Two NBA finals meetings in three years used to mean the Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Lakers were just getting warmed up. Larry Bird and Magic Johnson did this three times from 1984-87. Boston won all three when the teams squared off in 1962, ’63 and ’65; and repeated the feat three times in four years at the end of that decade.
Originally posted here:
Celtics’ Big 3 may be making last stand (AP)
• Yorkshire 155-6, Lancashire 138 • Yorkshire won by 17 runs Somewhere in Friends Provident t20, there is a great tournament waiting to get out. More than 10,000 turned up at Headingley tonight in glorious sunshine to celebrate a Yorkshire victory in the Roses match, a win that owed much to the nous of their former captain Anthony McGrath and the reawakening of the leg‑spin of Adil Rashid. When Lalit Modi, the Indian Premier League commissioner at the time, but about to be suspended because of suspected financial irregularities, was asked in Delhi by Yorkshire’s chief executive, Stewart Regan, what English T20 most needed, one of his three answers was “England players”. In English cricket’s suffocating calendar, they have been conspicuous by their absence. There was no Jimmy Anderson, Tim Bresnan nor Ajmal Shahzad. If T20’s future must embrace all 18 counties then the presence of England’s best is essential. On the day that Kevin Pietersen’s announcement that he was leaving Hampshire underlined what little benefit he has brought them, the self-inflicted damage could not be clearer. An English summer, though, is about making the best of it. T20 is reviving Rashid’s season. He has cut an uncertain figure in the championship, but when he completed his stint of two for 22, the Australian Simon Katich tricked into chipping a return catch, his 11 wickets made him the leading wicket-taker in the competition. Richard Pyrah caught exceptionally in the deep as Lancashire collapsed. McGrath’s unbeaten 73 from 50 balls was as methodical as t20 can get, restraint followed by judicious late hitting. The Headingley pitch was inhibiting and Lancashire’s bowling attack had been mean-spirited all season, a class above their batting. Top side of 150 was competitive. From the moment that Herschelle Gibbs popped a return catch to Tom Smith and Sajid Mahmood bamboozled Jacques Rudolph with a slower ball, McGrath cut his cloth as tightly as a canny Leeds tailor. Yorkshire were almost halfway through their overs when Andrew Gale’s mistimed pull to deep square left them 60 for three. Crucially, they rallied with 52 from the last five overs. McGrath struck 36 of them, the outstanding moments two sixes off Glen Chapple, a slice over point (fast becoming the most popular get-out shot off the summer), followed by a hook. McGrath, a former captain who found it too much, is a good pro who has had a tough couple of years. He deserved a happy night. Friends Provident t20 Yorkshire Lancashire Twenty20 Cricket David Hopps guardian.co.uk
Here is the original post:
Yorkshire 155-6 Lancashire 138 | Friends Provident t20 match report
Tagged bennyhollywood, creditors, Hollywood, premier-league, rainbow-peak, Sports, stars, summer, time, usa, winner
• Proposal offering 20p in the pound on debts approved • HMRC has 28 days to appeal Portsmouth appeared to move a significant step closer to achieving long-awaited financial stability today when the company voluntary arrangement to take the club out of administration was voted through by its creditors. The decision also clears the way for David Lampitt, the Portsmouth chief executive, to appoint a new manager, with whom he is “currently negotiating a contract”. The only obstacle to the CVA being officially approved is the possibility of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs raising a legal challenge. HMRC voted against Portsmouth’s proposal of 20p in the pound over the next five years, which was approved by 81.3% of the creditors, and has 28 days to raise an objection. The Revenue was allowed voting rights of only £24m by the administrators rather than its claim of £37m, which would have given it more than the 25% required to block the CVA. HMRC voted against because it is challenging the Premier League and Football League rule which states that football creditors must have priority and their debts paid off in full when a club enters administration. A statement released by the Revenue said: “HMRC notes that the result of today’s vote was to accept the CVA proposals. HMRC stands by the full amount of its claim. We will now carefully consider our position following the decision to reduce the amount of