Kamis, 30 Mei 2019

The superstar-size shadow lingering over these Finals - ESPN

8:14 AM ET

  • Tim BontempsESPN

TORONTO -- The 2019 NBA Finals, which have the makings of a potential all-time classic on the court, will be played amid a sea of speculation from across the league over the futures of Kevin Durant and Kawhi Leonard.

And, as the Golden State Warriors and Toronto Raptors face off over the next four to seven games, several other teams will be paying attention not to the outcome, but to the future of the two stars, hoping to lure them away next season.

In the midst of this age of player empowerment in the NBA, it is fitting that the league's championship series will serve as the backdrop to an ongoing discussion -- one both teams have weathered all season long -- over what decisions Durant and Leonard will make a month from now.

Both the Warriors and Raptors deserve credit for how they have managed to come so far this season with the cloud of Durant and Leonard's respective free agencies hanging over their heads. Both teams have had low points, from the infamous blowup between Durant and Draymond Green on the court in Los Angeles against the Clippers in November to the Raptors being annihilated in Leonard's return to San Antonio in early January.

But in the end, those were simply signpost moments along the way in seasons that will end, as both teams had hoped and expected, in the Finals. At media day, Raptors president Masai Ujiri, who made the daring trade to bring Leonard to Toronto last summer, addressed the media before either team, and was asked directly about Leonard's future in Toronto.

"I think when [Leonard] came here he made it clear he wanted to be healthy," Ujiri said Wednesday morning at a news conference ahead of Game 1 Thursday night. "He wants to play on a good team that would compete, and I think kudos to [director of sports science] Alex McKechnie and Kawhi's team that I think they have worked together to get him slowly back to playing at this level after missing, playing only nine games last year.

"I think when he sees with the city, the fan base, basketball, I think coaching, everything almost has to come together. I think that was an incredible moment in Game 7 with that shot. All these things I think naturally they have to come together, and I think we're blessed here in Toronto that it's slowly coming together for us. But the trust, you hope to build that trust where at the end of the day we know that there are two tough moments in sports, in the job that we do that make it very, very difficult, and that's trading a player and when a player leaves in free agency. We all have to prepare ourselves for everything, and I think we have built this trust in a way that whatever it is, I think we would have prepared ourselves."

The Warriors have faced similar questions about Durant all season. From the moment Golden State landed the former MVP three years ago, teams around the league waited for the time this dynastic run for Golden State would begin to fade -- either because of injury, or because of a defection via free agency or trade.

Durant -- who will miss at least Game 1 because of his lingering calf injury -- could bring that potential fade to fruition by deciding to leave when he becomes an unrestricted free agent after the season.

In doing so, he would not only turn a Warriors team that has looked unstoppable for three seasons into a simply great team, but he'd also give hope to several teams -- most notably the New York Knicks and Los Angeles Clippers -- that one of the greatest players of this (or any) generation will choose to join them come July.

The same could be said for Leonard, who seemed destined to wind up in Los Angeles even before the Raptors acquired him in a trade with the San Antonio Spurs. But while the Clippers and Los Angeles Lakers would still hope to land Leonard this summer, his magical playoff run in Toronto -- including an all-time great buzzer-beater in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference semifinals to defeat the Philadelphia 76ers -- and the way the Raptors have successfully managed his health have given rise to a belief that he could, in fact, remain north of the border beyond this season.

The endless speculation around his future could have easily unsettled, and ultimately doomed, the Raptors. Instead, they -- and the Warriors -- managed to rise above the noise.

Instead, they allowed themselves to emerge from hellacious fights during these playoffs -- the Warriors winning the final two games of the Western Conference semifinals against the Houston Rockets with Durant out injured, and the Raptors surviving slugfests against first the Sixers and then the Milwaukee Bucks in the Eastern Conference finals -- unscathed.

"As each series goes [by], you get more media, or asked more questions about what's going on," Leonard said. "But I think once this is over, it's still between the lines. You're playing five-on-five. We're still playing basketball. We have a scheme. [So] just focus on that, and don't focus on the outside attention.

"We know what we need to do here inside this locker room every day, so don't pay attention to people who are not in your locker room."

That is a formula both teams have found solace -- and success -- in this season. But it hasn't erased the speculation from their lives. And, as this series continues to progress, the noise may only grow louder.

Every Toronto victory or defeat during this postseason has become a mini-referendum on Ujiri's franchise-changing experiment to bring Leonard to Toronto last summer. That no one has any idea whether this run is having any impact on Leonard's thinking is beside the point; it hasn't stopped anyone from constantly wondering whether it has.

