The most dominant football team in Alberta is not in the Canadian Football League, but in Canadian Interuniversity Sport. On Saturday night at McMahon Stadium, the University of Calgary Dinos (7-1) will host the University of Manitoba in the Hardy Cup semi-final (Saturday, SHAW TV, 5pm).
Quarterback Eric Dzwilewski of Boise, Idaho set a Canada West Conference record with a 70.6 completion percentage, and helped set team records for most points, touchdowns, first downs, passing yards, completions and total yards of offense in 2012.
The 2012-13 NBA season starts Tuesday. Yes, I know the Los Angeles Lakers now have Dwight Howard and Steve Nash, the Miami Heat have Ray Allen and the Toronto Raptors have Kyle Lowry and Landry Fields, but I think it is time to look at other significant off-season moves in the offseason.
The Dallas Mavericks have changed their roster significantly, and got younger in the process. In are German center Chris Kaman (from New Orleans), shooting guard O.J. Mayo (from Memphis) and point guard Darren Collison (from Indiana). All three averaged in double digits in scoring. Out meanwhile are Jason Kidd (New York) and Jason Terry (Boston).
Another team that has a completely different look are the Minnesota Timberwolves, who are gambling on Russian forward Andrei Kirilenko from Utah (11.7 ppg) and Brandon Roy from Portland who is coming out of retirement at the age of 28.
Just when you think you’ve seen it all, along comes the internet with some crazy new stuff to flip the script on you!
This week on “When Sports Go Viral,” that is exactly what happens – from paper airplane world records to singing athletes to funny car commercials involving athletes, it’s all here for your perusal. Oh yes, and there’s some Auto-Tune.
Remember the video of Tim Tebow reading Dr. Seuss? Well, you had to know this was coming:
I watched the upstart Minnesota Timberwolves for the first time last night and was very impressed.
The Timberwolves went into Los Angeles and beat a Clippers team 109-97. A major reason for their victory is that Head Coach Rick Adelman seemed to focus defensively on all of the Clippers except their two star players– Chris Paul and Blake Griffin.
While doing play-by-play for the University of Calgary Dinos Women’s Basketball team in 2003, I saw Dinos’ head coach Shawnee Harle execute a similar defensive strategy against the University of Winnipeg to perfection. The fundamental approach is let the entire team you are facing beat you.
Tactically, Rick Adelman is an underrated basketball genious. Even though he has never won an NBA Finals, he has gone 963-633 while coaching the Portland Trail Blazers, Golden State Warriors, Sacramento Kings, Houston Rockets and now Minnesota Timberwolves. What he has been able to do in Minnesota is amazing. Last season the Timberwolves were the worst team in the NBA defensively. Now they’re in the middle of the pack, and Minnesota is fighting for a playoff spot.
All throughout the game it went through my head, is why didn’t the Raptors make more of a push for Adelman when they had the chance after being fired by the Rockets? Why did they decide to settle on Dwane Casey instead? Adelman has more experience and has never been afraid to coach in smaller, less profile basketball markets. The Raptors blew an opportunity here my not going after the best candidate on the market stronger.
Kobe Bryant’s father is returning to an elite role in the WNBA.
According to the Calgary Sun, Joe Bryant is taking over from Jennifer Gillom as the head coach of the Los Angeles Sparks.
This will be Bryant’s second time at the helm of the Sparks. He coached the team from 2005-07 and had a regular season record of 29-11 over that time. In the NBA, Bryant played for the Philadelphia 76ers, San Diego Clippers and Houston Rockets from 1975-83.
After leaving Houston in 1983, Bryant spent seven years playing professional basketball in Italy. Since 1992, Bryant has coached in the NCAA, Japan and Italy.
The Toronto Raptors have found their replacement for Jay Triano.
On Tuesday, the Raptors will announce Dwane Casey as the eighth head coach in franchise history.
Casey spent last year as an assistant coach for the NBA Champion Dallas Mavericks. Considered a defensive minded specialist, Casey was credited for putting together outstanding creative schemes in limiting the offensive output by Miami Heat star LeBron James.
Casey does have some head coaching experience as well. From June 2005 to January 2007, he was the head coach of the Minnesota Timberwolves and posted a record of 43-59.
Another reason Casey got a brownie point from General Manager Bryan Colangelo in my opinion, is because he knows the international game as well. Casey spent five years as a head coach in Japan before returning to the NBA where he spent eleven years in the Seattle Supersonics’ organization.
