Magic Johnson has said all the right things about what he needs to learn, at least enough to make you think he has a better chance as a former player to resemble Larry Bird as an NBA executive than Isiah Thomas.
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Great rivalries at the prep level are more exception to any rule, so the one that has developed between Findlay Prep and Bishop Gorman is to be welcomed and celebrated annually.
Kevin Durant was as bad as he gets Monday in a loss to the Dallas Mavericks, so the expectation for a fallen superstar is to see him rise again. Durant delivered 34 points Thursday to lead Oklahoma City to an NBA playoff win.
You can never underestimate the spirit of sports, those intangibles that make certain athletes rise to the occasion when all seems lost in a season, when your bench has been reduced to the point your basketball coach spent part of his day before a conference game against your biggest rival glancing at the school’s football roster.
It was Friday afternoon at the South Point, and the women’s basketball team from Stonehill College was playing Tarleton State in the annual Division II holiday tournament. That was one way to look at it.
When it comes to selling the idea that getting to the NBA would be best accomplished at a particular college, UNLV’s coaching staff ranks among the finest nationally in delivering such a message. Dave Rice and his assistants own the most important of factors in such recruiting wars: tangible evidence.
NCAA officials hope proposed rule changes, including a shorter shot clock, will help increase scoring in college basketball. But it looks as if the rule changes will make things much tougher for lesser-talented teams to upset bigger, faster, more athletic ones.
Is there such a thing as a season-defining moment for a college basketball team in just its fourth game? For UNLV, it will find out Saturday.
History is pretty clear on this: You can’t begin listing the greatest Final Four games and not mention many — Magic vs. Larry in 1979, Texas Western and its all-black starting five vs. Kentucky in 1966, Jim Valvano looking for someone to hug in 1983, Villanova slaying Georgetown in 1985 — before reaching games between UNLV and Duke in 1990 and 1991.
It almost wasn’t fair. The NBA Summer League in Las Vegas had for nine previous years grown in a positive direction. More teams. More fans. More interest.