a 12-Th seed, but they are still the big, bad Arizona and they don't really qualify as a cinderella.

Bad weekend for me as an ASU fan. Not only did Arizona advance, ASU was eliminated. There's a lot of talk about how James Harden hurt his draft status with his performance in the NCAA tournament. Harden was really lost in the Syracuse zone. Lets see where he goes in the draft. Top-10 for sure, but is he top-5? Not a great weekend for Pac-10 except for Arizona. President Obama had all the Pac-10 teams eliminated by the second round and he was almost right. I was pulling for Washington and it's laser-quick guard Isaiah Thomas, but Purdue survived. We have some interesting match-ups in the sweet 16. I am especially looking forward to the Villanova-Duke game. I am not sure if Gonzaga can hang with Carolina and same with Syracuse against Oklahoma and Purdue against U-Conn.

Game on!

This is one of the best times of the year if you are a sports fan. I am big on the NCAA tournament, but then again who isn't? I have not been following the college action the last couple of weeks this year, but I still had to fill in 2 brackets. I seriously considered just copying President Obama's bracket. But I did my own with very little knowledge. And as you might expect, I am doing much better with my brackets than usual. I got 15/16 correct including the day's biggest upset - Western Kentucky over Illinois. Not many upsets today, but we got the usual 12 over 5. The only game I missed was Michigan's upset of Clemson. Tomorrow is another day in the tournament. I am excited for ASU, who have qualified after many years thanks to the greatness of James Harden. Mr.Smooth will be asked to do his thing tomorrow.

In the NBA, another day, another triple-double for King James. The ridiculousness, also called LeBron James, dominated the game, especially late, on both ends of the floor to protect home-court. This team is over-achieving big time and they now have a game lead over the Lakers for home court throughout the playoffs. Amazing place to be for the once lowly Cleveland Cavaliers. LeBron-V-Kobe might actually end up being the NBA finals and the suits in New York will love it. Of course it would be fun for us fans too. As if we didn't have enough basketball games today, TNT featured both LeBron and Kobe in their NBA double-header. Lets see how tomorrow goes. Both for me and my bracket.

Who is the MP3?

43-12-8. Those were LeBron's numbers today against a very good Magic team. And those are becoming typical numbers for LeBron every day. On top of that, he hit a game-clinching 3 at the end to seal the deal. Recently he had a 50+ point game and before that had 3 straight games with triple doubles. The Cavs are 54-13 and are leading the East and as of today, the entire league. This to me is a MVP resume if there ever was one.

One of the hottest topic in all of sports right now is who's the MVP of the NBA? LeBron, Kobe and Wade are all playing at an extremely high level and all 3 are legitimate candidates. I don't think there has ever been such a strong MVP field in recent years. In fact, some people may argue that even the dudes who won the award in some of the recent years don't deserve it (Nash and Nowitzki). I don't agree with those doubters, but this year, all 3 are deserving candidates and you can't complain if any one of those guys get it.

But LeBron is still the king. LeBron is carrying his team more than Kobe, who has a tonne of talent around him. May be Wade is working with less, but he has not carried his team all that far. Thanks to Wade, Miami is 36-30, but they are still a solid 17.5 games behind LeBron and the Cavs, Cavs excellence needs to be rewarded and what better way to do it than to give LeBron the MVP. It's a 3-way race right now that might go all the way to the last game of the season, but as of today, it's LeBron's award to lose. Wade is second and Kobe is third.

Much ado about nothing

There was a lot of noise surrounding the Suns and the trade deadline. It turned out that the Suns did nothing player-wise and stayed put, but lost Amare anyways to an eye surgery. The trade deadline was a big snooze-fest as none of the big names around the league changed addresses. Just when the team and the fans thought Amare was all set to be a productive Sun the rest of the season, he is out with an unexpected eye surgery. This guy has impeccable timing as far as his injuries and surgeries go. He signed a multi-year deal a few years back and had a knee surgery before he played the first game of the very next season. This year he was part of all kinds of trade speculation and just a day or two after the deadline, he is done for the season. Now Suns are in a bigger hole than ever as far as this season goes.

The Amare speculation was all over the place, but the most intriguing trade rumor was Shaq going to C-town. Wow! As much as I like the Suns to do well and come out of any trade with value on their side, I wouldn't have had a problem seeing Shaq alongside the King even if it meant the Suns had to take back garbage. That would have been awesome theater to say the least. He would have helped the King too given how good he has been this season. Shaq is in good shape and is doing fairly decent in the low post and on defense. In that half-court offense they run in C-town, he would have been a valuable piece for the stretch run. How ironic would it have been if he helped LeBron win a ring after having helped Kobe to 3 rings, and then gravy-trained Wade for one more? Thats three of the best wings in the game today and Shaq would have played, won and tried to steal the credit from all of them.

Kerr came out of the All-Star weekend and promptly fired Coach Terry Poter. I rarely support firing coaches after just 4 months, but this was one of those rare cases I guess. Porter didn't do much for this team and he had to go. Running selectively, or to be more precise, running randomly on a whim, and throwing the ball into Shaq on every half-court possession is not great coaching. May be Porter could have gotten away with it in 2001 when Shaq was Shaq. Plus the whole thing seems to have alienated Amare more than he would like to admit. So Kerr turned over the keys to the car to Alvin gentry and Gentry is driving it at full-speed again. The run-and-gun is back and the Suns have scored 140+ points in 3 straight games.