Colangelo is expected to keep P.J. Carlesimo as Casey’s assistant. Last year the Raptors had a disappointing 22-60 record, the third worst record in the entire NBA.
The Toronto Raptors won’t have Jay Triano as their head coach next season.
Triano will take on a new role as Special Assistant to Raptors’ President and General Manager Bryan Colangelo.
The Raptors were the third worst team in the NBA this season with a record of 22-60. Only the Cleveland Cavaliers (19-63) and Minnesota Timberwolves (17-65) were worse.
Triano, from Niagara Falls, Ontario, cannot be blamed exclusively for the Raptors’ downfall this season. The Raptors were not in a great position to win, having lost their best player, Chris Bosh to the Miami Heat last summer.
The Raptors were just not in a financial position to go on the free agent market and replace a player of Bosh’s talents last year.
Injuries were also a major factor. Jose Calderon, Andrea Bargnani, Leandro Barbosa and Linas Kleiza all missed significant time due to various ailments.
Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert will have a couple of big decisions to make in just over a month, which he hopes will ease the pain of “The” Decision.
The Cavs won the NBA Draft Lottery on Tuesday night after the club’s first season without LeBron James, who left for Miami last summer. Represented on stage by Gilbert’s 14-year-old son Nick, Cleveland walked away with the first and fourth picks thanks to a trade with the LA Clippers back in February.
While the 2011 draft pool isn’t seen as being incredibly deep, Gilbert and the Cavaliers still have a pretty solid opportunity here to right a ship that was left in tatters by the departure of King James. (After the jump: Was the Lottery fixed? Plus some sick Taj Gibson dunks…) (more…)
The Miami Heat didn’t have to wait long for a chance to enact a bit of revenge for their worst loss of the season…but could they do it?
On March 4th, the San Antonio Spurs beat the Heat by 30 points, which came a night after Miami blew a huge lead in a loss to Orlando and a few days before they were said to be crying in the locker room following a loss to the Bulls.
The sports world had a good laugh at their expense over “Crygate,” but the Heat seem to have really pulled it together (at least for now) since being embarrassed by their head coach, Erik Spoelstra.
Miami beat the LA Lakers last Thursday, they whooped the Grizzlies on Saturday and on Monday, the Heat recorded the biggest win of them all: a 110-80 victory over the Spurs. That’s right, they lost by 30 in Texas and won by 30 at AmericanAirlines Arena! (more…)
With “Crygate” now in their rear view mirrors (despite the rest of us still laughing about it), the Miami Heat are gearing up for a meeting with the LA Lakers tonight at AmericanAirlines Arena.
They beat the Lake Show 96-80 back on Christmas day, but a lot has changed since then in FLA! For starters, that last win came in the middle of a run that saw the Heat take 21 of 22 games. At that point I think we all kind of figured that they had sorted out how to win games together and would be unstoppable for the rest of the season. Oh, how wrong we were!
After that streak was over they lost four in a row, won 13 of 16 and now come into tonight’s action having lost five straight. They’re not just losing either, they’re blowing huge leads, getting blown out or losing tight games and (allegedly) crying about it in the locker room afterwards.
I haven’t weighed in on “Crygate” until now, but I think it’s time. Are you ready? (more…)
It hasn’t been a banner season for Jay Triano and the Toronto Raptors, and that was more than evident on Monday night.
A shorthanded Raps team fell prey to some last-second heroics from Rudy Gay to win the game for the Memphis Grizzlies, an eighth straight loss for the fourth-worst team in the entire NBA. The hurt doesn’t end there though.
When you’re not winning and things aren’t really going well, you try to hang onto the small victories out there on the court, to give you something to feel good about. Well, the Raps have one less accomplishment in the works as a streak of consecutive games with a three-pointer came to an end on Monday too.
Before going 0-for-13 in that loss to the former Vancouver Grizzlies, the Raptors went 986 straight games with at least one swish from beyond the arc – an NBA record dating back to February 26th, 1999. To put into perspective just how long ago the streak began, here are some tidbits from the Raps website (from when the streak hit a decade in 2009) and some of my own. (more…)
The most dominant football team in Alberta is not in the Canadian Football League, but in Canadian Interuniversity Sport. On Saturday night at McMahon Stadium, the University of Calgary Dinos (7-1) will host the University of Manitoba in the Hardy Cup semi-final (Saturday, SHAW TV, 5pm).
Gilbert’s “Decision”
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