our claim for voting purposes. “HMRC believes the so‑called football creditors rule is unfair, unlawful and unacceptable. It cannot be right for millions of pounds worth of assets and income of Portsmouth FC to be earmarked for payment of football debts in full while other creditors – including the public purse – have been offered a mere 20p in the pound over five years.” Whether HMRC mounts a legal challenge remains to be seen, though it is thought to be unlikely. What the CVA’s acceptance means is that control of Portsmouth’s day-to-day operations will be now completely ceded to Lampitt, although until a new buyer is found for the club he will still report to the administrators. Andrew Andronikou, the chief administrator, told the Guardian: “We are now in a transitional period where we hand over the club’s daily business more fully to David Lampitt.” The chief executive praised the CVA’s authorisation and told Portsmouth’s website: “This is a hugely significant day – I’m very pleased the vote has gone through. The deal reached between the administrators and the creditors provides us with the first step towards the rebuilding of the club. One of my tasks is to bring stability to the club so that it has a long-term future. This should make it a more attractive proposition for new investment. I believe this has to the best way to bring long-term success.” Andronikou confirmed Lampitt is close to appointing Avram Grant’s successor. “He is past interviewing candidates and is negotiating a contract with the new manager.” Steve Coterill, the former Notts County manager, is thought to be in line to take over but Andronikou refused to comment. Portsmouth Jamie Jackson guardian.co.uk
Here is the original post:
Portsmouth creditors accept deal and give the club a brighter future
Tagged country, creditors, first-sight, possibility, premier, premier-league, rainbow-peak, revenue, royal, Sports, stars, usa, winner
Could it be the cheese roll and lack of a hat that gives our intrepid journalist away among the posh people? When you imagine Ladies’ Day at Royal Ascot you may visualise a hat – the largest, most absurd hat you can imagine, a hat that looks like a suicide-bomber chicken after its glorious auto-martyrdom. And this is true. I am standing at the entrance to the Royal Enclosure, interviewing a woman with a Lego Palace of Westminster on her head. The photographers snap away, gasping, “Lego hat!” Her hat is indeed made of Lego and, to labour it, the Lego press office will later email me a document entitled Lego – Ascot hats. But Ascot is more than that. Ascot, as far as I can see with my middle-class eyes, is the British Class System in a grandstand. It is a world of barricades and badges and net veils and is thus the most terrifying place I have encountered since I last went to South Kensington by mistake. But that is for later. For now, the hats. Ah, hats! It is only when you watch British women dress up en masse that you realise we cannot dress at all; we dress like cats trying to learn algebra. I love us for this, because we look, to a woman, vulnerable and terrible. I have sunburn and a hole in my stocking. The woman beside me is wearing a 3ft-wide papier-mache teapot on her head and is already planning her Phantom of the Opera-themed hat for next year. But we are in denial; Jeff Banks is on the loudspeaker, praising the hats. “The hat,” he is saying, “is an exclamation mark.” In the tiers of things that matter at Ascot, after the hats come the enclosures or, as I prefer to call them, the pens. There is a strict apartheid system here. If you do not have a badge to a particular pen, you cannot go in and you probably cannot vote either. And, to enforce it, there is an army of Group 4 security guards, all in grey. And they keep us in our respective pens. On the far side is the Silver Ring. It is cheap and packed and it has women holding babies and eating sausage rolls. People have brought their own furniture and it is full of bins. The bins, it seems, are the focal point. Then, slightly nearer the action, is the main grandstand, which, from the inside, looks like Peter Jones. It has giant internal escalators and repulsive carpets. It houses the Middle Classes and Jeff Banks. Then, further over, and bang in front of the finishing line, is the Royal Enclosure, the pen of the toffs. I do not have a ticket but I walk in anyway. I am carrying a large cheese roll. This is my plan. If I do not succeed in getting in, it will be the fault of the cheese roll. The security guard waves me in – victory! I am now in the Royal Enclosure. But, because it