9:34 PM Never really had an opinion on Canadian hoops hero Jay Triano, who is now coaching the Toronto Raptors. But after watching him do this, he's officially my favorite coach of an NBA franchise.
9:25 PM Interesting stat in Topeka Capitol-Journal from Kansas State's hoops win over Dayton today in Puerto Rico: "K-State comes home with its first nonconference win over a ranked opponent since 2000." Is that a good thing, or bad?
7:55 PM WTH: "Ricky Williams will send me a text message saying, for example, to work on his ankle, visualize Ricky's ankle as if he's standing in front of me. I visualize him glowing. I make a sweeping motion over my ankle to remove the dirty energy from his ankle that's creating an abnormality.''
So with Glen Davis (or, as the kids call him, Big Baby) sidelined for a few weeks to rehab the thumb he broke by getting punchy, Davis has a lot of time on his hands. He can think about things. Maybe do some whittling. Give up on that on account of the broken thumb. Get back to thinking. Think about the future. Think about… the NFL.
For some reason, Big Baby told ESPN THE MAGAZINE’s Chris Broussard that he’s considering giving up the game of basketball at his peak in order to try his hand again at football. Yes, again; he was a defensive end and halfback as a youngin’. Of course, there’s video after the break.
Front-row tickets to a major sporting event may be the best seats in the house, but we should all know by now that there are some inherent risks involved. Glen “Big Baby” Davis reminded us of that last night when he plowed through a crowd of front-row spectators after hitting his game-winning jumper last night to potentially save the Celtics’ season. He avoided most of the fans, but landed a direct hit on a kid wearing a white t-shirt, sending his hat flying into the stands.
(An approximation of what Nicholas Provetti saw coming at him last night)
Well, the kid who took the brunt of Big Baby’s considerable momentum has a name: he’s 12-year-old Nicholas Provetti, and he was with his father in the seats they sit in for every Magic home game. And the elder Provetti, Ernest, is not at all happy with Davis, going as far as sending an angry e-mail to the NBA’s league office this morning calling Davis a “lunatic” for shoving his son. But I think the evidence will reveal who the real lunatic is in this spat.
If anyone was going to step up and hit the game-winning shot in a must win game for the Boston Celtics, of course if was going to be Glen “Big Baby” Davis, right? I mean, just look at the guy’s track record. It’s…OK, basically it’s him getting screamed at by Kevin Garnett on the sidelines and crying into his towel. So what I mean to say is that there is no possible way that Glen Davis hits the biggest shot of the season for the Boston Celtics.
But there he was, with the clock running down on Sunday night against Orlando and the Celtics trailing by one, draining a 21-footer after the Magic had swarmed Paul Pierceto give Boston the 95-94 victory to tie their Eastern Conference semifinal series at 2-2. And there he was charging down the court like he was chasing down the ice cream truck as it took off down the street, taking out some helpless kid on the sidelines in the process. Make sure you keep an eye on the kid’s friend shooting daggers at Davis:
Yeah, kid, I’m sure you could have taken him down if he just wouldn’t have run away so fast. But back to the shot: it’s not that the shot was too uncommon for Davis to hit - he does have that kind of range from the outside. But to hit that shot in that situation is just uncanny. Almost as uncanny as Paul Pierce having the guts to pass to him and let him take the shot with the Celtics’ season basically on the line. Can you imagine Kobe Bryant passing the ball to Andrew Bynum in the same situation?
Meanwhile, remember how the Rockets’ season was supposed to be doomed when Tracy McGrady went out for the season? That didn’t happen, as Houston won a playoff series for the first time in 47 years (approximately) before giving the Lakers all they could handle in their Western Conference semifinal series. But the news that Yao “Bamboo Bone” Ming would miss the rest of the playoffs with a broken foot suffered in Game 3 was surely the end of their run.