Of course these wins were against the Clippers (twice) and Thunder, but at least it shows that Gentry is indeed committed the to the run-and-gun and the Suns players are still alive and awake. This is no guarantee the Suns are going to be great again in the West. I mean even the Gonzaga bulldogs can probably drop 100 points on the paper-clips and the Thunder, but 140 points is still huge in the NBA and I was curious to see what happens to the Suns under the new-old regime the rest of the way. We may not get the answer we need this season because Amare is out for the rest of the season with that eye surgery. Typical Suns. One step forward, but two steps backwards.

Mediocrity in Phoenix

The mediocrity that surrounds the Phoenix Suns this season seem to have gotten to the All-Star Saturday today in Phoenix. I personally prefer the Saturday festivities to the game on Sunday, but this one was not all that. The 3-point shootout was weak and the slam-dunk contest had it's moments, but nothing more. I like that the guys are getting creative and are using all kinds of props from phone booths to all-green outfits that signify kryptonite, but the dunks themselves were not as good as last year.

There were a few good ones. I liked Nate Robinson's jump over Dwight Howard. That was incredible. I like the one where Howard dunked the ball off the edge of the side-board and didn't even need more than one attempt to nail that. The Rudy Fernandez dunk was also good, but he needed 200 attempts to make it work. The best part of that dunk was Kenny Smith's funny comments about Rudy's choice of Pau Gasol and J.R.Smith's choice of Sonny Weems to throw these passes. They are not exactly Steve Nash or CP3, though Pau Gasol did a decent job with those passes.

The rookie-Soph game happened yesterday night and I am glad I didn't watch even a second of it. That game should easily be the worst basketball game of the year. It's just like the All-Star game with no defense and everybody trying extra-hard to put on a show, but it's much worse because the talent, experience and the maturity level is ten times worse than that of the All-Stars. No wonder, tickets were available for 5 bucks each for this game on Stubhub. All that remains now is the All-Star game tomorrow. It has some potential to be interesting given how good LeBron, Kobe and Wade are playing and competing these days, but it's still just an All-Star game.

Phoenix is at the center of the NBA world right now for both the right and wrong reasons. It's hosting the All-Star game and is front-and-center in all trade deadline talk. Plus the Arizona Republic is reporting the Suns are going to fire the coach Terry Porter. I support that decision. He has not had any significant impact on the defense - may be he can't, given this Suns personnel. But the bottom-line is , this defense still sucks. So his only contribution has been confusing and derailing the offense. All Porter does is go to Shaq and Shaq has been decent, but this is not the Shaq of 2001. You got to have a better offense than just going to Shaq every time especially if you have talent like Nash, Amare, J-Rich and Barbosa. I hate coaches getting fired too soon, but I don't see an option in this case.

As for the trade deadline, there are a lot of rumors out there about Amare. It's funny how he is saying things like "I have no idea why the Suns would like to trade a super-star who is also still getting better". They want to trade you because you don't play defense, you don't rebound and you just disappear for long stretches of the game. This guy was an unstoppable monster a few years back, now I don't even think it's a bad idea to trade him away. He is the youngest asset the Suns have and I would hate for him to become a monster again somewhere else, but still it kinda makes sense the Suns are trading him. I like that the Suns seem to consider Nash untouchable, though I am a little surprised given his age and Amare's age. Amare still thinks Kerr is a good GM, but has accused the owner Robert Sarver of being money-minded.

Kerr should be a smooth-operator if he is still able to be in the good books of Amare and Shaq. But he has not distinguished himself as a GM yet. One bad decision after another starting with getting rid of Marion for an old Shaq. I was half hoping he would trade Amare to the Heat and get Marion back. But Marion has now ended up in Toronto with the Heat getting Jermaine O'Neal. That trade makes no sense for the Heat given O'Neal's track record of injuries. Pat Riley is saying he has cleared a lot of cap space for 2010 with this trade. For what, I don't know given that Wade is their own player and is one of the prized free agents of 2010. I guess at least he is trying to do something and if O'Neal is healthy, this could work. I think Toronto might trade Bosh next and I wouldn't mind swapping Amare for Bosh.

A-Fraud

It's funny that just few days into the whole "Joe Torre called A-Rod, A-Fraud in his book" controversy, A-Rod has indeed been exposed as a fraud. Sports Illustrated has broken the story that Alex Rodriguez was tested positive for not one, but two different steroids in 2003. This was when MLB was doing anonymous testing for God knows what. He was apparently one of 104 dudes who tested positive then and this was one of the reasons MLB and the union eventually adopted more comprehensive testing. It turns out the testing was not very anonymous after all. I am sure the other 103 players should be very happy knowing that. It was hidden from George Mitchell and his report too, but suddenly it's leaking like a sieve now.

This was the hottest sports news of the weekend because A-Rod is the biggest name in the sport of baseball. It's another blow to the credibility of this era and all the great numbers from this era. A-Rod has great numbers and MLB was hoping he would be the guy who leads MLB and it's records in to the new, supposedly cleaner era. But now, he is just another cheater and MLB has to live with him and his records for the next several years just like they did with Bonds and his tainted numbers. And of course, the inevitable "does he belong in the hall of fame?" question is already coming out. The only positive in all this for A-Rod is that, if he weathers the storm, he has many years to recover from this. He would really be in trouble legacy-wise if he retired in a year or two.

Am I surprised? Not really. I had no specific doubts or opinion on A-Rod and I always liked him as a player. But are any of us stupid enough to trust anybody in this game anymore? I always had a problem when experts like Peter Gammons came out and said things like "clean" players like Adam Dunn and Ken Griffey want more testing because they don't want to be looked at as cheaters. My reaction was always why use any names? How do you know those are "clean" players? They will say they want more testing, but how does Gammons know they are not lying? For all we know, they could be the biggest "roiders" ever. Same with A-Rod or any other name you want to insert in that Gammons comment. It turns out A-Rod is not clean after all though many people assumed he was and he is done now.