is still early it is empty apart from a woman wearing a washing machine on her head. So, although I have arrived at the apex of British Society, everyone else has left. I now have an important contribution to make to Marxist theory. If you want to demolish the British aristocracy, admit me to its pen. I also have a cheese roll. The Royal Enclosure has benches instead of bins because everyone knows that posh people do not drop litter and, even when they do, it’s not litter, it’s the free market. “Do not bring a gazebo into the enclosure,” says a sign. (Nor hot tubs.) I sit and nibble my cheese roll, wondering whether to call g2. “I’m in the Royal Enclosure illegally,” I plan to say, “But everyone else has left. And, if I am caught, will you send a Social Democratic Swat Team?” But the cheese roll that screams “Outsider!” is, as I have always suspected, a time bomb. A man in a bowler pounces. “Madam,” he coughs discreetly, “DO YOU HAVE A BADGE?” I wave my press pass at him like a crucifix. “I am sorry, madam,” he replies, “but you will have to move.” But I am a friend of Ronnie Corbett, I say. He is on the front of the Official Royal Ascot Magazine and I am with him. He is in the toilet with Cilla Black. But they will be back soon and then – then – I can guarantee you will be on the eastern front by Christmas! The man gives a gently fluttering gesture away from the benches and towards the bins . I think briefly of the Exorcist and Max von Sydow roaring, “I CAST THEE OUT!” I am, in the end, glad I am thrown out, not because I am an egalitarian but because I get to see The Arrival of Joan Collins. The photographers, who have grown tired of photographing hats disguised as zebras, are restless. So, when Joan Collins appears dressed, as ever, as a transvestite outreach programme, they lunge like a confused centipede. Er, Joan, I say, hoping she will not remember all the times I have called her a transvestite outreach programme in print, what do you like about Ascot? “Not this,” she says, regarding me, as ever, as if I am a badly accessorised Matalan dress. Then comes Charlie Watts in a grey suit, thin and ghostlike. He tries to smile, fails and walks away. The photographers hurl themselves on Louise Redknapp and someone from Strictly Come Dancing instead. I leave. But the apartheid follows me. I approach one of the escalators. But a Group 4 employee plants herself in front of me. Think Rosa Klebb. “You cannot go down there because you are not wearing a hat,” she says. I long to say that this is the stupidest thing anyone has ever said to me. That I am wearing a microscopic nanorobotic hat designed and sponsored by the China Nanchang Aircraft Manufacturing Corporation and, just because she cannot see it, it does not mean it isn’t there. But of course I do not because I am British. I know my place. I long for Trotsky and walk away. Eventually, the Ascot PR rings to say I can sit in the Royal Enclosure grandstand to watch the racing. (I complained earlier that all I can see in the press room is the back of the Sun reporter’s neck.) So I slink back to the Royal Enclosure and sit down. I smile and murmur at the people around me but I am blanked with thin smiles. Reader, they know. They know about the cheese roll. Why am I not by the bins, where I belong? We applaud the Queen as she comes past in her carriage. (I do this unwillingly but I am outnumbered.) The Queen looks, as ever, like an angry sweet sitting on her rage. She waddles to her box to watch the show. There’s not much left to do but sit down, eat the cheese roll and wait for it all to die. Fashion Horse racing guardian.co.uk
Read more:
Royal Ascot: How to get thrown out of the Royal Enclosure
• Fifa mistranslation gets up Howard’s nose • USA goalkeeper says ‘talk is cheap’ It is not often you hear Tim Howard warn an opponent that “talk is cheap” or tell him to be prepared to “stand toe to toe” – but two words, lost in translation, have spiced up tomorrow’s encounter between the biggest and smallest countries in this year’s World Cup. This week the Slovenia midfielder Andrej Komac, regarded as the most humble member of the squad, told reporters: “We will play to win” – a gentle statement confirming his side’s intentions to book their place in the last 16 before facing England. However, Fifa’s interpreter turned his innocuous words into the more emphatic “We are going to win.” • Follow the Guardian’s World Cup team on Twitter • Sign up to play our great Fantasy Football game • Stats centre: Get the lowdown on every player • The latest team-by-team news, features and more That statement