Tag: Basketball

Cal Ripken Jr.’s Shares His Favorite MLB All-Star Memory

Cal Ripken Jr. joins Behind the Mic just as MLB holds one of its most celebrated events in New York City, the 2013 MLB All-Star Game. While Cal was obviously in town for the game, he was also in town because he’s been working on providing children in need with eye exams and new eyeglasses fitted with Transitions lenses while teaching the kids life lessons through baseball.

What’s your favorite MLB All-Star Game story? Let us know in the comments.

communities across the country by providing children in-need with eye exams and new eyeglasses fitted with Transitions lenses and teaching them life lessons through baseball.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com


Ranking the All-Star Games in the Four Major Sports

The NBA All-Star Game is to be held on Sunday, and we have every reason to believe it will be a terrific event for fans and families alike.  

But how does it compare to the games in the other professional sports?  

Certainly, all of the games have their own strengths and weaknesses, but which one is the best overall? Here is a comparison of the games for the NBA, NHL, NFL, and MLB.

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Philadelphia Sports: Best Sports Quotes in Philly History

Philadelphia has had its fair share of interesting athletes throughout the years. Along with interesting characters, Philly sports figures have also been known for their infamous quotes.

Whether it was directly after a loss, or a miraculous fourth down reception or at a World Series parade, some Philly sports stars really knew how to blow a gasket or pump up a crowd.

No matter if it’s the Phillies, Eagles, Flyers, 76ers or Big 5 basketball, these quotes will definitely bring back some memories.

So without further ado and/or eloquence, here are the best/most ridiculous/most passionate quotes in Philadelphia sports history.

Warning: Some quotes have rather distasteful language


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The 20 Greatest Individual Seasons in Sports History

Brady and Moss both had great 2007 seasons, but were they good enough to crack the top 20?

The athletes on this list had absolutely amazing and dominant seasons. There are some names you know will be on this list and there may be some you did not expect.

The list consists of athletes from sports that are big in America: football, baseball, basketball, hockey, golf, tennis, etc. Sorry soccer fans but there are no soccer players on the list. Also there are no rugby, cricket, Formula 1 racing, or athletes from other sports that are popular around the world but not in America.

So here it is; the 20 greatest individual seasons in sports history.

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Stan Musial, Bill Russell Presented with Medal of Freedom by President Obama

The St. Louis Cardinal’s Hall of Famer Stan “The Man” Musial, along with Boston Celtic legend Bill Russell, received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama.

The Medal of Freedom is the highest honor a civilian of the United States can receive for making an exceedingly great contribution to the interests of our country.

Stan Musial was one of the best baseball players of all time and played in the MLB for 22 years. Along with his service to the league, Musial also served his country in the Navy during World War II.

After his service to both baseball and country, Musial has spent the rest of his life helping those in the St. Louis area. He is a true leader.

Along with his astounding 11 NBA Championships, Bill Russell was also the first African American head coach in the NBA.

Furthermore, Russell led the United States men’s basketball team to a gold medal in the 1956 Summer Olympics.

Along with these two great athletes, 13 other individuals received the award from the President.

Some of the other recipients were George H. W. Bush, Maya Angelou, Yo-Yo Ma and Warren Buffet.

When President Obama spoke of the recipients, he was quoted as saying that they are “the best of who we are and who we aspire to be.”

To spend your whole life working to be the best in a professional sport is one thing. But to then, after you are retired, continue to inspire and be apart of a community is something else altogether.

Working to see that future generations grow to help this country not only showcases the greatness Stan Musial and Bill Russell encompass, but it reveals how genuine they are as individuals.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com


Five Reasons You Shouldn’t Be Afraid of Fantasy Basketball

Are you new to fantasy basketball? Maybe you have played fantasy sports before but have been hesitant to try out fantasy basketball for one reason or another.

Well, here are five good reasons why you should take the leap and give fantasy basketball a chance if you’ve never played before:

 

    1) Like any other sport, it takes time to learn.

    Remember your first baseball draft? When you took players from your favorite team instead of the best available? When you took Peyton Manning No. 1 overall because “he’s the best player in the league”?

    It happens.

    Your team more than likely sucked, but since then you’ve crushed the opposition for a couple of titles. If you’re already a fan of fantasy sports, you should be a little more prepared to embark on a new journey than you were before. Even if you’re not, there’s no reason to take the Ricky Bobby philosophy on winning and losing.