Meanwhile, Durant exiting the stage in Game 5 of the Western Conference semifinals with a calf injury has added a new dynamic to the ongoing drama over his future. With the Warriors rattling off six straight wins (including Game 5) without him, the question of whether Golden State is better without him has, again, become a talking point.

So, too, has whether the Warriors should even bring back Durant before they lose a game, no matter when he's ready to play, or what it would mean if Golden State brings him back and the team's strong play without him fades away.

All year long, these two teams have been working toward this final goal, building toward the crescendo of arriving here at the NBA Finals hoping to make history. Now, that goal is within their reach, and both sides are fully capable of achieving it.

But rather than the focus solely being on that, and how this series plays out, the fight over the futures of Durant and Leonard rages on. From here to Oakland, from New York to Los Angeles, the chase is on to secure the services of two of the game's premier talents.

Even the league's showcase event -- the one everyone in the league wants to be in -- isn't big enough to make us forget that.

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http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/26850312/the-superstar-size-shadow-lingering-finals

2019-05-30 11:56:23Z
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Kawhi Leonard Delivers His Message During Raptors’ Run to NBA Finals - The Ringer

With a little under seven minutes left in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference finals between the Toronto Raptors and the Milwaukee Bucks, a play took place that seemed to symbolize not only the Raptors’ delirious, improbable victory in the game, and not only their delirious, improbable victory in the series, but also their delirious, improbable run through the 2019 playoffs. In the moment, I would have sworn it symbolized even more than that—something like hope, and the possibility of justice, and maybe life itself—but we will see about that as we go along.

The play, like the rest of the Raptors’ season, was first and foremost a message from Kawhi Leonard. The Bucks’ Khris Middleton had taken the ball inside Milwaukee’s 3-point line. To get around his defender, Toronto’s Fred VanVleet, Middleton tried to dribble behind his back, a perfectly normal move under most circumstances, but one that becomes a risky circus stunt against a defense as pitilessly well-honed as the Raptors’. Middleton bobbled the ball, just slightly, but enough to give Toronto’s Kyle Lowry an opening. Lowry snatched the ball away from Middleton and flew down the court. He was chased, and almost caught, by the Bucks’ Giannis Antetokounmpo, the freakishly talented 24-year-old Greek superstar who led Milwaukee to the best record in the NBA this year and whom many people think is the league’s best player. Sensing Giannis’s fluorescent-orange shoes closing in on him, Lowry pulled up in the paint to protect the ball, then laid it off to the trailing Kawhi, who now had a clear path to the basket—clear, that is, except that Giannis, the probable league MVP, a player four inches taller and who had recently blocked the 7-foot Joel Embiid four times in one game, was standing directly in his path.

Kawhi didn’t hesitate. In one smooth motion, he scooped the ball up and leapt toward Giannis and the rim. He had already done so many unlikely things in these playoffs, including sinking the first series-clinching Game 7 buzzer-beater in NBA history—against the 76ers in the previous round, on a shot that bounced four times on the rim before falling through—that dunking on Giannis might have seemed like a matter of course. Toronto had trailed by 15 in the game and had come back to lead by six; Toronto had trailed by two games in the series and had come back to lead 3-2. Kawhi had been putting up Jordanesque numbers for weeks, scattering 30-point games in his wake like Gretel tossing bread crumbs in the forest. The Raptors had acquired the aura of a team for which nothing is impossible, and Leonard’s surreally great playoff performances were the major reason why.

Still, for the fraction of a second that the two stars rose toward each other in the air, it was hard to feel that Kawhi had the advantage, either in this exchange or in the flash-vision of the NBA’s future that hung on the outcome of the play. Giannis was a natural face for the league: telegenic, charismatic, at ease in his own skin, a player people loved to talk about. He had done everything the right way, embracing the city of Milwaukee after the Bucks drafted him in 2013, projecting an image fully in keeping with the NBA’s social media-era PR model—approachable but larger than life, awe-inspiring yet fun. It was easy to imagine him sliding into the kind of lovable, lucrative fame-space that Steph Curry so easily occupies and from which Kevin Durant seems determined to eject himself. A Warriors-Bucks Finals made a certain aesthetic sense: With LeBron James temporarily lost to the nihilistic chaos-rodeo he dreamed up for himself in Los Angeles, it would pit the league’s most dominant current icons with its most obvious future one.