went on press wires and bulletin boards, and was put to Howard, who warned Komac: “Talk is cheap, he’s got to stand toe to toe and they’ve got to stand toe to toe with us for 90 minutes. And if he’s still standing, then I’ll take my hat off to him. But a lot of boxers talk too and they’re looking up at the lights. And the next thing they know, they’re trying to figure out how they got there.” Howard will have a painkilling injection on his ribs before kick-off but will be fit. Komac is set to be named on the bench. Perhaps it is just as well. Slovenia’s coach, Matjaz Kek, who is expected to stick with the 11 who beat Algeria as he attempts to guide his country into the knockout stages of a major tournament for the first time. Expectations are high in Ljubljana; cinemas will show football instead of films, and bars will be overflowing. And Kek is promising his team will go for it. “We might be the smallest country in this World Cup but we have not come here as tourists,” Kek said. “We are really focused.”Slovenia face a nation a 150 times bigger in terms of population but Kek insists: “We don’t stand in awe of the US.” His team are certainly in form, having won seven of their last eight matches since losing to England last September. As usual, Bob Bradley gave little away in his press conference. But the USA coach is a tinkerer and maybe minded to start Jose Torres in midfield instead of the more defensively inclined Ricky Clark. “Slovenia are a very good team,” said Bradley. “They are very well organised and tactically very smart. We have a great deal of respect for them. Robert Koren is the engine of their team. [Mile] Novakovic is a tall player with a creative side and [Valter] Birsa has a great left foot. They do a good job of staying very tight,” he added. “But we’ve been in many of these games before. I expect the game to be a tactical but we are looking at a way to get an edge.” With the stakes so high, the football might not be pretty. The USA captain, Carlos Bocanegra, was quite upfront about it, telling US journalists: “We will have to approach this game in an intelligent fashion. We have to be smart and not open up because a loss would put us out of the tournament.” But Bradley does not intend to lose too much sleep over what lies ahead. “I sleep from 12am to 6am every night,” he said. “And that’s not going to change.” World Cup 2010 Group C Slovenia USA World Cup 2010 Sean Ingle guardian.co.uk
See the rest here:
World Cup 2010: USA’s Tim Howard offers Slovenia some trash talk
Have you been forced to kill the volume while watching World Cup matches?
Continued here:
Have you pressed mute because of the World Cup’s vuvuzelas?
Tagged espn, kill-the-volume, Score, Sports, stars, TMZ, volume-while, world
Maverick adventurer returns to New York and son he’s never seen To call Reid Stowe’s voyage “epic” barely seems to cover it. But as his 1,152 days spent continuously at sea came to an end today in New York, there seemed to be no other way of describing it. Stowe, 58, sailed his 70ft schooner, Anne, on the last short hop – from New Jersey to Manhattan – completing a trip that has taken him round the world, lasted more than three years, set a record for the longest continuous sea voyage, and presented him with the biggest surprise of all: the young son he had never seen. For although Stowe has been isolated for a very long time, he was not alone for the entire voyage. When he set sail in 2007, he was accompanied by his girlfriend Soanya Ahmad, a college graduate more than 30 years his junior, who had never been to sea and who had to be evacuated off the vessel after 300 days suffering from what she and Stowe assumed was an especially stubborn case of seasickness. Except that it wasn’t. It was morning sickness. Today, at the end of his voyage, Stowe was looking forward to finally meeting his 23-month-old son, Darshen. Since she left the boat the couple’s only communication has been by phone and email. They now plan to live together as a family and Stowe has even built a berth for Darshen on Anne. During their time apart, Ahmad had no fears over whether Stowe would stay faithful. “Reid’s not in a place where he can get distracted by anyone. So that eliminates any tensions arising from his end,” she wrote in a blog post explaining their relationship. For his entire voyage, Stowe has lived off his supplies, never putting into port or setting foot on land. He had dried fruit and vegetables, fresh fish and rainwater. Today, a mini-flotilla packed with family, friends and media followed him home in bright sunshine as he sailed up the Hudson