    So go ahead, take your team’s starting five, get your college team’s up-and-comers. Maybe it’ll work out, maybe not. Either way, you’ll have the enjoyment of another fantasy sport added to your repertoire, and hey, there’s always next year.

     

    2) The scoring is the same as fantasy baseball.

    I would even go so far as to say that players are more easily compared in fantasy basketball than in any other league.

    In fantasy baseball, pitchers convolute things. Looking at the pros and cons of a specific hitter versus a specific pitcher becomes completely relative to the makeup of one’s team. This leads to a lot of difficulties when ranking players and reviewing trade offers.

    Football’s problems are much more obvious. Because it’s based on a point system, taking the best player doesn’t always translate to creating the best team. Of course, one can compare players by their average points per game, but these can be very ephemeral. Two one-yard rushing touchdowns will outdo a player who has 115 rushing yards with no touchdowns.

    This is not to say that fantasy baseball and football are unfair. I just think the use of the same stats for every player in the game and the use of rotisserie scoring give basketball the best translation from on-the-court to fantasy scoring.

     

    3) The schedule should not turn you away.

    The spotty nature of the NBA schedule per team, therefore per player, can turn a lot of people off to fantasy basketball. It shouldn’t.

    Sure, you don’t have a daily schedule like the MLB or a weekly appointment like the NFL. There’s no debating that. And it does stink to check your roster every day only to see that you only have one or two guys playing on a number of nights.

    The solution: Set your roster in intervals. Every three days. Once a week. Something defined. The stability of playing time in the NBA means that you will rarely have a guy starting that doesn’t actually play, even if you don’t take the time to study your team every single day.

     

    4) Of the Big Three, the NBA offers the smallest player universe, and therefore, the smallest number of relevant fantasy players.

    This makes the amount of information that you need to be process much smaller. Not that you should stop visiting your favorite fantasy basketball site. You should never do that. Many people actually do the opposite with the NBA.

    The smaller player universe means less information to wade through on a daily basis, so one can more easily extract the data that applies to them from their favorite site. A site like rotoprofessor.com/basketball, maybe?

     

    5) It’s fun.

    If you’ve played and enjoyed fantasy sports, you know this point already. I think it’s worth further emphasis, though.

    Remember the feeling you got from buying Josh Hamilton cheaply this year? Or how about all the sympathy you’ve received since taking Matt Forte ahead of Chris Johnson last year?

    There are conversations and debates that you can only have if you’re playing fantasy. It’s as simple as that. If you like basketball, why wouldn’t you participate in something that simultaneously makes you more informed about the league and lets you compete against others?

    It’s a win-win.

       

      So with all that said, if you’ve never played fantasy basketball before, there’s no reason to be afraid. Give it a shot and see for yourself how much fun it can be. And of course make sure you’re checking out the Rotoprofessor for all your fantasy analysis.

      To view the first part of Will Overton’s Top 200 Rankings on Rotoprofessor, click here

      Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com


      Houston Astros Play An All-Star Game In September

      Baseball, like all sports, is in the age of specialization.

      In football, teams have a guy on the roster who is just a long-snapper and a guy who just handle kickoffs. In basketball, teams have guys on their roster who are defensive specialists or three-point specialists.

      In baseball, as we all know, teams have left-handed pitchers on the roster just to pitch to one left-handed batter in the game. Well, the Houston Astros took specialization to another level on Wednesday afternoon.

      In a 10-inning, 8-6 loss to the Milwaukee Brewers on Wednesday, manager Brad Mills used nine different pitchers. Really? Nine pitchers to record 30 outs?

      Mills essentially turned Wednesday’s game into an All-Star Game.

      Here is the inning breakdown of the nine starters used:

      JA Happ: 4.1

      Henry Villar: 0.2

      Felipe Paulino: 1.0

      Tim Byrdak: 0.1

      Mark Melancon: 0.2

      Fernando Abad: 1.0

      Brandon Lyon: 1.0

      Matt Lindstrom: 0.0

      Gustavo Chacin: 1.0

      Now granted, Lindstrom was used because Lyon naturally blew the save in the ninth and Chacin was used because Lindstrom was dreadful in the 10th. But even if you take Lindstrom and Chacin out of the equation, there is no way a team should use seven pitchers in one nine-inning game when the opposing team hasn’t scored 10 runs or more.

