Baseball is on the way back, we were told this week. “Spring” training camps will open on July 1, a 60-game mini-regular-season will begin play on or about July 24, and the World Series will finish no later than October 28. The NBA’s plan for a return-to-play “bubble” in Orlando was made public on June […]

[Read more →]

The NBA returning to action this season? For a while there, it seemed unlikely. Everyone’s attention was focused on the killer Covid-19 virus, as it should have been, and during the harrowing height of the pandemic it was easy to forget this salient basketball fact: Los Angeles’s two teams would have lost a chance to […]

[Read more →]

This is another entry in the “Back in the Day” series, where we look back at a sports event I wrote about for the newspaper. In this case, the nearly forgotten 2008 mid-season trade of Shaquille O’Neal from the Miami Heat to the Phoenix Suns. The idea in Phoenix was that Shaq would be the […]

[Read more →]

“Blasts from the Past” is the idea. On days when I feel like writing but don’t feel like doing much research, I am going to revisit topics from my 40 years in journalism. This will be one of those. It is my take, from January of 2008, on Kobe Bryant’s chances of winning his first […]

[Read more →]

I heard about Kobe Bryant while leaving church, around 11:15 a.m. today. “Killed in a helicopter crash in Calabasas,” someone said. It took me a few seconds to process. “Kobe, dead? That can’t be right.” Pause. “A helicopter? That’s possible; how many celebrities have died in private planes and copters?” Pause. “Wow. Kobe dead.” At […]

[Read more →]

Los Angeles Clippers supporters have been waiting a long time for their team to win an NBA championship. Or play for a championship. Or even get into the Western Conference finals. None of which the club has accomplished. Which seems to have made many of them impatient. They figured Kawhi Leonard, architect of the Toronto […]

[Read more →]

As the NBA season opens tonight, let’s pretend some readers are interested in finding out how a fantasy draft went for a six team league. Who went first?

[Read more →]

When I was working as sports editor for The National newspaper in Abu Dhabi, our No. 1 topic was soccer. Football. I expected that; soccer clearly is the preferred sport of the citizens of the United Arab Emirates, as well as the preferred sport of many expatriates who live and work in the UAE. That, […]

[Read more →]

Most NBA fans/observers are probably not interested in this. I am. I want the Golden State Warriors to win the NBA championship, over the Toronto Raptors, and I want them to do it with Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green running the show. I want the return of the Big Three that carried the […]

[Read more →]

OK, yes. It turns out the Los Angeles Lakers needed more than LeBron James to be relevant in the 2018-19 NBA season. With 18 games to play, the club is 30-34, having lost seven of its past 10, including a game to the Phoenix Suns, owners of the worst record in the NBA. Before they […]

[Read more →]