If A-Rod thought he had issues with the fans and was already called A-Fraud for no apparent reason, I can't imagine what he has to endure the next couple of years. Of course, he has refused to comment on the controversy as of now and that pretty much means he is guilty in my book. Now he can deny it all or come clean and for some reason, America likes the guys who come clean. I don't understand the psychology of it, but thats been the history so far with Jason Giambi and Andy Pettite and Giambi wouldn't even tell us what he was apologizing for! Now A-Rod has to face the music and he is going to get killed until he wins a championship. But I think he minimizes the damage by accepting it, apologizing for it and claiming he stopped roiding up in 2003 and has never done it again. Lets see how this thing plays out.

Now I want to know the other 103 names. That will make this more fun.

MSG is home sweet home

Madison Square Garden has become home to anybody and everybody except the New York Knicks. The Knicks have been bad for a few years, but now with Mike D'Antoni coaching them, the defense is even worse and the pace is more up-tempo resulting in increased scoring and more fun for the visitors. Superstars always want to do well in MSG because it's New York and the arena has a lot of history and tradition and they want to leave their mark in the Big Apple. I think Michael Jordan set the precedent through his numerous performances against the Knicks at the garden. This week saw both Kobe and LeBron go into the Garden back to back and put on a show.

First Kobe went nuts and scored 61. It was an amazing performance as Kobe scored efficiently on not that many shots. Kobe even got MVP cheers on the road in NYC. The next game brought LeBron to the city and people were expecting big things from him even before the game because of what Kobe did 2 days back. These two are the best in this business and it's only natural for LeBron to try and outshine Kobe. But still I was very impressed by how LeBron stepped up tot he challenge. I was curious to see how he responds because in the past, he may not have had the drive to out-perform Kobe. But he is a different man these days. This game was another step in his evolution as a great superstar in this game.

LeBron not only almost matched Kobe, but he was even more impressive doing it his way. He scored 52 points, but played his usual complete floor game for a 52-10-11 night. Those are ridiculous numbers. Thats almost 72 points via the shots and assists combined. LeBron is the man! Great back-to-back games for the Knicks season ticket holders. It should have been a lot of fun watching Kobe and LeBron light up the scoreboard. New York welcomes the Celtics tomorrow and that will get ugly for the Knicks as well, especially since the Celtics lost to the Lakers today in a great game that went to overtime.

The season is heating up and the top 4 teams are the Lakers, Magic, Cavs and the Celtics in that order. The Andrew Bynum injury slows down the Lakers significantly. How significant it is, time will tell. His toughness and defense will be sorely missed. But the Celtics couldn't bully the Bynum-less Lakers in to a defeat today. There's a weird rumor out there that the Lakers might even be interested in getting Shaq in a trade. That would be big - no pun intended, because of all the history there. I can't believe Buss will pay Shaq so much money now since he refused to pay him back in the day when Shaq was actually good.

I wouldn't be surprised if it happens because Shaq is right now playing very well, he can fill in for Bynum, he can give them the toughness against the Celtics and his massive salary comes off the books next year. It could happen. If I was Kobe, I don't want him because he will get a lot of credit if they win the championship and Kobe would rather win one without Shaq to cement his legacy and stop Shaq from singing stupid lyrics like "Kobe couldn't do it without me!". This could be an interesting trade deadline with some big names moving. Keep an eye on Amare Stoudemire. Something is cooking with Amare and the Suns.

Super Game!

America is still celebrating the greatness of the game that was the Super Bowl. But was it the greatest Super Bowl ever? There's some argument over that and I have not seen all 43 Super Bowls to answer this definitively. My first question when the game ended was whether this game was even better than last year's Super Bowl. People forget that last year's game featured a great comeback and a huge upset. What has put this game ahead in a lot of people's eyes is that if featured 2 comebacks and 2 "game-winning" drives if thats even possible! Personally, I might also be looking at this game through the tinted lenses of a Cardinals fan. Classic games don't feel that great for the losing teams or their fans.

The game did have everything. The clutch execution, big plays in the late fourth quarter and the high-level of QB play made this a game for the ages. Kurt Warner was on fire the entire second half and Larry Fitzgerald went from one catch in the first half to 7 catches and 127 yards for the game. That 64 yard pass to Fitz with 2 minutes and change to go was a beauty. It was amazing to watch Fitz accelerate and just separate from the 3 guys who were chasing him. I have not seen the short-slant pass go the distance like that in a while, though this was not technically a slant. It was an incredibly exciting play and everybody thought that was the game winner.

Big Ben had other ideas as he started driving the Steelers on that last possession. Big Ben had not looked that good in the second half though the Cards didn't seem like they were capable of stopping him in the first half. I am not a Big Ben fan, but he definitely converted me with this performance. The Cads looked like they got to him many times, but he always escaped. The guy is so slippery and is so strong. A unique combination and a frustrating one if you were a Cards fan. His escapability and his ability to make plays was very much on display in this game. And that play to score the game-winning TD was just as incredible as the Warner-Fitz TD. Ben just missed Santonio Holmes on the other end of the end zone the previous play, but hit him perfectly the very next play. Only this time he put it at the right corner and above 3 defenders.

