Some terrific memories of the ABA, WHA

June 3, 2023

By Paul Newberry The Associated Press As we relish one of the greatest couple of weeks on the sporting calendar — the NBA Finals and Stanley Cup Final, going back and forth sometimes on alternating nights — a pair of long-forgotten leagues deserve a shoutout. Take a bow, ABA. You too, WHA. The American Basketball Association and World Hockey Association have been gone for decades, but their brash challenges to the set-in-their-ways NBA and NHL left a mark that is still recognizable today. The 3-point shot in hoops and Europeans playing key roles at the rink are two of the ...

In Miami, stars come out to shine

May 27, 2023

Tuesday night in Miami was full of high energy for Game 4 of the Eastern Conference finals between the Heat and the Celtics. The celebrities surrounding the court added electricity to this pivotal game. Basketball is unique as it is the one sport where the celebrities would rather be in seats “on the wood” surrounding the court than in a skybox. At football games, unless a celebrity is shown on the jumbotron, nobody would even know they were there. Unless you are playing in the game, you can’t sit on the 50-yard-line next to Bill Belichick. But in basketball everybody in ...

NFL schedule not all about home-field edge

May 20, 2023

By Jim Caltagirone sports@altoonamirror.com With the announcement that five NFL games will be played in London and Frankfurt during the 2023 season, fans in select American cities are left to ponder how exactly they benefit from the international outreach. As the league schedule trickled out during the second week of May, it became painfully obvious to fans of Jacksonville, Buffalo, Tennessee, Kansas City and New England that they will have one less opportunity to see their favorite team play a home game during the upcoming season. Since international games are played at a ...

PGA Tour has made mess out of LIV presence

May 20, 2023

Byron York Andrews McMeel Syndicate For more than a year, professional golf has been engulfed in a civil war over money and politics. The cause has been the creation of a new tour, funded by the vastly wealthy government of Saudi Arabia, to challenge the dominance — some would say the monopoly — of the PGA Tour. The PGA Tour has reacted like any other business facing a potentially mortal threat. It has tried to strangle the new tour, known as LIV Golf, by threatening lifetime banishment for any PGA Tour player who defects to the new league. It has carried through on ...

The little things add up in sports

May 13, 2023

By Jeff Bartlett Things I miss… n The days we kept track of RBIs (yes it’s plural), home runs and batting average. Not exit velocity and bat speed. n When players played. Not took off a quarter of every season off for some contrived term called “load management”, and then got hurt and missed the playoffs anyway. n When pro golfers looked more like the guys at your local muny — a little wobbly in the middle but loaded with personality. Not the GQ crew that dot the fairways now with every one named Harrison, Justin or Cameron. n When they just showed highlights on ESPN, ...

Wembanyama mania is on the NBA horizon

May 13, 2023

By Tim Reynolds The Associated Press Victor Wembanyama’s first basket on a recent Sunday night game looked so easy. He deflected a pass, ran it down, dribbled twice and dunked the ball with his left hand. And 15,000 people — about four or five times the size of the usual crowd at his home games — roared. He’s called a generational talent, though really, there’s never been one in France quite like Wembanyama. The 7-foot-3, 19-year-old, soon-to-be No. 1 pick in the NBA draft is on his farewell tour of his homeland, playing his final pro games there before he comes to ...