It Ain’t the Thunder’s Night

Dang. The Oklahoma City Thunder lost:

The Los Angeles Lakers are moving on — battered and bruised, but not beaten.

Pau Gasol putback a missed jumper by Kobe Bryant with a half-second left and the defending champion Lakers survived a late comeback effort by Oklahoma City and eliminated the Thunder 95-94 in Game 6 of the first-round playoff series on Friday night.

“This is the playoffs. This is what it’s about,” Los Angeles coach Phil Jackson said. “When you have teams that have won 50 games in the course of a season like this Thunder team did, they have a sense of pride about them. They can play a game that’s obviously not far off of what our mark is or was this season.

Well, it was fun while it lasted. And for a team that’s only be in existence two years, not a bad performance at all. Way to go, Thunder.

Sam Bradford Picked First

The things I know about sports? Squat. But even I know enough that this is good news:

Holding a St. Louis Rams jersey with his name already stitched on the back, Sam Bradford flashed a million-dollar smile.

Make that multi-million.

The Oklahoma native and Sooner superstar was the first overall pick of the NFL Draft on Thursday night. With that spot comes great prestige, great clout and great wealth. But even with the $50 million or so that Bradford will be guaranteed — his contract will be a paltry $25 million, plus or minus a few million — nothing will be greater than the expectations that he now faces.

We saw him once at a Waffle House in Norman. Or, rather, Clara did. We came in and Clara said that was Sam Bradford. I thought she meant the guy working the grill. Clara rolled her eyes and said, “No, the guy who went by us when we came in the door.” Oh. I’m a little out of touch with this stuff.

Anyway. Good for Bradford. Good for Oklahoma.

Agassi’s Road to Redemption

I’m by no stretch of anyone’s imagination a fan of sports but I like stories of personal redemption and it looks like Andre Agassi’s autobiography, “Open,” promises to tell a good story about his:

Whether he was the bratty, scrawny teenager from Las Vegas bursting onto the tennis scene in 1986 or the bald, buff 36-year-old elder statesman who received an emotional eight-minute standing ovation at the U.S. Open when he retired in 2006, Andre Agassi always seemed as beset by inner demons as by his opponents across the net. Why?

We begin to glean the answer with the publication of “Open,” a memoir that describes his personal odyssey with brio and unvarnished candor. Looming throughout Mr. Agassi’s fascinating life has been the shadow of his overbearing father, a former Olympic boxer from Iran. Violent and foulmouthed, he single-mindedly groomed his son for tennis greatness even before he could walk. The results were phenomenal: At age four, Andre had already hit with Jimmy Connors; at age seven, he hustled the former football champion Jim Brown out of $500 in a set; at age 16, he turned pro. Though his work ethic was questionable, his blistering forehand helped redefine the game—indeed, the transformation of tennis from serve-and -volley play to today’s big groundstrokes was in many ways Mr. Agassi’s doing.

Agassi’s story has a happy ending and serves to remind us that redemption always available to us. All we have to do is ask and then take action.

Tony Dorsett Pulls a Kanye

I’m not a huge follower of sports – I know, big surprise – but this caught my eye. Tony Dorsett rags on Tony Romo:

I don’t know why on God’s earth Tony Romo has been anointed a superstar in the National Football League. Tony is very young in his career. Not to say you can’t be young in your career and be a superstar because you’ve got one up there in Minnesota in Adrian Peterson.

“But the thing is this: You have a guy who hasn’t done much, and quarterbacks in the NFL, most of them go through this growing curve. He hasn’t gone through that growing curve, but he was anointed this great player all of a sudden. Now he’s having to live up to that. And obviously Tony has some deficiencies.

“He’s a good player who’s still learning how to play in the NFL, and I think the media has given him too much credit for doing nothing. He hasn’t done anything really in the NFL to deserve all the recognition and visibility he’s gotten so far.

Since I don’t know much about Romo or Peterson, I have to rely on the writer of the piece to tell me that Peterson is a lot like Romo. The difference? Romo had a bad game. Peterson didn’t. So that makes it worth Dorsett’s time to lay into Romo.

Like the Kanye West incident, Dorsett uses his status and comes across as oafish about another player who, for whatever reason, isn’t his favorite.

Poor form, old sport. It’s just just not done.

An Interview with Football Coach Tony Dungy

I know it’s hard to feel anything but animosity towards pro-footballer Michael Vick but Coach Tony Dungy see something else in Vick’s circumstances:

Tony Dungy’s favorite verse in the Bible is Matthew 16:26: “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world but forfeit his soul?”

“In my 30 years in the NFL, I’ve seen a lot of that,” says the first African-American head coach to win a Super Bowl and a best-selling author of inspirational books. “All the notoriety, all the accolades, all the money that people could get, and you see guys that aren’t happy, and have personal problems because they haven’t directed their lives toward something that’s going to be long lasting.”

In his case, faith and family provide direction. For years he has worked through his prison ministry and mentored kids and families, dads above all, and naturally his players. But the troubled soul he has on his mind, sitting over an orange juice at his hotel in midtown Manhattan Thursday, is Michael Vick.

I don’t follow sports and I don’t much like what Vick did with his dogs but he’s served the punishment he was given and now seems to be seeking redemption. We ask for our own sins to be forgiven as we forgive others so it’s only right we include the likes of Vick in that forgiveness. As far as we know, Vick’s road to redemption appears genuine. Dungy sets a tough example for us to follow but, hey, who said being a Christian, or acting like one, was easy?

I’m just glad, as I’m sure Michael Vick is as well, for people like Coach Dungy. Redemption is available for everyone.

Sports Figures!

Here’s something for you sports fans:

As if the mall wasn’t already jam-packed on a Saturday. Nothing like former OU footballers to bring out the true-believers.

Since I didn’t want an autograph, I was free to wander to the front of the line and grab a shot of the principals:

They seemed like good guys and the crowd was orderly and well-behaved. A good way to celebrate the holiday season.

Sports Figures!

Here’s something for you sports fans:

As if the mall wasn’t already jam-packed on a Saturday. Nothing like former OU footballers to bring out the true-believers.

Since I didn’t want an autograph, I was free to wander to the front of the line and grab a shot of the principals:

They seemed like good guys and the crowd was orderly and well-behaved. A good way to celebrate the holiday season.

Sports Figures!

Here’s something for you sports fans:

As if the mall wasn’t already jam-packed on a Saturday. Nothing like former OU footballers to bring out the true-believers.

Since I didn’t want an autograph, I was free to wander to the front of the line and grab a shot of the principals:

They seemed like good guys and the crowd was orderly and well-behaved. A good way to celebrate the holiday season.