Holmes made a great catch and landed in-bounds to seal the deal. He also won the MVP that some people think should have gone to Ben. I thought either of them would have been a great choice. Poor Warner should have felt like Holmes stole his MVP trophy. Great day for Big Ben all around. We all knew he wanted to have a great game because he didn't feel too good about his first Super Bowl performance despite the ring he won. Not only did he get the opportunity to do something special in this game, he nailed it. He couldn't have written a better script for this game except that, for some reason, the wide recivers keep getting the MVP whenever he wins the Super Bowl. Many people think he still doesn't get the credit he deserves because he runs around like a chicken and doesn't look too smooth as a passer. There is some truth to that. Plus he is too big for a QB and doesn't put up huge numbers like a Peyton Manning or a Drew Brees. But he is an accurate passer and a great QB and hats off to Big Ben.

As for Warner, I did say he needs to win this one for a hall of fame spot, but not anymore. His 377 yards against this defense in this game and the great play in the fourth quarter puts him in the hall in my opinion. He is statistically one of the best Super Bowl QBs ever and his clutch play in this one was impressive. I sure hope he comes back next year to lead the Cards again. Not to sound like a broken record, you give him time in the pocket, he is one of the best QBs ever, period. But Warner might have also lost the game for the Cards with that interception at the end of the second quarter. It was a 14 point turnaround right there and you have to wonder how the game would have turned out if the Cards were leading 14-10 at the half instead of trailing 7-17. I personally thought that it was a big play, but it happened early enough in the game and I knew Warner can overcome it, that I was ready to accept it as just "part of the game".

This may sound like a boring simplification of a game this great, but the real reason the Cards lost this game was due to the penalties. As simple as that. Warner and Fitzgerald were the only reason that they could overcome the 106 penalty yards against a defense this good. The game was not free of controversies either. I am not sure why the last Warner fumble was not reviewed, though I think it was too close to call and I was fine with whatever was called. But Santonio Holmes used the football to do the LeBron James powder thing to celebrate his TD and that should have resulted in a 15 yard penalty. If Warner's fumble was reviewed and over-turned, and if you added another 15 yards for a steeler celebrating that fumble by removing his helmet, you are looking at Arizona with the ball at around the Pittsburgh 15 yard line. You are telling me you wouldn't want to see that one play with 5 seconds on the clock, 15 yards to go, Warner with the ball and Larry Fitzgerald in the end zone?

Well. one can only imagine.

Billion Dollar Game

The Super Bowl weekend is almost here and America is getting ready for the biggest sporting event of the year. Like Allen St. John explains in his interesting book "The Billion Dollar Game", the economic impact of this game is far-reaching. The most obvious economic impact of this event is apparent on the television screens. The TV ratings for this game this year will be huge as always and the cost of the advertisement spots have only gone up. It's going to cost the companies 3 million dollars for a 30 second spot. Thats a lot of cash especially in this brutal economic climate. Still there are enough companies that are lining up to advertise on super sunday. Some usual suspects have dropped out but new ones like the restaurant chain Dennys have come on board. As always, you can expect a significant contingent watching this game just for the new and funny ads. Las Vegas is hoping to be the other big beneficiary on super sunday as millions of dollars will be wagered on this game. Vegas didn't quite appreciate the New York Giants' stunning upset of the New England Patriots last year as the sports books lost a lot of money.

As for the game itself, it should be a good one. The Pittsburgh Steelers and their top-ranked defense is playing the Arizona Cardinals and their fourth ranked offense. A classic defense versus offense match-up that I think is going to be a lot closer than people think. Very few experts are giving Arizona any chance as they expect the better team Pittsburgh from the superior conference AFC to win it all. But the neutral site, good weather and the corporate Super Bowl crowds blunts the Steelers defense a little bit and plays right into the hands of the Arizona offense. This game would be a lot tougher for the Cardinals if it was played in the cold Pittsburgh weather with it's rabid crowds waving the terrible towels and screaming at the top of the lungs. Though the tradition and the history of the Steelers will pull in way more fans than the relative anonymity of the Cardinals franchise, it'll still be a fairly docile crowd by NFL standards that a veteran quarterback like Kurt Warner should be able to handle.

Speaking of Kurt Warner, he has had a tremendous season and he deserves all the credit for steering this lowly Cardinals franchise to such great heights. He is a classy guy who is easy to root for and even at the ripe old age of 37, Warner is way better than the guy he was supposed to backup - Matt Leinart. One of the major discussion all week has been about whether or not Warner belongs in the hall of fame. As much as I like Warner, I still think he needs to win this game to cement his spot in the hall of fame. This is his 3-Rd Super Bowl with his second team and thats quite impressive to say the least. But still he has been quite inconsistent in his career and he needs this second championship to erase all doubts about his hall of fame credentials. He is going up against Big Ben Roethlisberger who is also working on his second ring and is very motivated to get it. Big Ben didn't play well in his previous Super Bowl and the Steelers won that one in spite of him and not necessarily because of him. One of the interesting stats of this Super Bowl is that it features opposing quarterbacks who were born more than 10 years apart. Thats unusual. They are both very good and they will both be ready to play on Sunday.

It's common for everybody to spend a lot of time talking about the quarterbacks in any football game, but the most important player in this Super Bowl is clearly Arizona's stud receiver Larry Fitzgerald. He is a true freak of nature with incredible size, jumping ability and a pair of great hands that seem to pull in all passes Warner throws in his vicinity. His ability to elevate over his defenders and catch the ball at it's highest point and bring it in safely is just amazing to watch. It should be fun to watch this guy play against a great defense like the Steelers. Pittsburgh strong safety Troy Polamalu is one of the best athletes on the other side and I can't wait to see Fitzgerald and Polamalu go up against each other in this game. If the Cardinals can keep the pressure off of Kurt Warner, he will find a way to get the ball to Fitzgerald and thats how Arizona has been winning throughout these playoffs. This is easier said than done against a tough defense like the Steelers, but if Warner is in rhythm, he is hard to stop and beautiful to watch. Steelers better get after him and disrupt his rhythm if they want to win this game.

