On Saturday, I filed a blog about the NCAA Tournament — the NCAA men’s tournament — that began thusly:
Basketball
When it plays like this, scoring in transition, defending with size and length and purpose in the half court, making open shots out of set plays, forcing turnovers, having its way at both ends over 40 minutes, Arizona offers a basketball team that is nearly impossible to beat.
It’s a common reaction: One of the best players on one of the nation’s best college basketball teams is lost for the season due to injury and his teammates begin pressing.
Jacob Parker is what you might expect from a Cinderella story in the NCAA Tournament, a free spirit who happens to be the leading scorer on a team that has won 29 straight games and last lost Nov. 23.
It was as difficult and emotional a loss as you can imagine for UNLV’s basketball team. The Rebels played their hearts out for 45 minutes Saturday night and deserved a better fate.
Like the lunatic fan everyone despises but tolerates because the home team wins when he attends the party or the nutcase who retires to his basement to create more good luck for his favorite side, UNLV should immediately enroll in a local hotel’s rewards program.
Now that they have run the table again, in a different format with a playoff bracket and everything, it’s almost too easy to compare the NBA Summer League’s Golden State Warriors with author Roger Kahn’s “Boys of Summer.”
Everything is coming so easily for LeBron James. When he records a triple-double, it seems routine. When the pressure intensifies late in a playoff game, he now shines in the spotlight instead of shrinking in it.
Dunks are more exciting than free throws, and that’s stating the obvious, but Doug McDermott is the type of player who excites bettors even though he’s not a big-time dunker.
