Category: Sacramento Kings

by David Zizmor

San Antonio vs. Oklahoma: The Spurs have the home court advantage opeing up their first two games against the Thunder and they already took game one by a wide margin 122-105. It really wasn’t much of a battle on Monday night in San Antonio.

They outscored the Oklahoma City Thunder by 17 and the Spurs outscored the Thunder in the fourth quarter by 14 points. OKC came within striking range in the first three quarters but the Spurs pulled away and got the victory. The Spurs Tim Duncan had a very Tim Duncan like game he came out there and dropped 27 points, seven boards, 11-19.

Because San Antonio had such a nice lead late in the game Duncan only had to play 29 mintues in this one and that was even a bigger plus for them. The older guy has the impact and doesn’t even have to stick around for all 48 minutes of this because OKC didn’t even keep it close enough.

Duncan is going to be very fresh for game number two on Wednesday and it’s kind of what you expect from the Spurs, they just go about their business and get it done. They’ve been there so many times at this point it’s almost like clock work. It’s not going to be this easy in game number two on Wednesday night or the rest of the series because the Thunder are too good of a team.

Indiana vs. Miami: The Indiana Pacers victory over the Miami Heat is surprising in game number one 107-96, and we’ve been saying all along the Pacers have not been playing well for maybe half of this season. It’s one thing when you have a lousy game for a stretch of a couple of weeks, the Pacers have not been good since January 1.

The Pacers were struggling for five and half months and were almost in June at this point, The Pacers were not playing well in some five months.Then all of sudden against Washington in the last couple of games in round two they kind of seem to find their mojo again.

The Pacers Roy Hibbert came around finally and got his offensive game back and got his defensive game back and sort of made an impact and took Indiana past Washington in six games. Then they go into game number one against Miami the defending World Champs and they beat them by 11.

The Pacers were in control most of the game they took the lead in the first quarter and just carried it all the way through the Pacers made a game of it. It wasn’t a blow out by any means as the Pacers won by 11. At the same time the Pacers were never really close enough for the game to be in doubt. It’s definitely surprising lets keep in mind the Pacers are the number one seed and they have home court advantage.

The Heat are back for game two in Indiana on Tuesday night.

David Zizmor is covering the NBA for http://www.sportsradioservice.com

by Daivd Zizmor

San Antonio vs. Oklahoma: The Spurs took out the Trailblazers in the second round four games to one and that’s what was expected. The Spurs are just on another level than Portland and while the Blazers have some very good young players they’re very inexperienced in the post season and throughout NBA history these are teams that are young with freshlegs.

The Trailblazers will need some experience to find their way into the finals and the Blazers are a team that’s on the way up. Michael Jordan took three or four tries before he won his title, the Blazers have the pieces in place to be a competitive team for several years.

San Antonio is a team that has won multiple championships, they’ve been in the playoffs every year forever and their a fantastic team with players that are in the twilights of their careers their still a fantastic team. All credit to guys like Tony Parker, Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili and also their great coach Gregg Poppovich whose going to be in the Hall of Fame someday.

The match up which starts on Monday night with the Oklahoma Thunder and the Spurs who are the top two teams in the west. These two teams that have met in the post season in the last couple of years has been in a big battle and it was so for OKC last season when Russell Westbrook got hurt in the playoffs.

Westbrook didn’t play against the Spurs and that was a huge loss and Westbrook is one of the best players in the league at his point guard position. Westbrook is a leader on that OKC team and to not have him against the Spurs was a big loss last year. This post season he’s healthy, he’s back and OKC should give the Spurs a great series starting Monday night.

Indiana vs. Miami: The Indiana Pacers suddenly flipped the switch and are playing very well in these playoffs after strugging in the first round against the Atlanta Hawks and in the second round they got by the Washington Wizards winning that series 4-2.

They didn’t look fantastic, they had plenty moments of weakness the big difference was the Pacers Roy Hibbert was finally playing like Roy Hibbert and he was back to scoring. The Hawks in that first round had somehow figured out a magic potion to nuetralize the Pacers and Hibbert woke up against Washington and did a fantastic job all series including scoring 11 points to help the Pacers beat the Wizard 93-80 in game six on Thursday night.