For most fans watching the Super Bowl on TV, the game almost doesn't matter. Super Bowl is just a great event when they get to meet friends, drink some adult beverages and have a good time. A good game is just a bonus and I expect this Super Bowl to give us a great game. We have had enough time to slice and dice all angles of this match-up and now it's almost time for the real game. The constant hype for two weeks on TV channels like ESPN can sometimes be tiring even to the die-hard football fans, but thats the reality of this day and age with 24 hour sports TV and radio channels. Thankfully the two week wait is almost over and the kickoff is almost here. Tampa Bay and it's 70 degree weather should provide the perfect setting for this game. I am so ready for this Super Bowl.

Time to rebuild?

This was the first Sunday since August without a football game. It does feel weird and you realize how much this country has become a football nation. There was NBA to fill the void, but you did feel a void for sure even if you are a NBA fan. ABC had the Celtics-Mavs followed by Spurs-Lakers and both games turned out to be one-sided. The Mavs got blown out by Boston much like the Suns last week. This was after they got blown out by Milwaukee and they blew out the Detroit Pistons themselves.

It's interesting to see how both the Suns and the Mavs seem to be in the same boat. Both used to be at the top of the Western heap, but now are fighting for a playoff spot. Both teams are very inconsistent and up and down. Both teams routinely get blown out on the road. It's clear both these teams are just due for a make-over. Given that the talent differential is not that high in professional sports and especially with good teams like the Mavs and Suns, there can be only one reason for frequent blowouts - a lack of effort.

It's clear what's happening with both these teams. They are veteran teams bored with mediocrity. They have been close to the mountain top and they don't feel all that excited about their inevitable slide down. Young, up and coming teams get excited about making the playoffs and clinching the 7-Th or 8-Th spot, but the Suns and the Mavs obviously cannot be motivated by just that after headlining the playoffs the last 5 or 6 years and making multiple Western conference finals. Now these vets don't see themselves going that far and are not seeing any light at the end of the tunnel. So when they get down by 10 in a game, they just give up. No energy or enthusiasm to fight back.

All this means is that the GMs of the Suns and the Mavs have to start looking at rebuilding. It's not going to be easy given the age and salary of stars in these teams, but it has to be done sooner or later - better sooner than later. If you are not going anywhere, you can either grab a snickers bar or start wheeling and dealing and re-building on the fly. I think both these teams have to cross that bridge. They may have to go the Miami route where the Heat held on to Wade and are re-building around him. They can't be afraid to take a step back for a year or two for future greatness.

Mavs and Suns can't just tweak this roster here and there and catchup with the Lakers, Celtics, Cavs or even the Hornets of the World. I would say the Mavs hold onto Dirk and Suns hold onto Amare and look at gutting the rest of their roster. I am a Suns fanatic and I love nothing more than watching Steve Nash in a Suns uniform, but even I have to say, the Nash trade rumors make sense. He is one of the guys on the Suns roster with some trade value and the new Suns don't use all of his skills anyways. He is a defensive liability who probably can be hidden well in a defensively superior roster. I wouldn't be surprised if Kerr pulls the trigger.

The straight-up Nowitzki for Amare trade rumors are also out there. I don't see the point in these except that it'll shake-up both the teams I am talking about. It's obvious everybody thinks these two teams need to do something drastic to get back in the game. Lets see what happens. Who knows, Nash might be throwing alley-oops to LeBron in a month or so. Speaking of the King, dude has been amazing. He hit the first buzzer-beating game winner of his career on Friday against the Warriors. Then he had another monster game on the road against the Jazz. This guy is on a clear-cut MVP pace this season. He is dominating on all fronts and is unstoppable.

The other unstoppable team in the NBA are the Lakers. Today, they pummeled the Spurs at home. Bynum has been awesome the last week and this guy can put the Lakers over the top. Bynum is coming into his own after his return from injury and getting used to playing with Pau and the new alignment, Add his defense and offense to Kobe and Pau and that ridiculously loaded bench, the Lakers are a scary team. I sure hope the Celts, Cavs or the Magic stop the Lakers. I don't see anybody in the West touching them.

Suns lose to Knicks

Suns went into New York and lost today like they have been prone to do lately. They didn't get embarrassed like the other day at Boston, but this was bad enough considering they were playing against their old friend and ex-coach Mike D'Antoni. Nash gave him a hearty hug before the game, but his 19 assists were not enough to secure a Suns win. Nash has been raining assists lately, but the Suns are still a mediocre team. Some days they look real good beating the Mavs or nearly-beating the Spurs, but then on other days, they lose to the Knicks.

Terry Porter has made some changes and some people say the Suns are better for it, but things are still not significantly better. The ball goes into Shaq a lot more and they run a lot less, but the defense is nowhere near where it needs to be, Nash gets exposed every night and the others in the team are not much better either. They just don't have the right personnel for defense. For instance, how can David Lee have a 25-16 night with Shaq and Amare in the paint? Amare had a grand total of 4 boards today. I am sure D'Antoni loved how the Lee-Shaq/Amare match-up turned out today. The Suns are nowhere near the class of the Lakers or the Celtics and and with all the changes, this team is still searching for an identity. So I don't know where they are headed, but I would have to guess not too far.

