Basketball

Miami Hotter: LeBron James and Company Size Up Repeat

The Miami Heat have come along way since the days of The Decision, transformed entirely at both team and personal levels to the point where they’re the hands down favorite to win the NBA championship. If you thought the Big Three were imposing three years ago, or even last year when they won their first title together, think again.

Baseball

Neither ran, nor sleet, nor snow…: Minor League Baseball in April

The Mississippi River has flooded parts of the Quad Cities stadium parking lot, encroaching on the ballpark and the downtown streets of Davenport, Iowa. This, not first overall MLB draft choice Carlos Correa, is the type of headline that’s dominated River Bandits media coverage for the past few weeks. Is baseball in April, unpredictable weather and all, worth it?

Reviews

Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig (2005)

It still boggles the mind to think about Lou Gehrig and his consecutive game streak. Sure, it was broken by Cal Ripken Jr. a few years back, but the 90s were a different time: Ripken played in a time of physical conditioning, specialized team doctors and better medicine. Gehrig played back when the trainer’s job was to rub players down.

Basketball

How the 2004 Detroit Pistons live on today

In 2004, the Detroit Pistons accomplished something that will probably never be done again: they won an NBA title without a superstar. It may seem somewhat premature to make such a bold declaration, but the facts certainly support it. We are fully entrenched in the era of the “superteam” and there is seemingly no looking back.

Reviews

Play Their Hearts Out (2010)

All the rankings of teenage basketball players and callous attempts to sign the top-rated high schooler in the country starts at the grassroots level. Schools go out of their way to make these young boys comfortable from the very second they enter high school as a freshman. You’ve heard about it before; new houses, new cars, the best shoes, and promises that even the best coaches sometimes can’t fulfill. It starts even earlier in Play Their Hearts Out.

Football

Could the Chiefs take an offensive lineman in the 2013 NFL Draft?

This year’s NFL draft starts on Thursday, and it may begin with a selection that’s more remarkable than it seems. The prevailing consensus amongst draft experts is that the Kansas City Chiefs will take an offensive tackle first overall, either Texas A & M’s Luke Joeckel or Central Michigan’s Eric Fisher. At first, that might appear to be a dull story: many see going for an offensive lineman with the top pick as both a safe move and a reflection of the lack of elite quarterback prospects in this draft. However, taking an offensive lineman first overall is highly unusual in the NFL’s recent history, and that represents an important story in its own right.

Baseball

Jeffrey Loria and the Par 50

With all this talk about the must-watch storylines that have already unfolded in this young Major League Baseball season, it’s been easy to overlook the battle that the Miami Marlins and Houston Astros are fighting for the title have cellar dweller in the big leagues. While the Astros make a compelling case, few have mastered futility as well as Jeffrey Loria.

Other Sports

The Boston Marathon: What went Wrong

The marathon is a celebration of Pheidippides, whom according to legend, was a messenger in the battle of Marathon, running from the battle all the way to Athens to tell the people that the Persians had been defeated. He then collapsed and died. The legendary run was thought to have been about 26.2 miles, which was adopted as the official marathon distance.

Other Sports

The Boston Marathon: Healing with Sports

Sports are supposed to be fun. Sports are supposed to be an escape from the rest of the world. The Boston Marathon is supposed to be a celebration of human accomplishment. Patriot’s Day in Massachusetts is supposed to honor the brave men and women that fought to found this nation. On April 15, everything the day and the marathon were supposed to be became targets, just the same as the innocent men and women around the blast zone.

Hockey

The necessary presence of NHL players at the Olympics

With fewer than eight months until the puck drops on the Olympic hockey tournament in Sochi, Russia on February 8, 2014, it is still undecided whether or not NHL players will be making the trip to represent their home countries. The NHL along with the International Olympic Committee and International Ice Hockey Federation have been making progress, but work still remains to be done, mainly hammering out details on travel and insurance, to see whether or not NHL players will participate as they have done since 1998.