As June hits the sports calendar Tree.com will have you covered. The pennant races are just heating up in baseball, while the NBA and NHL seasons are coming to an end. The NFL will continue to grab headlines as both sides creep closer to a deal, and on the links the U.S. Open will be center stage. Great topics, big stories, and we look forward to discussing them with you on the sports channel.
Tony Gwynn was 11 years old, watching from him family's home in Long Beach when Reggie Jackson hit the home run out of Tiger Stadium in the 1971 All-Star Game.
Eleven years old, but Gwynn can tell you about Reggie's home run that clanked a light tower, plus several other home runs that night by future Hall of Famers.
Gwynn also can tell you about walking into the National League All-Stars' clubhouse, wide-eyed, as a rookie outfielder in 1984. Or about about the winning run he scored in the 1994 All-Star Game at Three Rivers Stadium, and why he pumped his first afterward.
And a Californian shall lead them...back to the abyss?
Post-LeBron James, the Cleveland Cavaliers turned to a West Coast guy named Chris Grant to start their rebuild. Cavs fans, not blaming Grant for The Decision or the ears of corn and sacks of oats he inherited, ignored their new general manager during the team's 19-63 season this year.
It wasn't until the NBA Draft last week that the spotlight found Grant.
Ever been cruising past some dude who's pulled over by a cop and chuckle, "Poor guy" then step on the accelerator? You think it's occurred to any one of the NBA owners or in the ranks of the NBPA that they can't afford to speed towards a work stoppage?
The latest developments have most insiders concluding there will not be NBA games come October. Charles Barkley said on The Dan Patrick Show he doesn't think there will be a season, "I don't think we are going to play at all next year. Everything is out of whack... These owners are in it for Armageddon."
"There's nothing that cleanses your soul like getting the hell kicked out of you." -- Woody Hayes, old school football coach.
At the Church of Baseball, soul-cleansing is guaranteed.
Baseball kicks the stuffing out of ballplayers, if not their bodies their egos. Batting champions meet failure more than half the time. Most division winners absorb 60-plus defeats.
Talk about an awful year for the New Jersey Nets. After finishing the 2009-2010 season as easily the worst team in the NBA, there wasn’t as much success during the 2010-2011 season as new owner Mikhail Prokhorov had hoped for. Despite a few promising roster moves and a front office facelift, the team looked almost as bad as it did the season before. They struggled to win any games throughout the first half of the season and made a desperate attempt to spur some wins with a blockbuster trade
Soak it in people, because this may just be the last bit of NBA action you get before another lockout takes down another major league sports organization for an indefinite amount of time. It’s understandable that the draft may not be the most exciting thing to watch on television on a Friday night, but it’s a good way to gauge the direction your favorite NBA team is headed in.
There hasn't been much news on the NFL labor front. In this case I believe the no news is good news saying holds true. They are actually working on the real numbers in revenue sharing and rookie pay scale and with the deadline for getting preseason games rapidly approaching they have more and more reason to make it happen. Other news around the NFL is sparse, but it's still there! And here is some of it!
In one fell swoop, okay, more like two, the Philadelphia Flyers kicked off the summer by subjecting themselves to a self-administered facelift. Just 24 hours ahead of the draft the Flyers traded away two players who just a couple years ago were viewed as franchise building blocks. In fact, GM Paul Holmgren felt so strongly about these cornerstones that he handed them contract extensions totaling 23 years and $127 million, both within the last couple of years. Today however, Holmgren moved team captain MIke Richards to the Kings and Jeff Carter to Columbus in exchange for prospects, draft picks and more importantly, cap space.
The 2011 NBA Draft is finally over and what a draft it was. There were plenty of big surprises, some good and some not. With the draft process now over, these players can get to work with their respective teams and start working towards the 2011-2012 season. Here’s a rundown the picks and my thoughts on how they fit with the team that drafted them.
The best college basketball player in the West also happened to be the best player in the recent NBA Draft, even if the Cleveland Cavaliers and most pundits decided otherwise.
Said player, Derrick Williams, the University of Arizona forward, went to the Minnesota Timberwolves second. Cleveland took Duke point guard Kyrie Irving first.