The Suns are really riding one of the most under-rated curses in all of sports. The "Lew Alcindor curse" is now 40 years and counting and it would stick out like a sore thumb in Phoenix if the Cardinals win the Super Bowl. Even Sportscenter referred to Phoenix as a NBA-town last week. Phoenix quite frankly is not the greatest sports-town period these days, but it used to be a hard-core NBA market in the 90's before the influx of all the new franchises. Nobody cared about the Cards back then and the DBacks, Coyotes and Jake Plummer where not in town yet. DBacks got their championship within a few years and if the Cards get theirs next week, the Suns will be left all alone. I hope the Cards win, but I want the Suns curse to end soon too.

In other news, Jeff Kent is retiring. He is the most under-rated baseball player of all time. He is one of the best ever to play at second base, but few people realize that. Dude is not the best human being - who can forget his motor-cylce lie, but he never got credit for all of his baseball exploits. He put up great numbers and it was always credited to him either protecting or playing in front of Barry Bonds. He then went to Houston and now his success was all because of Biggio, Bagwell and Berkman or it was because of the small juice box out there for a baseball park. But Kent went to LA and still put up decent numbers until he got too old the last couple of season. He never got along with Bonds or for that matter with anybody, but Bonds was the only guy who wanted the Giants to re-sign him. Bonds is no fool and he knew how good Kent was and Bonds also knew that the Giants would not spend the money to replace him in the lineup with an equivalent bat. But the fans had no appreciation and thats been Kent's story everywhere. Now he is retired and I would definitely put him in the Hall of Fame.

Supreme Bowl

This is going to be a great Super Bowl. As an Arizona Cardinals fan, obviously I am excited after last weekend. The Cards took it to the Eagles and showed everybody they are very legitimate. Once again, Warner was back in the year 2000 and Larry Fitzgerald was as good as Torry Holt and Isaac Bruce combined. This post season has been the official coming out party for L-Fitz. I mean football people and fantasy geeks always knew how good he was, but he was still not a household name primarily because the Cards are never on national TV. But all that might have changed in that first half against the Eagles. He had three TDs including a beautiful flea-flicker that Fitz caught, stumbled and still took it to the house. Warner and Fitz killed the Eagles time and again. Eagles knew where the ball was going and they still couldn't stop it.

Eagles came back in the second half with a more aggressive blitz package and stopped the Cards offense a couple of times. Phily's offense was also better and they took the lead to shock the home crowd. But Warner and the Cards were ready on this day. That drive in the heart of the fourth quarter that took 8 minutes was just a thing of beauty. The Cards did everything right and scored on a screen play to seal the deal. Suddenly, it felt like we were seeing a entirely new franchise with new players and coaches. This was a new feeling to go through as a Cardinals fan and we should thank Warner for all this. The only downer in the whole thing was Anquan Boldin arguing on the sideline with his coach. That took away from the feel-good story a little bit, but it's par for the course and no big deal in the big picture.

The Steelers made it from the dark side as expected. The Ravens D kept the game close, but the Steelers were in control for sure. Finally, the Steelers intercepted the rookie and put the game away. It was an ugly game and was aesthetically nowhere near as good as the Cards-Eagles game earlier. Despite all the hype for defense and toughness, would anybody actually prefer the Steelers-Ravens game to the Cards-Eagles beauty? I don't think so. Give me Kurt Warner's flea-flicker over a 5 man gang tackle after a 3 yard run any day of the week and twice on Sundays. But this sets up the ultimate Super Bowl match-up - good passing offense against a great defense. We have 2 weeks to break it all down, but all I would say is do not count the Cardinals out.

Go Cards!

It's going to be a great Sunday tomorrow. I have to make sure I watch the Cards-Eagles game one way or the other. It might be another 70 years before the Cards get this far. For all we know, they might be Oklahoma City Cardinals by then. The only thing more intriguing than watching the Cards in the NFC conference game is that they have a shot - a very legitimate shot, at going to the Super Bowl. It is a surprise that they made it this far, but let's not forget this was a weak NFC league this season and I can't see why the Cards can't represent the conference in the big game. The Eagles are not that good either. Both the Cards and the Eagles have only 9 regular season wins and I don't think there's a whole lot of talent differential between the two.

Eagles just have "name recognition" because they have been to many of these games, they have stars like Donovan McNabb, they were expected to be good this year and they started the season strong. But after watching them all season, I would say they are over-rated. So I pick the Cards at home in this one. In any case, the real Super Bowl is probably going to be played in Pittsburgh tomorrow. That game between the Steelers and the Ravens is going to be off the hook. I want the Ravens to win, but I am afraid that Pittsburgh at home is going to win. I grudgingly pick the Steelers at home and either of these 2 teams should be prohibitive favorites in the Super Bowl.

Basketball is fun too these days. Arizona State finally has a team to talk about this season. They won at UCLA today behind a great performance from super-soph James Harden as always. This was ASU's first road win over a top-10 team since 1998. Thats an ugly stat, but in James we trust and today he came through for my Devils in front of LA celebs like Pat Riley and Kevin Love. The story of the day was Jonathan Xavier, the brother of Providence's Jeff Xavier calmly walking onto the court and all the way to the free-throw line to confront the refs after Jeff Xavier's hard fall. That was not even a foul, but the brother was upset I guess. It's kinda scary how easy it is for people to get to the court like that. If people have not seen it yet, they should find it on youtube.

In the NBA, the Magic are on a roll. They walked into LA and punched the Lakers on the face yesterday. Three things stood out for me from this game. It was impressive to see the Magic win on the road in LA and establish themselves as a legitimate contender. They are for real. The second thing was, Dwight Howard showed the national audience how dominant he has become. I almost got a new appreciation for interior defense and strong "big-man" play just looking at him do his thing. It's amazing to see how many shots he changes in the paint and how he patrols the paint. Thats over and above all the rebounds and blocks he is credited with everyday on the stat-sheet.

