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The Daily Digest: Friday, March 28, 2008 |
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March 28, 2008 |
≡ The Daily Digest ≡
 Pearl: good on the court and in the bank |
= To Our Readers =
In addition to posting our regular daily column of news, observations and commentary, we now distribute The Sports Examiner DAILY, a .pdf-format newsletter – with bonus features – with the daily Tip Sheet that can be printed out to take with you or forwarded to your laptop to read later.
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= Tonight’s Menu =
>> Los Angeles, Ca.: The 18-53 Memphis Grizzlies come to Staples Center to face the suddenly needy 49-23 Lakers, who are one game out of the top spot in the West with 10 games to play. Kwame Brown returns to Staples Center with the Grizzlies, but Pau Gasol is still out for Los Angeles and the Lakers are only 5-5 against Memphis in their last 10 meetings. Moreover, the Lakers are only 5-5 in their last 10 games overall, but are still a 14-point choice over the Grizzlies, with an over-under of 216. That means the Lakers are supposed to win, 115-101, but then again they were supposed to beat the Bobcats on Wednesday, weren’t they?
>> Salt Lake City, Ut.: The 21-50 Clippers, losers of nine straight, will face 47-25 Utah tonight, which has the NBA’s best home record at 31-4. Quinton Ross is questionable for the Clippers, who have won just three of their last nine from the Jazz. Utah is 7-3 in its last 10 games, so they’re favored over Los Angeles by 15 with an over-under line of 205. That means the sharpies think the final will be Utah 110, Clippers 95.
>> Anaheim, Ca.: The defending Stanley Cup champions from Anaheim (44-26-8) have won 10 straight at the Honda Center and are in fourth place in the Western Conference with 96 points, but will face the second-place team tonight in San Jose (46-21-10). The Ducks have an 8-2 record against San Jose in their last 10 meetings, but San Jose’s glossy road record of 26-8-4 is the same as the Ducks’ home mark! Nevertheless, the Quack Attack is favored on the money line: it takes $150 to try to win $100 on the Ducks, but $100 on the Sharks could return $115.
= L.A. Stories =
>> What’s Bruin:
See our daily blog on UCLA sports at LATimes.com!
>> Talk of Troy:
Maybe basketball is mattering more at USC, judging by the tone of Peter Simones’ look at the future in Thursday’s Daily Trojan: “With a state-of-the-art arena, a top-flight coach and Los Angeles media market in place, USC has the basketball infrastructure necessary to succeed.
“As the saying goes, ‘If you build it, they will come’ - and they have. But a more time-appropriate follow-up question is, ‘Will they stay.’” Freshman forward Davon Jefferson is reported to be staying at USC, but the consensus is that star guard O.J. Mayo is ready to go to the NBA and that soph center Taj Gibson is on the fence. “If the Trojans lose two of the three to the NBA Draft, fans can kiss goodbye hopes of a brighter tomorrow.”
= Panorama =
The National Pastime:
>> New York, N.Y.: The most eligible bachelor in Japan is off the market. Yankees slugger Hideki Matsui, 33, caused a sensation on Thursday, announcing that he had married a long-time girlfriend in a small ceremony in New York on Wednesday.
According to the New York Daily News, Matsui “was so secretive about his wife’s identity that he held up a drawing of her, rather than a photo, at a press conference.” Her name was not revealed, but she is 25 years old and from Japan. They reportedly began dating during the 2006-07 off-season.
>> New York, N.Y.: The march to the Internet continues for baseball ticket buyers, who have purchased nearly 30% more tickets now than a year ago at this time. The sales total is now 19 million on-line and the season-sales record of 27 million set last season looks like it may be surpassed by the All-Star Break.
College Hoopla:
>> Berkeley, Ca.: Plenty of names are being tossed around as Cal searches for a new coach in the aftermath of excusing Ben Braun. In addition to the usual suspects such as ex-Stanford coach Mike Montgomery and St. Mary’s coach Randy Bennett, the whispers now include the name of Denver Nuggets assistant coach Mike Dunlap, who was a big winner at Metro State College in Denver, a Division II school.
But how about Jamie Dixon of Pittsburgh? He’s one of the nation’s hot coaches and has a 132-40 record after taking over for Ben Howland when the latter left for UCLA. Writes Ron Kroichick in the San Francisco Chronicle: Cal probably would need to offer big money to lure Dixon away from the Big East. He signed a contract extension in March 2006, after ASU and Missouri expressed interest, reportedly boosting his salary to $900,000.” Dixon grew up in Southern California and still has family here.
It would make the Pac-10 that much tougher and certainly change Cal’s expectations about basketball if he were to make the move to Berkeley.
>> Charlotte, N.C.: It was less than a half-hour after North Carolina finished pounding Washington State, 68-47, in an East Region semifinal, but reporters were already asking Cougars coach Tony Bennett if he was moving on to Indiana or somewhere else. The Cougar players, though, were sure he would return.
“They love it in Pullman,” said senior guard Derrick Low of the coach and his family, in an interview with the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.. “I don’t see him going anywhere. As long as Coach Tony is around, I think players will buy into what he asks and they’ll do well.”
