by gordie | Oct 13, 2020 | NBA
So this seemed a little odd: LeBron James, standing alongside his Lakers teammates and various other team personnel (including general manager Rob Pelinka, a Rob Lowe lookalike and former Fab Five adjunct) after the team closed out Miami to win the NBA title Sunday...
by gordie | Sep 26, 2020 | College Basketball
Distinguished author John McPhee wrote “A Sense of Where You Are,” the definitive book about Bill Bradley’s Princeton basketball career, in 1965. It only seems like McPhee’s seminal work had been sitting on my shelf that long. A pandemic makes for strange...
by gordie | Sep 14, 2020 | MLB
When the Baltimore Orioles last won the World Series, all the way back in 1983, the decisive blows in their decisive Game Five victory over the Phillies were struck by their glowering first baseman, Eddie Murray. Murray homered twice that day off Charles Hudson...
by gordie | Sep 6, 2020 | Uncategorized
Dangerous and fruitless as it often is to speak in absolutes, the pass by Toronto guard Kyle Lowry to teammate OG Anunoby at the end of Game Three of the Raptors’ playoff series against Boston last Thursday night has to rank among the best in NBA postseason history....
by gordie | Aug 25, 2020 | Uncategorized
John Beilein can’t say he wasn’t warned. Last offseason he signed on to coach the lowly Cleveland Cavaliers, after a long, successful run as a college head man, highlighted by two NCAA championship-game berths in 12 seasons at the University of Michigan. He lasted 54...
by gordie | Aug 17, 2020 | Uncategorized
Long before Matisse Thybulle emerged as the video star of the NBA bubble, it was clear he was ready for his closeup — that the Sixers’ rookie swingman had the look and feel of someone capable of thriving in the spotlight, which is exactly where he now finds...
by gordie | Aug 9, 2020 | Uncategorized
When Donovan McNabb was in his heyday as the Eagles’ quarterback, he often did this thing where he would escape the pocket and find himself on the perimeter, with seemingly acres of open space in front of him. At this point it only sounded like every fan in Lincoln...
by gordie | Aug 4, 2020 | Uncategorized
Rather than closing in on his 51st birthday, Chris Finch is closing out on it. That’s what good defenders do, and that’s what Finch was, in his heyday at Franklin & Marshall. So whether by rote or some other mechanism, he is closing out on this milestone, and...
by gordie | Jul 26, 2020 | Uncategorized
Since 1993 I’ve had the above painting on my wall, one adapted by a local artist named David Kirsch off a black-and-white newspaper photo I shared with him. I love the subject and the symbolism — how it shows Sixers point guard Maurice Cheeks, a guy who...
by gordie | Jul 12, 2020 | Uncategorized
At one point in his itinerant seven-year pro basketball career, Paul Shirley found himself playing with Steve Nash. OK, maybe playing is putting too fine a point on it, because Shirley seldom actually played for the 2004-05 Phoenix Suns. That was, after all, when they...