Last but not the least, Kobe showed us he can still go knuckle-head, good-ole Kobe on us anytime. I can't believe what he was doing the last minute of this game. He followed one bad shot with another and got completely carried away by his drive to one-up his friend Dwight Howard. He took some horrible shots on Dwight when Dwight was on Kobe on a switch or when he was helping with the double team. Kobe had a triple-double but shot a horrible 10 of 26. LeBron looked a lot better than Kobe yesterday dominating the Hornets at home. When LeBron shoots the jumper like that, there aint nobody that can even come close to stopping him. But both the Cavs and the Celtics better be careful with the Magic. They are coming hard and they spanked Denver on the road today.

Warner is the man!

This NFL season might end up being a truly inspirational one for me personally! The impossible might just happen and that means I can make such things happen in my life too. The Arizona Cardinals have a legitimate shot at making it to the Super Bowl. Yeah, thats right. The team that won it's first home playoff game in 51 years last week, which of course means they have never won a playoff game in Arizona, can now go all the way to the Super Bowl. The Cards can definitely beat Phily. Eagles are over-rated and they have almost the same record as the Cards. Plus the Cards got embarrassed on Thanksgiving day in Phily. I am hoping that gives some extra "oomph" for the Cards, just in case being in the NFC conference championship game is not enough motivation for a perennially down-trodden team. I am personally pumped up to beat Phily because that game in Nov cost me quite a bit. I was vacationing in Veags and lost all of the 5 bets I placed on that game.

The Cards have to truly thank Kurt Warner. It's his team, it's his playoff run. Plus it frees Matt Leinart to focus on what he truly cares about - cheerleaders and other hot chicks. There's no way the Cards get here with Matt. As a matter of fact, I think Ken Whisenhunt is over-rated too. Warner, Larry Fitzgerald and Anquan Boldin have carried this team on their shoulders. Warner's jump-balls to Fitz is what defines this team. L-Fitz is amazing. He routinely out jumps his double-team and comes down with the ball. I always find an in-form, in-rhythm Kurt Warner to be the most fun QB to watch outside of Peyton Manning. Of course he has many flaws and anything can happen any given week with this guy, but if you give him some time in the pocket, and if he is in rhythm, he can make it rain out there on the field like nobody. He has always been fun to watch since his Rams days. Just don't let the defense touch him, because if they do, the chances are, he is going to fumble the ball or throw it to the wrong team. And he holds on to the ball a little too long at times inviting the defense to get to him often. But with all that said, you give him time, you give him L-Fitz and A-Bold, fun will be had by your fans.

Jake Delhomme is a poor-man's Kurt Warner himself and he had one of those real bad nights which Warner is known to have too, only Jake's was much worse. I felt bad for the birthday boy as he kept completing a pass to the Cards for every 3 he completed to his own teammates. Steve Smith caught 2 balls and the AZ cardinals caught 5. Of course it felt like L-Fitz caught all of Smith's passes and Anquan's too as he ended up with 8 catches for 166 yards. 33-13 was the final score. Bring on the Eagles! The Eagles beat the Giants rather easily. Both the QBs looked lost in the first half, but McNabb and the Eagles offense looked much better in the second half. Giants and Eli have looked horrible ever since Plaxi-glass Buress shot himself out of this season. Now the Manning brothers can completely focus on the Oreo cookie Double Stuf Racing League.

In the AFC, Baltimore and Pitssburgh got it done like I expected them to. The Baltimore game was a little surprising to me. Tennessee actually moved the ball rather easily against the Ravens D, but they kept turning the ball over. The turnovers are no coincidence with the Ravens. They hit hard! I mean they land some blows like they are looking to separate the ball and even some body parts from thje player. This defense can easily carry the Ravens to their second championship in recent years. San Diego went into Pittsburgh and came back empty-handed. Another tough off-season for the Chargers. They need to figure out a few things. I feel sad to even say this, but LT is definitely aging. Rivers looks like he is the real deal, but Norv might be on the hot-seat again. Baltimore at Pittsburgh is going to be insane! If the weather is good, I think the Ravens and the rookie can get it done. Flacco has a rocket for an arm. He didn't do much this weekend, but might have to step up next week for the Ravens to win.

King's World

LeBron James owns the NBA right now. What we are seeing this year is another step in his evolution. Post-Olympics, his attitude, approach and commitment has gone to an whole another level. Defensively, he is probably 10 times better than he was in the past. It's amazing to see him come flying in for a block from the weak side. Tonight, against Boston, he showed the World who the king is. He killed them systematically and his defense on Paul Pierce was stifling to say the least. LeBron is an amazing player. He looks like a cross between MJ, Magic and Malone - an unique combination of speed, athleticism, court vision and strength. Sky is the limit for him. He has the opportunity and the talent to be a bigger name in all of sports than MJ and Tiger in a few years. I am very interested to see where his career goes from here. He might win a championship as early as this season. The Cavs are tied for the best record in the league with the Lakers and they ain't got no Big-3 or Pau Gasol or a Lamar Odom coming off the bench. It's all defense and LeBron.

The Suns won impressively today. They pulled one of those Mike D'Antoni quarters as they shot 17/21 and scored 40 points in the 3-Rd. Shaq had a 25-10 night. He is actually having a great season. It's not quite 2001 for Shaq, but he looks closer to the 2004 version than the 2007 version and thats a good thing. He hit all his free throws much to everybody's surprise. Nash and the Brazilian Blur had great games too. Actually everybody did for the Suns and nobody except Josh Howard looked good for the Mavs. Both the Suns and the Mavs are in that cluster of teams separated by 3.5 games in the West holding the 2-Nd to 9-Th slots. It's brutal out there. These teams look like a contender some of the days, but in reality, they can miss the playoffs altogether.