>> New York, N.Y.: A telling segment of today’s column by William C. Rhoden in the New York Times about how much college basketball and football coaches are paid:
The battle of escalating contracts – football and basketball – has less to do with wins and losses than with so-called incremental revenue. This is why the arms race in intercollegiate athletics won’t end anytime soon.
Those increments. Four years ago, the Tennessee men’s basketball revenue concession was a little more than $200,000. This season, the concession revenue nearly reached $1.1 million. Before [Bruce] Pearl arrived, the Tennessee athletic department planned to renovate Thompson-Boling Arena. It was going to pay for the renovation by building 26 luxury suites. There were also plans to build a practice facility for $16 million.
When Pearl arrived, there was $2 million pledged toward the practice facility and five of the suites were committed. Then Tennessee upset Texas on national television. All of the remaining suites were sold – in fact, 12 more were added. The money pledged for the practice facility ballooned to $24 million. The average crowd of 13,000 ballooned to 20,000.
Pearl came to Tennessee from Wisconsin-Milwaukee, but is now also considered a possible coach at Indiana. Tennessee athletic director Mike Hamilton told Rhoden that the school would do whatever it needs to to keep Pearl.
NBA Hoopla:
>> New York, N.Y.: “We’re mindful of the fact that baseball just did it,” said NBA commissioner David Stern on a conference call with reporters, referring to the sleeve patches (for EMC and Pepsi) and Ricoh helmet decals worn by the Boston Red Sox and Oakland A’s in the season-opening series in Japan. Stern is considering allowing the sale of ad space on NBA team uniforms for the four-game NBA Europe Live 2008 pre-season tour in October in Paris, London, Berlin and Barcelona.
The New Jersey Nets, Miami Heat, Washington Wizards and New Orleans Hornets are scheduled to play and Stern noted that “Our history has been we’ve tended to do things that honored the local venue that we’re playing. We’re mindful that in Europe, sponsorship on uniforms is more common that it is here. It’s something we would consider, but we’re not planning.” So-called “shirt sponsorships” bring millions of dollars per year to European soccer and basketball teams, but would raise interesting issues for athletes here. For example: if Nike bought the shirt sponsorship for the Lakers, what would adidas–sponsored players such as Kobe Bryant do?
>> Dallas, Tx.: The Dallas Mavericks have been instructed by the NBA to open their locker room to credentialed bloggers, ending their lock-out of Tim MacMahon of the Dallas Morning News, ESPN.com’s TrueHoop and Andrew Kamenetzky of the Los Angeles Times online edition.
Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, who instigated the ban because of supposed space issues in the spacious Mavericks’ locker room, moved immediately to make sure there would be space issues by saying he would accommodate all credentialed bloggers and then invited everyone and anyone to apply for credentials. “[W]e will encourage all bloggers to apply, whether they be someone on blogspot who has been posting for a couple weeks, kids blogging for their middle school Web site or those that work for big companies,” wrote Cuban in an e-mail to the Morning News. “We will try to work it out so that all bloggers come in as a group after credentialed media,” he added. “This will help is manage the crowds should there be quite a few bloggers.”
The churlish response was immediately criticized by Mike Fannin of the Kansas City Star, who is also the current president of the Associated Press Sports Editors group. “With all due respect for the potential journalism talent in the middle school ranks, this rebuttal smacks with the tartness of sour grapes. Is this really the standard the NBA wants to set for blogging?”
The likely outcome of this issue, which is coming up everywhere, is that the NBA – like the NCAA – will issue specific guidelines for credentialing media, including bloggers. Where will the line be drawn?
College Gridiron:
>> Gainesville, Fl.: The Miami Herald reported that ESPN will televise the Florida spring game on April 12, beginning at 1 p.m. Eastern time with its “GameDay” crew of Chris Fowler, Lee Corso and Kirk Herbstreit on the microphones. Two hours of “College GameDay” will start at 11 a.m. Eastern. Why? Mostly because of returning Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow.
Rings & Things:
>> Beijing, China: “The stream of invective reflects a deep-felt nationalist pride that has the Olympics at its core. These games are, after all, for most Chinese a moment when they want to celebrate, with the world, their achievements in development and prosperity of the last three decades.”
That’s Jane Macartney of the Times of London, noting the displeasure of many Chinese about a Times article that compared this summer’s Beijing Games with the 1936 Games in Berlin that served as a Nazi propaganda show. She also notes:
The Times is far from being the only Western media organization to be accused of an anti-Chinese bias since the start of the Tibet unrest. Several German television and print media have been criticised, among others. The China Journalists Association has said some coverage “betrayed the basic principles of accuracy and objectivity.”
The American television station CNN has come in for particular opprobrium. Indeed a university student has set up a special website, www.anti-cnn.com, devoted to showcasing misleading or incorrect use of photos. The Times features here too for an allegedly misleading photo caption. And a new phrase – “Don’t be too CNN” – has entered the Chinese vocabulary to mean “don’t ignore the truth.”
The follow-up question to be asked is, “whose truth”?
~ Rich Perelman
>> Have an opinion? You can send it using the “Comment” button below!
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