Kawhi, by contrast, was … what’s the word? Enigmatic? There was nothing obvious about him. Where Giannis had stage presence, Kawhi had a kind of unreadable contrariness, a quality of being somewhere else even when he was standing right in front of you. From a marketing standpoint, he was a nightmare. He did his own thing without seeming to care whether it rubbed anyone, or everyone, the wrong way. He had no evident interest in crafting a narrative or explaining himself. He wasn’t provocative in a flashy, audience-focused way, as, say, Dennis Rodman was; what made him difficult was his indifference to being watched. Coming off a season-ruining injury, he’d walked out on San Antonio, an old-school franchise where stars are expected to sip Château d’Yquem with Gregg Popovich until death swallows time, and been traded to the Raptors to spend one mildly baffling season until his likely free agency this summer. Fans didn’t hate him, exactly; you have to understand someone, or think you do, to hate them, and Kawhi was too elusive to be understood. There was something about him that couldn’t be easily incorporated within the image of an elite NBA star in 2019—something that not only didn’t fit the image but that invisibly seemed to repel it, as if Kawhi and fame were magnets turned the wrong way around.

The leaning one-handed dunk that Kawhi Leonard threw down over Giannis Antetokounmpo wasn’t the prettiest or the most acrobatic dunk I have ever seen. But it had the same quality of shocking, off-kilter inevitability that many of Kawhi’s best moments share, that strange grace of retroactive fatedness: A split second before they happen, you could not imagine them happening; a split second afterward, you cannot imagine how anything else ever could have. Four bounces on the rim? Of course!

The dunk turned a six-point lead into an eight-point lead and contributed mightily to Toronto reaching its first-ever NBA Finals. It turned Twitter, and Drake’s brain, inside out. It set up a tactically fascinating Warriors-Raptors matchup that tips off tonight in Toronto. I’m not dwelling on it for any of those reasons, though. I’m dwelling on it because it was the moment when I first consciously recognized how utterly satisfying I find it to watch Kawhi Leonard, the ultimate basketball plot twist, laying waste to the orderly NBA. And it was the first moment when I consciously realized why.

Kawhi is a misfit, like most of us in this mad and maddening world. When life is easy—when you get the big tax refund you weren’t expecting, when your car arrives just as the rain starts, when the cool kids mysteriously want to be your friend—then maybe you can identify with Steph Curry. When your boss praises your potential, when you feel you have the respect and admiration you know in your heart you have earned, then maybe Giannis is your natural avatar. But when you feel misunderstood, you want someone like Kawhi to show you that it’s possible to win even when you’re odd and out of place. He’s the basketball star for everyone who missed out on an invitation to life’s red carpet. He’s the player for the artist who didn’t get the grant, the photographer who doesn’t get likes on Instagram, the singleton whose crushes don’t swipe right. He’s the player for the parent whose kid didn’t make honor roll and the worker who got out-talked and out-smiled for the promotion. His game is a reminder that the universe’s golden children don’t have a monopoly on brilliance—that you can be outside the circle of prestige and still be great, and maybe, eventually, be vindicated.

Do the Raptors have a chance in the Finals? It’s a long shot. But then, it’s supposed to be. If there was ever a sports team of, by, and for the universe’s golden children, it’s the Warriors, and when you are favored by definition you are likely also to be favored on the court. Kawhi will have to sustain what might be an impossible level of brilliance just to keep it close. To my mind, this is the most fascinating story the NBA has to offer this year, precisely because it seems less prepackaged and TV-sculpted than the other, more obvious stories we could have gotten in its place. Whatever happens, Kawhi has made basketball more exciting, and in a strange way more accessible, by being, inaccessibly, himself.

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https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/5/30/18645329/kawhi-leonard-nba-plot-twist-toronto-raptors-nba-finals

2019-05-30 10:20:00Z
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Sarri's agent to meet Chelsea today to free the manager: the scenario - Calciomercato.com english news

30 May at 11:45

Yesterday's Europa League final against Arsenal might have been Maurizio Sarri's final match as Chelsea's coach, only one year after arriving at the Stamford Bridge to replace Antonio Conte.

As reported by Gazzetta dello Sport, Sarri's agent Fali Ramadani will likely meet Marina Granovskaia today to try and free the manager from his Chelsea commitments.

The English club continues to demand a compensation of about 5.5 million euros to free Sarri for a potential move to Juventus, even though there are reports of AC Milan's interest in the manager as well.