NFL playoffs are back tomorrow and I expect Baltimore to beat Tennessee and want Arizona to beat Carolina, but it'll probably be Carolina. Arizona can pull it off though, especially if Anquan Boldin is in full strength and they don't get scared of the East coast like they have been all year. These games can get out of hand in a hurry on the road and sometimes Warner lets that happen, but if they keep it close, they can definitely beat this Carolina team. in the other game, the Baltimore D should get the job done. How good is Ed Reed? I think he is a better receiver than half of the receivers in the league. It's amazing how he catches the ball almost every-time unlike defensive backs in the other teams who get their hands on the ball only to drop it on the ground. Tennessee is no joke though. The Ravens need their A-game to beat them for sure and the rookie better show up tomorrow.

It's Florida again

How good is life down there at Gainsville? Florida is just winning NCAA championships like it's nothing. Urban Meyer has won 2 championships in his 4 years there. He probably owns the state right now. For all the hype that the Ol'e ball coach Stever Spurrier got, he just won one championship at Florida. Meyer has already won 2. While the first one was mostly Ron Zook's recruits, this team is all his. Of course I am sure recruiting in Florida is much easier now with both FSU and Miami struggling, but for him to come in all the way from Utah with a new offensive system, and make Florida a better program than it ever was under the ball coach is indeed amazing. Even his opponent on the other sideline, Bob Stopps, has just one ring and the media treats him like he is some kinda God.

It's good the season is over now. I got a little tired of the Tim Tebow and Sam Bradford hype. Tim came on top as Oklahoma lost it's 5-Th BCS game in 6 years. Thats a lot of losing, but thats lot of money for the University too. The real loser in all this in has always been Texas. They beat Oklahoma and still ended up with nothing to show for it this year. Big-12 wouldn't even let them play for their championship. At least the Fiesta Bowl let them play! There is talk now that USC might share this championship. Thats amazing to me. Isn't the BCS supposed to put an end to all the sharing? Anything can happen with BCS if you lose a game. BCS works well only with unbeaten teams. And that too if there are just 1 or 2 of them. But I love this year though. After all the East coast crap about how bad the Pac-10 is and how great the SEC is, I guess they have to respect USC now after the impressive showing of the Pac-10 teams in the bowls. Plus Alabama lost to Utah. Are you kidding me? If Utah can beat Alabama, how far fetched is to imagine USC beating Florida?

We can now close the book on this year's football season and focus on the NFL and the NBA. Cavs-Celtics and Mavs-Suns tomorrow. Good times!

Happy New Year!

New Year means one important thing - we are ready for the NFL playoffs. And I am excited for this year's version more than usual. The main reason for it is how the regular season ended in an absolute perfect way for me. Dallas got annihilated in Philly. They lost 4 fumbles and Romo wanted to give back even more to the Philly community. He threw an interception too. A 44-6 drubbing kept Dallas out and also let Philly in to the playoffs. Both results I definitely can live with. I have always maintained Donovan McNabb is kinda overrated, but I like him as a person and I have a lot of sympathy for him. He had to deal with all the crap TO brought to his life in addition to those Philly nut-jobs. Too much for a dude who has a lot to deal with to begin with being a black QB.

The next best result on Sunday was Miami beating the Jets. Nothing against the Jets and Brett Favre, but Miami's win meant New England was out of the playoffs. Sweet! Plus I am fan of Chad Pennington. Another decent guy who is very accurate and always plays under control. How ironic is it that he was let go in New York in favor of Favre and he comes back to rip their hearts out. Of course I don't blame New York for getting rid of him. His shoulder was indeed shot after the surgery. Even with all that, I always felt like Pennington was one of the few athletes who was relatively comfortable in New York. It should have had something to do with the way he handled himself. Even with a Super Bowl ring, Eli Manning seems overwhelmed by New York on a weekly basis. I am very happy that Chad is taking Bill Parcells' team to the playoffs and they both eliminated the Patriots on the way.

San Diego took Denver to the woodshed Sunday night and clinched a playoff spot which looked impossible just a few weeks back. This led to the shocking firing of Mike Shanahan. I would rather have LT, Philip Rivers and Norv Turner in the playoffs instead of Shanahan, Jay Cutler and their 8-Th string running back. I think the Chargers will give the Colts a run for their money though I expect the Colts to win the game. That game also happens to be the best match-up of the wild-card weekend. Couple of other reasons I love this playoffs is of course because of the presence of Arizona after a loooong time. And they are playing Matty Ice and the Atlanta Falcons. What a turnaround for the Falcons and how great is it to have 2 rookie QBs lead their teams to the playoffs? Ice and Joe Flacco with the Ravens. Finally these teams have some hope at the QB position. Matty Ice seems like the real deal. Lets see what he does in the playoffs against our Cards.

The College Bowl Season is also heating up after 3 bowl weeks and the first 190 bowl games. How many bowl games do they actually have these days? More importantly, how many companies are out there in the World? I heard the names of some companies for the first time ever through the stupid bowl games they sponsor. After all the early season bowl games like the KFC chicken bowl played in the parking lot of the new Yankee stadium in front of 7 construction workers that featured the 11-Th ranked team from the Big-10 and some team from the ACC with a robust 2-8 conference record, now we can watch some real bowl games. I am talking about the USC-Penn state Rose Bowl match-up. I want to watch it for sure to start 2009 in style.