River and docked in Manhattan. “It is an epic of exploration, like Shackleton or Scott. But with a much happier ending,” said his friend, Jeff Blumenfeld, who visited the schooner during her last full day at sea. Blumenfeld said Stowe had been in a great mood. He had served visitors, including US Customs, a meal of tea, crackers and cheese. “He was the perfect host, though the crackers were three years old. They still tasted delicious,” Blumenfeld said. Stowe has now been at sea for so long that many – including Stowe himself – have likened his experience of solitude to that which will be endured by astronauts on any future manned mission to Mars. “It is an experiment in self-exile,” said Blumenfeld, who showed Stowe an iPhone and asked: “Do you know what this is?” (Stowe did not. Nor, apparently, did he care). Stowe has triggered controversy in the sailing world. An artist and yoga enthusiast as well as a sailor, he is not the usual image of the reserved, stoical, long-distance sailor. He is a great espouser of New Age philosophy and has the air of a mystic. He built Anne himself and has lived on her since 1978, becoming well known as a sculptor and painter. Stowe’s journeys by sea have never been straightforward. He once sailed in the Atlantic for 197 days, tracing a course in the shape of a turtle. His current journey included the rough outline of a whale off South America. Such antics have drawn criticism. Several anti-Stowe websites have dismissed him as careless or an exhibitionist or a poor sailor. One blog, called 1,000 Days of Hell, depicted him as Don Quixote with his boat tilting for a windmill. “Reid is a hazard to navigation,” wrote one commentator on the Sailing Anarchy website. “He dead yet?” asked another. The abuse has shocked Charles Doane, a sailing writer who has followed Stowe’s journey and was among those waiting to greet him in New York. “I can think of no other long-distance ocean sailor who has ever endured such relentless and venomous public abuse while actively engaged in a voyage,” he wrote. It has not been an easy trip. Aside from the drama of Ahmad’s pregnancy, Stowe has battled the elements and catastrophe. After just 15 days at sea, Anne was hit by a freighter in the Atlantic and damaged so badly she drifted for a month. His sails were torn rounding Cape Horn and he even capsized once. His computer died several months ago, leaving him with just a satellite phone for contact. Yet Stowe persevered. Waiting for him today was a crowd of well-wishers. Whatever one thinks of Stowe’s motivation and methods, whether he is a madman or a genius or perhaps both, his achievement has gone down in history. “If you have a dream, if you want to do something unique, then he shows you can figure out a way,” said Blumenfeld. Sailing United States Paul Harris guardian.co.uk
Visit link:
Sailor artist Reid Stowe completes record 1,152-day voyage
After six seasons as the New Jersey Devils assistant coach and one season as a head coach in the American Hockey League, John MacLean will get his shot at head coaching in the NHL. The team announced the news on their website on Thursday morning and they’ll hold a press conference at 2 PM the same day. With the hiring, our Devils blog, In Lou We Trust , doesn’t see much changing in terms of the system in New Jersey. If
See the rest here:
Devils Set To Name John MacLean Head Coach
Tagged devils, erformance-on-saturday, hiring, News, shot-at-head, Sports, the-hiring, thursday, under-pressure, vuvuzela
Vincent Enyeama has kept Nigeria in this tournament, between his performance on Saturday denying Lionel Messi and his saves on Thursday to keep 10-man Nigeria even with Greece.
Go here to see the original:
World Cup 2010, Nigeria Vs. Greece: Vasilis Torosidis Puts Home Rebound To Give Greece 2-1, Second Half Lead
Tagged erformance-on-saturday, gilbert-arenas, Hollywood, lionel, little-vuvuzela, nigeria, saturday, saves, Sports, stars, streaming, TMZ, vincent-enyeama
Even great works of art can be improved with a little vuvuzela , something you can do with any website thanks to Vuvuzela Time. Take the url beginning with the “www”, and paste it in after this: “http://www.vuvuzela-time.co.uk/” …and any place on these internets becomes a howling storm of World Cup fury, South Africa-style.
Excerpt from:
Vuvuzela-ize Any Website, Or How To Instantly Lose Friends
Tagged celeb news, collaborators, happy-town, interscope, little-vuvuzela, Photo, pressure, south, Sports, stars, struck-out, the-1st, these-internets, TMZ
Breaking Sports Video
Pac-12 NCAA Sports
Justin Bieber Fan Site Breaking News