Then what in the world were the Lakers doing trailing by as many as 29 points to a team starting a 6-foot-6 center (Chuck Hayes) before falling 99-87 to have their series evened up at 2-2? For one thing, the Lakers had no answer for Chris Rock Aaron Brooks, as the diminutive guard ripped Los Angeles for 34 points, while the combination of Ron Artest and Luis Scola held Kobe Bryant to just 15 points.
As Phil Jackson predicted, it may have just been a case of a team playing full of emotion after having their backs to the wall; and yes, the Lakers did still regain home court advantage during the two games in Houston. But watching the Lakers and comparing them to the molten hot ball of basketball destruction that is the Denver Nuggets right now, perhaps that Cavaliers vs. Lakers NBA Finals isn’t as much of a sure thing as we previously thought.
Meanwhile, in those “other” playoffs, the Bruins followed the lead of their basketball brethren from Boston, although their prospects are still far more bleak. Despite their 4-0 win over the Carolina Hurricanes, Boston still trails 3-2 and needs to win at Carolina in Game 6 (where the Hurricanes have lost just once this postseason) in order to extend things to a Game 7. And in the Western Conference, the Red Wings pushed the Ducks to the brink with a decisive 4-1 victory to take a 3-2 series lead.
While the Celtics and Bruins were in their playoff battle, the Red Sox were simply beating the Rays 4-3. But how could one fan celebrate everything that was going on in the Boston sports world on Sunday? BUGS AND CRANKS found one fan who had the perfect answer: a Celtics jersey pulled over a Bruins jersey, topped with a Red Sox cap:
Just to finish our Boston sports orgy: are you ready for a reality show starring Troy O’Leary as the baseball version of Simon Cowell? The BOSTON GLOBE says O’Leary hopes you are, as he’s developing a new TV show called “Play Big or Go Home” that is trying to find baseball diamonds in the rough. My choice for the Paula Abdul spot at the judges’ table? The San Diego Chicken.
England national team soccer star Ledley King was arrested over the weekend after allegedly assaulting a bouncer at a London nightclub and insulting his Pakistani heritage. THE SUN says that King got to sleep it off in the drunk tank, literally, as he passed out in the stony lonesome for five hours.
While that was happening, the TELEGRAPH says that Manchester United was throttling Manchester City 2-0 to put a stranglehold on the English Premier League title with two games remaining. But mercurial United star Cristiano Ronaldo found something to mope about, throwing a fit after being removed by Sir Alex Ferguson just short of an hour into the match:
PRO FOOTBALL TALK says that Drew Rosenhaus is, as usual, stirring up more problems. This time he’s using Twitter to start trades for one of his disgruntled players, saying that he thinks teams would “give up a 1st round pick and more for my client Darnell Dockett.”
NASCAR’s head of drug testing isn’t exactly buying Jeremy Mayfield’s claim that a reaction to an allergy medication led to his positive drug test, telling USA TODAY that “in my many years of experience, I have never seen a violation like this due to the combination of over-the-counter or prescription products.” But maybe he was trying to get pregnant?
With college athletes getting in trouble about Facebook postings on a seemingly daily basis, you would think that universities would avoid social networking sites like the plague. But the IDAHO STATESMAN says that Boise State is embracing the concept in a big way, complete with Facebook pages, YouTube channels and more. (h/t to THE WIZ OF ODDS)
Glen Davis is one huge, huge dude. The former LSU star is 6′9″ and a svelte 290 pounds, moves like a ballerina, and can bench press the Southern Hemisphere. But it looks like his “Big Baby” nickname isn’t just a reference to his youthful visage, as Kevin Garnett caused the big man to break down in tears at the end of the bench during last night’s 93-78 victory over Portland.
Garnett had plenty of reason to be angry with Big Baby and the rest of the backups; Boston led by 25 near the beginning of the fourth quarter when Doc Rivers started emptying the bench, but Portland quickly cut into that lead, bringing the starters back with six minutes to play and the lead halved. Ever made a starter come back into a game he had mentally checked out of? Doesn’t make him very happy. Observe, after the jump: Read more…