      You want to know why games three-and-a-half or four hours these days? Just look at innings five, six, and seven for the Astros. They used four pitchers to get nine outs.

      I don’t mind mixing and matching late in the game, but there is no reason why middle relievers can’t pitch two or three innings these days. There’s really no excuse for it.

      It might be a while before Mills ever manages an All-Star Game for the National League, but he certainly managed one for the Astros on Wednesday.

      You can follow The Ghost of Moonlight Graham on Twitter @ theghostofmlg

      Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com


      Tiger, Elin, and 10 Of The Biggest Splits In Sports

      With the news that Tiger Woods and Elin Nordegren made their divorce official and with Frank and Jamie McCourt’s divorce starting tomorrow, August 30th, let’s take a look at some of the other big splits in the professional sports world.

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      Texas Rangers: Nolan Ryan, Mark Cuban Bidding to Become New Owners

      This is the day a lot of people have been waiting for since the decision came down that the Texas Rangers would go up for auction. At this moment it’s a two team race, so to speak, as to who will be the new owners of the Texas Rangers. The two teams are groups headed by Attorney Chuck Greenberg and Hall of Fame pitcher Nolan Ryan up against Houston businessman Jim Crane and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban .

      What we learned earlier today was that the group led by Crane and Cuban had the highest bid over Greenberg and Ryan by more than $25 million. At that point, the attorney’s for the Greenberg and Ryan group wanted 12 hours to look over the Crane and Cuban bid. The judge gave them one hour and asked that they come back and tell him where they were.

      If you think this has been a clean battle, you’d be dead wrong. Tim Cowlishaw of the Dallas Morning News, Dan Kaplan of the Sports Business Journal, Bob Nightengale of USA Today, and Brian Dolgin with the Texas Rangers are all on hand, and all have reported several heated arguments between the attorneys from both sides.

      Dolgin and Kaplan both reported, via Twitter, that Louis Streubeck and Thomas Lauria, respective attorneys for both sides, got into a shouting match and cussed at each other during a confrontation in the hallway of the courtroom.

      We may not know the resolution of the proceedings today but what we do know is Major League Baseball is not a fan of Cuban and does not want to see him become the owner of any team let alone the Texas Rangers. After his attempt at buying the Chicago Cubs from The Tribune Company, Cuban wrote on his blog , “On the flip side, my dedication to winning could also make my job of getting approval with MLB baseball much harder.”

      Whether Major League Baseball approves Cuban and Crane as the new owners of the Texas Rangers is still yet to be seen. However, if the creditors get their way, they will urge the presiding judge to award the Cuban group for no other reason than to get more money.

      If you ask a lot of the Ranger fans, at least those not after the “big name” owner, they’ll tell you that the best ownership group for the foreseeable future is the group led by Ryan. However, it might not be so far fetched to think that Cuban can’t bring a championship to North Texas. He has the kind of money that can bring in the players needed for the Rangers to compete in not only the AL West but also in the American League year in and year out. He can take the money from ticket sales, concessions, and advertising among other avenues, and put it back into the players on the field.

      I’m not saying Ryan won’t do the same as he’s been a big part of the rebuilding process of this team over the years, however,  Cuban isn’t a bad owner and Dallas Maverick fans will tell you the exact same thing.

      What those around Major League Baseball object to is his constant questioning of NBA officials as well as the members of the NBA front office as well. Major League Commissioner Bud Selig gets questioned enough by those around baseball, having Cuban’s outspoken manner might not go over so well in baseball circles.

      Whatever comes of the court proceedings over the next few days, I believe the Rangers will be in good, and capable, hands going forward.

      One thing you can take away from both Cuban and Ryan is the fact that both of these guys will be committed to winning and both will show that as the owners. I’m not going to say one is better than the other, but what I will say is one knows baseball, the other has admitted at previous times that he is not a baseball guy. I’ll leave you to figure out which is which.

      The bids are in and Cuban is the lead horse at this moment with a bid of $335 million, much to the chagrin of Ryan and Greenberg who’s offer currently stands at $320 million. There’s been no response from the Greenberg/Ryan camp and the judge has said that he’s willing to work through the night to have a resolution by morning.

      Though there’s been some talk of stopping for the night, the two sides have ordered themselves dinner to be delivered to the courthouse so it looks like they are ready to work through the night as well.

      This is a long ways from over and, if today was any indicator, there are more fireworks still to come.

      Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com


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