Niblets for 5/16/09

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Best comment of the week:

Comment on The NBA Playoffs are rounding first and staggering toward second. by Free T Shirts: Cleveland is on a mission. I like the way Lebron is taking the team on his shoulders and pushing them to sweep teams. He has help this year but he’s making sure there are no slip-ups.

There is no question that the difference between the Lakers and the Cavs is Lebron. Kobe has the better and deeper team. Lebron has the leadership that Kobe Bryant lacks. That plus home court will be the difference IF the Lakers make it past Houston and Denver.

Updates on previous columns:

NBA Playoffs—What have we learned? One of the things we have learned is that the Lakers don’t seem to be able to put a team away when they have a chance. They allowed the Rockets to tie up the series 3-3 after a lackluster 95-80 loss Thursday night. The Celtics are no better at locking up the deal as they too allowed an underdog Orlando Magic team to tie their series as well. Neither of these teams look like champions to me.

Cuban faces a tough decision about PG Jason Kidd. Kidd is a free agent and the trade for him didn’t work out like the Mavs hoped it would. Expect the Kidd to be set free.

Mavericks’ Owner Mark Cuban is a punk! I got a couple of people complained a bit about how tough I was on Cuban. One said that his anger should be excused because he has so much invested in the team. I would feel a lot more sympathy for him if the Congress had not played politics with Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac and caused the world to lose half of its wealth.

The Commissioner suspends the entire National League for 50 Games! Manny Ramirez of the LA Dodgers has taken some hits. Manny met with his team for the first time since his suspension and apologized for his actions. The Dodgers are still in first place with the league’s best record and will probably will win the NL Worst with or without Manny.

Niblets fresh off the cob:

Basketball great Wayman Tisdale passes. After becoming the Oklahoma Sooner top scorer and rebounder ever, Tisdale had a 12 year steller career in the NBA. What most fans don’t know is that he was also a very accomplished jazz musician. He died of cancer and will be missed.

The NFL salary cap will be raised to 128 million. The increase is due to the players not getting all the money that it was supposed to last year. This will be an increase of 12 million over the last estimate. It will be a great help to those teams that are struggling to sign rookies this year.

Lebron’s MVP puts pressure on Kobe. Kobe has yet to prove he can win a championship without Shaquille O’Neill. The face to face final against Lebron’s Cavs would make winning his own ring even more important to Kobe. The fact is he will be lucky to get to the finals and I don’t expect him to win the series against Cleveland if he does.

An NFL free agent finds that you can go home again. LB Jason Taylor is passing up more money with Washington to go back to play with the Dolphins. He told reporters he wanted to be closer to his family. An unstated reason that Taylor wanted to go back to Miami is that he feels that the Dolphins are a lot closer to a championship than the Redskins are. Expect the Dolphins to fail to equal their record last year. They have a 1st place team schedule including the entire NFC East in 4 straight weeks.

That’s what I think. Tell me what you think.

Bill Smith is a former coach of several semi-pro teams, has officiated both football and basketball, done color on radio for college football and basketball and has scouted talent. He is a senior writer for and edits https://fryingpansports.com. He has also published several novels on and edits .

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1 thought on “Niblets for 5/16/09”

  1. Should be a really good weekend for Basketball with two games 7s. Looking forward to it.

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