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https://www.calciomercato.com/en/news/sarri-s-agent-to-meet-chelsea-today-to-free-the-manager-the-scen-83407

2019-05-30 09:45:00Z
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Van Dijk 'wouldn't make much difference' to Arsenal - Football365.com

Date published: Thursday 30th May 2019 10:04

Lee Dixon claims that even Liverpool defender Virgil van Dijk couldn’t “make much difference” to the current Arsenal defence.

The Gunners conceded 12 more than any other top five Premier League side this season with 51 goals against to their 73 scored.

Former Arsenal defender Dixon was far from impressed with what he saw from Unai Emery’s men as they shipped four goals in their Europa League final defeat to Chelsea.

And Dixon reckons it is about a change in “mentality” at the club rather than a change in personnel that will ultimately improve their leaky rearguard.

“One player, I’m telling you, you put [Virgil] van Dijk in that back four at the moment, the way that the team is set up without the ball it wouldn’t make much difference,” Dixon told BBC Radio Five Live.

“It’s about the mentality of changing that around, they’ve not been good without the ball for years now and that takes more than one player, it takes more than five minutes. It takes a lot of work and effort on the training pitch.”

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https://www.football365.com/news/van-dijk-wouldnt-make-much-difference-to-arsenal

2019-05-30 09:04:52Z
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Chicago Cubs' Albert Almora Jr. Foul Ball Strikes Young Fan - NPR

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A young child is carried from the stands after being injured by a foul ball off the bat of Chicago Cubs' Albert Almora Jr. during the fourth inning of a baseball game against the Houston Astros Wednesday. David J. Phillip/AP hide caption

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David J. Phillip/AP

A young child was struck by a foul ball off the bat of Cubs outfielder Albert Almora Jr. in a terrifying scene during the fourth inning of Wednesday's nationally televised game in Houston.

Almora, who kept his eyes on the ball as it whizzed past the third base line, passed the existing safety netting and into the stands at Minute Maid Park, clasped his head in his hands and let out a cry as fans gasped. Grief-stricken, he then fell to his knees burying his face in his arms. Fellow teammate Jason Heyward and manager Joe Maddon attempted to console him as he cried.

Meanwhile, the Astros infield also dropped to their knees as a man, who seemed to be with the girl, scooped her up and rushed the child up the stadium stairs.

Almora struggled to play through the remainder of the inning. When it was over, he walked into the stands where he spoke with a security guard. The conversation ended in an embrace with Almora becoming overcome with emotion.

"All we heard was screaming," said David LeVasseur told the Houston Chronicle. "We saw this dad pick up a child and run up the stairs. He took off running."

LeVasseur said the ball eventually landed at his feet.

"I (came) upstairs and see the first-aid guys up there and the dad is holding the girl. She (was) alert, she's conscious, she's fine. I was just going to give somebody in the family the ball. They kind of, naturally, shook it off. I asked the first-aid guy if she was OK and he said he didn't know."

In a statement the Astros confirmed the girl was taken to the hospital but offered no details on her condition. "We are not able to disclose any further details at this time. The Astros send our thoughts and prayers to the entire family," the team said.

Speaking with reporters following the game, Almora said, "As soon as I hit it, the first person I locked eyes on was her." He said the rest of the at-bat "was kind of a blur."

"I had to try to keep my composure during that at-bat, but when that half-inning was over I just couldn't hold it anymore," he added.

In 2017 New York Yankee Todd Frazier hit a foul ball that struck a young girl in the stands. The incident renewed the debate over more extensive protection for fans in major league ballparks, eventually leading all 30 teams to implement extended safety nets in 2018.

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https://www.npr.org/2019/05/30/728182041/child-struck-by-foul-ball-at-cubs-astros-game

2019-05-30 08:11:00Z
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Gunnarsson's OT plea: 'Need one more chance' - ESPN

4:34 AM ET

  • Greg WyshynskiESPN

BOSTON -- St. Louis Blues defenseman Carl Gunnarsson struck up a conversation with coach Craig Berube in the team's restroom before Game 2's overtime against the Boston Bruins on Wednesday night.

This would become the postseason's most unlikely setting for one of its grandest predictions.

As Blues forward Oskar Sundqvist relayed afterward, Berube told the team that he was using the bathroom after the third period when Gunnarsson walked up and stood next to him.

"And all Gunnarsson said to him was, 'I just need one more chance,'" Sundqvist said. "It was true, apparently. It worked out."

