by gordie | Jun 4, 2018 | Uncategorized
During a 19-second sliver early in the fourth quarter of Game Two of the NBA Finals on Sunday night, Stephen Curry missed a layup in traffic and then, after a Golden State offensive rebound, saw another layup attempt blocked by Larry Nance Jr. That left Curry 6-for-20...
by gordie | Jun 1, 2018 | Uncategorized
I make no apologies for loving basketball in general and NBA basketball in particular, while at the same time acknowledging its flaws. That said, I hated Game One of the NBA Finals. OK, not all of it. LeBron James was great, scoring 51 points with eight rebounds and...
by gordie | May 30, 2018 | Uncategorized
The question is not whether the Golden State Warriors can beat the Cleveland Cavaliers in the NBA Finals, in which the Dubs have been installed as prohibitive favorites. Rather, the question is whether the Warriors will beat the Warriors. Only on occasion this year...
by gordie | Mar 30, 2018 | Uncategorized
At some point tonight, Bob Schlosser will approach a lectern in the banquet room of a San Antonio hotel and try to condense 27 years of coaching into five minutes. Five minutes – that’s all he gets. No timeouts, but plenty of replays and reviews — some out loud,...
by gordie | Feb 14, 2018 | Uncategorized
Any self-respecting media type entering the locker room of a pro basketball team knows the drill: You speak to the stars out of obligation, the lesser lights out of interest. An Everyman – a guy like Tyler Smith, for instance — is more relatable, more...
by gordie | Feb 6, 2018 | Uncategorized
It has been a Monday like no other. A Monday when so many in Philadelphia (and well beyond) awakened with a literal hangover, flush with the knowledge that the figurative one has finally – finally — subsided. For the first time in their tortured history, the...
by gordie | Jan 8, 2018 | Uncategorized
The rumor has made the rounds through the years that San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich, an Air Force Academy graduate who received intelligence training back in the day, was once a spy. He seemingly put the kibosh to that talk in a 2013 Sports Illustrated profile...
by gordie | Dec 11, 2017 | Uncategorized
Phil Jasner was a sportswriter of another time and place. Yet the things he represented – thoroughness, fairness, decency – are worth remembering, worth preserving. His son Andy, himself a sportswriter, has done just that in a collection of Phil’s work called “On the...
by gordie | Nov 4, 2017 | Uncategorized
Destiny pivots on a pinhead. The tiniest of things – actions and reactions, decisions and moments of indecision – gather together like the flapping of so many butterflies’ wings to build a hurricane, pushing one this way or that. That’s true of great civilizations,...
by gordie | Oct 8, 2017 | Uncategorized
Before Joel Embiid was cleared to play five-on-five last Friday – some eight months after he tore the meniscus in his left knee and some six months after surgery – video surfaced of him playing tennis and jogging the streets of Philadelphia, both late at night. If...
