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Basketball from a fans perspective

Rope a dope Part II

I will forever be impressed with the Heat for one reason alone. Facing elimination in their Game 5 match against the Nuggets they never gave up. I’m unsure of the time it was less than three minutes and the Heat were still in the game, they could have mailed this one in. Too much Jokic, Porter Jr. didn’t have a great game but shot much better than prior games. The Nuggets won this game and the series I believe thanks in part to their team defense. The Heat shot 34.4% of it based on the defense forced on them by the Nuggets.

It wasn’t all roses for the Nuggets, they shot a pathetic 17.9% from three. From memory I don’t remember a championship team shooting that bad from the arc. The Joker was outstanding for the series and he was named MVP, there was no one else to consider. Porter Jr. was up and down, so was Murray and every Nugget player. Joker was alone in his outstanding play for the series. The Nuggets are to be congratulated for winning their first NBA championship. The television camera managed to catch shots of some of the former Nuggets, David Thompson and Dan Issel were the ones I remember seeing. Injuries notwithstanding they have an ideal opportunity to repeat as champions next season.

Bits n Pieces

This is one of those “Who do you believe” accounts. The transfer portal is continually in the news and we might question who won the off-season? That might be a tad bit confusing based on what I discovered, in addition the search only covered two sites. Here goes:

247Sports.com

Kansas

West Virginia

TCU

Villanova

Arkansas

On3.com

Penn State

Missouri

West Virginia

Florida

Wake Forest

That’s your look at teams 1 through 5 on both sites, looks as though the Mountaineers of West Virginia are the only team listed on both .com sites.  

A source saluted former Mizzou Tigers winning championships in the NBA. Congratulations were extended to Michael Porter Jr. a member of the Nuggets in winning an NBA championship. Sorry Mizzou Nation I have a little problem with this, MPJ played a total of 3 games in Black and Gold. With so few games it’s difficult to even acknowledge he was a Tiger. On the other hand a mystery occurred which required some research on my part. The name Med Park was also noted as a Mizzou player winning an NBA championship. The other names were familiar to me but not Park. Turns out he played at Mizzou from 1952-1955. Park played in the NBA from 1955-58 with the St. Louis (Atlanta) Hawks and 1958-1960 with the Cincinnati Royals (Kings). That 1958 Hawks team won the NBA championship of which Park was a member.

The NBA has extended invitations to 19 players to the Green Room for the June 22 NBA draft. Victor Wembanyama of course is one of those expected to attend. All are likely to be drafted, in addition ESPN claims 4-5 additional players will be included. Besides Wembanyama also in the early list of invites are Brandon Miller, Scoot Henderson, Amen Thompson, Ausar Thompson, Cameron Whitmore, Jarace Walker, Anthony Black, Taylor Hendricks plus Gradey Dick. In addition also named are Bilal Coulibaly, Cason Wallace, Nick Smith, Dereck Lively II, Kobe Bufkin, Jalen Hood-Schifino, Jett Howard, Jordan Hawkins and Keyonte George.

Seattle next

The Emerald City is ready for a return to the NBA, it’s just a matter of time. One of the keys to a return was an arena. Key Arena, as it was then known, was considered inadequate by some in the NBA, that’s in the rear-view mirror now. If you view the building from the outside the iconic roof structure is still there, however inside it’s been completely refurbished. Currently the Climate Pledge Arena is home to the NHL Kraken, the WNBA Storm and Seattle Redhawks men’s basketball, it holds 18,300 for basketball and slightly under that number for hockey. Specifics on the arena “In partnership with Amazon, Climate Pledge Arena will serve as a long-lasting reminder of the urgent need for climate action. It might sound ambitious—but that’s the point.”

The building is the first carbon zero building in the world, in addition there is 0 single-use plastic anywhere in the arena. As for the NBA this is no criticism of Oklahoma City but I believe the league realized they made a huge error approving a sale and moving the team from Seattle. The Seattle Metro is the 15 largest in the nation with over 4 million citizens in and around the city. I’ve read negative reports regarding attendance prior to the Sonics sale. Attendance might be somewhat difficult to assess since I believe Key Arena at the time could only hold 14,000 fans. The numbers I located are as low as 17 (2001) in the NBA to 25 in NBA attendance the last year the team had Seattle on their jerseys. Expansion will come at a future date, the only question is who is at the top of the NBA’s list for expansion, Seattle or Las Vegas.