After ringing the puck off the post late in the third period, Gunnarsson scored the winning goal in Game 2 at 3 minutes, 51 seconds of overtime, draining a shot past Tuukka Rask from the blue line on a delayed penalty against Boston.

The Blues' 3-2 victory knotted the Stanley Cup Final at a game apiece. Game 3 is set for Saturday in St. Louis.

It was Gunnarsson's first career playoff goal in his 57th career postseason game -- and just the third time in NHL history that a player's maiden playoff tally came in overtime of a Stanley Cup Final game.

"I don't score too many, but nothing comes even close to this," Gunnarsson said. "So it's a pretty good feeling right now."

Gunnarsson had every reason to make his powder room proclamation, because he had beaten Rask twice before at TD Garden this season. On Jan. 17, he blasted a shot from the slot past Rask in a Blues win, one of just three goals he scored in an injury-riddled season. On Wednesday night in Game 2, with 1:57 left in the third period of a 2-2 game, Gunnarsson beat Rask with a shot, but it hit the iron and trickled away.

"[I shot it] as hard as I could, yeah," Gunnarsson said of his third-period shot. "I knew I had it past him, but then I saw it sitting in the crease. I was hoping someone would poke it in, but that didn't happen.

"But luckily, I was able to score in the OT."

Blues defenseman Colton Parayko said Gunnarsson made that "one more chance" count.

"That was an absolutely howitzer," Parayko said of the winner. "He's an unbelievable defender. I've been here for four years, and he does it all. He's been outstanding."

Despite his success in Boston, Gunnarsson isn't exactly known for his offensive acumen.

"I liked hearing it," Berube said of Gunnarsson's talk before overtime. "He hit the post in the third there and he felt good about himself, obviously, which he should have. He had a hell of a game, I thought, and I'm really happy for him that he ended up getting that game winner."

It was the kind of moment the Blues searched for in their Game 1 loss to the Bruins, needing someone to make a play as St. Louis trailed by a goal deep into the third period. In Game 2, the Blues were a different team in a variety of ways -- controlling the game with their forechecking, keeping the Bruins' offense in check and getting high-danger scoring opportunities against Rask deep into the game.

But the Blues needed a play in overtime, and Gunnarsson provided it.

"First game, we weren't happy; today, we came out flying, and I think we played a great game for 60-plus minutes," Gunnarsson said. "That's just the team we are. We come back like that. We never give up. For me to put it in there and get the winner, it's a great feeling."

The goal gave the Blues their first Stanley Cup Final victory in franchise history, sending the series back to St. Louis, where a sold-out watch party was flush with anticipation for Saturday's Game 3.

Gunnarsson's bathroom proclamation becomes the latest entry in Stanley Cup playoffs lore.

"You don't hear that story very often. That's not a place to have a conversation," Blues captain Alex Pietrangelo said. "But I guess it works."

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http://www.espn.com/nhl/story/_/id/26852417/need-one-more-chance

2019-05-30 05:50:38Z
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Rabu, 29 Mei 2019

White Sox employee hits photographer with terrible first pitch - UPI News

May 29 (UPI) -- A Chicago White Sox employee drilled a photographer with her ceremonial first pitch before the team's win against the Kansas City Royals.

The high and very outside offering came before Chicago's 4-3 victory on Tuesday at Guaranteed Rate Field in Chicago. The woman, who was being honored for Employee of the Month, took the hill and prepared to throw the pitch to White Sox pitcher Evan Marshall, who was acting as temporary catcher.

She settled in for the offering, before releasing the ball. The pitch sailed to her left, hitting team photographer, Darren Georgia, who was standing just feet away. The ball slammed into his camera as he backpedaled away from the area.

"I honestly didn't even see it coming," Georgia told NBC Sports Chicago. "I took the photo and it just hit the camera. It didn't hit my head. The camera is OK. I'm OK. I'm just shocked."

Georgia said he was able to snap a photo just before being hit by the ball. The White Sox posted the photo on Twitter.

A Twitter user tweeted that she is the woman's daughter.

"On behalf of my mother, we would like to extend our apologies!!! Hope you got a good shot out of it," she tweeted.

She also tweeted a photo of the ball, which had a scuff mark on it.

The White Sox host the Royals again at 8:10 p.m. Wednesday in Chicago.

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https://www.upi.com/Sports_News/MLB/2019/05/29/White-Sox-employee-hits-photographer-with-terrible-first-pitch/5441559133916/

2019-05-29 13:19:59Z
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