Sports Views

Ok… I know the NBA finals are going to be exciting now. I get that. Lebron “Luke-the-force-is-with-you” James vs the San Antonio “Deathstar” Spurs (who really thinks the good guys are going to win this time?) - great viewing.

I also use ESPN’s video service, called “ESPN Motion” almost daily. Upon launch, the red and grey window offers you a variety of “sections” to head to, including “Top Video”, “Sports Highlights & News”, “Dot Comedy” and more. Selecting a video launches it to the left side of the window, and a 30 second commercial always comes first… the advertising to real content ratio on this site is very high, but generally the ads are ones you’d be seeing on ESPN’s TV stations anyways. Windows Media Player is also used here, and ESPN seems to be pretty proud of the fact. Often, your navigation area will become a Microsoft ad. If you survive the commercials, you’ll find fast loading, high quality video… it often looks like it is simply spliced from SportsCenter, but that is hardly reason to complain. Updates are not as frequent as you might hope in the “highlights” area, and you can’t expect to find video of, say, a typical MLB game. You will, of course, see lots of content centered around the big name teams / players (think NY Yankees, Cubs, ATL Braves, Lakers, Shaq, Lebron James, Detroit Red Wi… oh wait… never mind). You’ll also find plenty of clips grabbed from ESPN shows like Baseball Tonight, OTL, PTI and the like. Obviously, because I use it daily, I love ESPN’s Motion, although I’d take CNN’s banner ad over the 30 second commercials before every clip any day.

My starting swingman would be either Marion or LeBron James, who is amazing to watch and can play the point if need be. He can drive and he can shoot, so he’s well suited for international play. We’d have seen a lot more of him last Olympics if Larry Brown wouldn’t have been coaching, so there will be a lot of anticipation as to how he plays, much like there was a lot of theorizing on how Michael Jordan would do against the international teams in 1992 – would he simply be Jordan, or would he explode and become something even greater.

Truly great players possess all of the fundamental skills: shooting, passing, ball handling, rebounding, shot blocking and defending. Now, players like Kobe, McGrady and Kevin Garnett certainly have these skills. But to truly separate players, we need to go beyond these skills. Consider two more factors: the ability to dominate at any position and to make all players around you better. This is the true test of greatness.

When I heard that Lebron James had fired his professional agent and replaced him with a high school teammate, I had a sense of foreboding for the young star. Sccop Jackson felt the same way.

For that same money, the city of New York could buy the New York Knicks for $500 million or so, fire the idiot Isaiah Thomas, replace him with Daniel Doctoroff or anyone else with an IQ over ten, earmark the remaining $100 million to sign LeBron James a few years from now, and then spend the next decade after that quietly collecting the $150 million in annual revenues that the Knicks rake in now, even sucking as badly as they currently do.

LeBron James has a slurpee at half time, he gets out onto the court, gametime, when all of the sudden… BRAINFREEZE! No matter how strong a man is, he cannot resist being incapacitated by a brainfreeze. Suppose Adam Vinitieri was sitting crosslegged at the Super Bowl, he goes up to kick one of his game winning kicks, and his foot is asleep?

LeBron James didn’t score 56 points, but his 29 were more than enough as the Cavs put on an impressive performance tonight in routing the defending champion Detroit Pistons, 91-76, in front of a sold-out Gund Arena. Zydrunas Ilgauskas added 13 points while “Sideshow Bob” Anderson Varejao pleased the crowd by chipping in with 11 points, including two rim-rocking dunks in the fourth quarter. Cleveland won despite being out-rebounded by Detroit, 46-39, but went over sixteen minutes in the second half without turning the ball over....

But anything’s possible when LeBron James is on your roster.

Nobody saw that coming. Probably because nobody saw the firing of head coach Paul Silas coming, either. Rarely does a team that is in the midst of a playoff race axe its head coach, especially if it plans on making those postseason reservations. That’s why firing Silas at the end of March with only 18 games remaining in a little less than a month made absolutely no sense. Rumors have circulated that Gilbert was going to fire Silas anyways, as he didn’t see the 61-year old coach as his team’s sideline director of the...

Gilbert effectively took what had been a speed bump in an otherwise breakthrough season and turned it into a massive road block. Don’t try telling the Cavs that making the playoffs this year wasn’t important, as playoff experience is clearly needed for superstar LeBron James to return next year better than ever before. All-Star center Zydrunas Ilgauskas was in the postseason with the Cavs in his rookie season, losing in four games to the Indiana Pacers, and he hasn’t smelled the playoffs since. With the 7′3” center...

“It was like we were just playing to play,” LeBron James said. “It wasn’t like we were playing for a playoff spot. We had no sense of urgency and I don’t know why. Hopefully, this game won’t come back to haunt us.”

LeBron James is one of TIME’s 100 most influential people? Man, what did he do apart from scoring in a basketball game?

You would think that Spike Lee’s recent yapping about LeBron James going to the Knicks would fire up James’ current teammates on the Cleveland Cavaliers. But if you watched Thursday night’s game at Gund Arena, you would think that the Knicks, not the Cavs, were fighting for their playoff lives.

In a showing that displayed a complete lack of heart, the Cavs played absolutely no defense, could not make their free throws, and saw the Knicks constantly beat them on the offensive boards in losing, 95-89. The loss was a crushing blow to Cleveland’s playoff hopes as the Cavs fell to 40-38. Combined with Philadelphia’s win against Miami, the Cavs are back to being the 8th and final seed in the Eastern Conference. LeBron James, despite an atrocious 7-for-25 shooting night, finished with 27 points and a career-high 18 rebounds. But,...

The biggest news story of the past seven days…20-yr old phenom Lebron James scored 56 points and the Cavs still lost!