After the first game when the Wiz knocked the Pacers around 102-96 the Pacers woke up and came to life and took the series in six games. The Pacers are a team that can compete with Miami and we’ve seen them do it several times this season. We saw them do it in the conference finals last year it’s just that Indiana has been lousy for the last few months.

It’s tough to feel confident that they can hang with the Heat, the Pacers have been playing a little bit better but the Heat have had a chance to rest up after really dispatching with the Nets pretty quickly. The Heat are so good on top of being the World Champions and having the best player on the planet in LeBron James. The Heat will be prepared for Indiana and game one is scheduled for Sunday night in Indiana.

David Zizmor covers the NBA for http://www.sportsradioservice.com

by Amaury Pi Gonzalez

OAKLAND–LeBron James said on Wednesday that he will not play next season if the LA Clippers owner Donald Sterling refuses to sell the team. It gives this story a really interesting angle as LeBron is the biggest star in the universe not only in the NBA but in all sports. I really don’t understand this and I really think they should let things go the way their going to go.

Sterling apologized in an interview with Anderson Cooper on CNN but this is headed to being litagated and Sterling’s wife whose part owner of the team is also planning to fight and will not relinquish her share of the team. This story has a lot of legs and LeBron saying he won’t play won’t help the situation. The NBA has more tapes of Sterling talking and they have more proof.

Regarding the NBA by laws and that Sterling violated a lot of them and if that’s the case he might have to sell. I have written and have spoken on the radio and said I don’t think he should be forced to sell, I don’t think a person that owns the team can be forced to sell because he’s a racist. The NBA has proof of what he said and that they want him out.

LeBron James doesn’t help matters by saying he’ll boycott next season but no matter Sterling is going to fight and the Clippers are a private enterprise, it’s their business and they pay their taxes and they haven’t committed any crimes and they can’t take their business away. I never heard of that, that’s not the laws of this country but again the NBA by laws might have teeth and they might know something that people don’t know.

LeBron is just reacting right now, yes everybody wants Sterling out but it may not be enough legally because everybody like you and I want him out and they might try to force him to sell and that’s another story and it’s going to the courts and it will be settled there.

Magic Johnson has had his share of air time in the Sterling controversy, and Magic says he wants to buy the Clippers. Why does Magic need to get involved with another team ? Magic knows he’s huge in L.A. and he owns a chain of Magic Theaters and he’s part owner of the Dodgers.

I don’t know what Magic needs? Does he need the limelight that much? Is his ego that big? I’m starting to worry about all these guys who want to buy the Clippers and boxer Oscar DeLaHoya wants to buy the Clippers too. This whole thing is becoming a circus.

Sterling is being ridiculized in the court of public opinon and half of this country is against him. Still isn’t that enough to make Sterling sell the team? We’re going to have to let it play out in the court of law. Legally I don’t think they can make him sell the team in that case it would set a legal presidence.

Amaury Pi Gonzalez is the Spanish radio voice of Oakland A’s baseball and does News and Commentary on http://www.sportsradioservie.com

by David Zizmor

San Antonio vs. Portland: The Trailblazers are not a bad team they have a lot of the pieces to make the team run in the future their an inexperienced team and going up against a team like the Spurs who have all the experience in the world are a fantastic team in their own right and it’s a really a rough road for Portland.

Portland did pull off a win to avoid a sweep in Portland over the Spurs with a 103-92 victory, the Spurs are ahead in the series 3-1 with game five coming up on Wednesday night in San Antonio. So you have to think that the Spurs are going to wrap this one up.

The Spurs don’t want to have to go back to Portland, the Spurs like we’ve been saying all along they are an older team, so the more rest they get before the Western Conference finals it’s better for them so it’s likely they’ll wrap this one up tonight.

Oklahoma City vs. LA Clippers: You hate to see games this big decided by officials, referees usually should try to make themselves scarce towards the end of these games. If there’s an obvious foul and obviously you call it most of the time in these close and late situations the refs tend to put their whistles away.

Officals in crucial situations don’t call ticky tack fouls that’s not what you want to see, in this situation you have a three point play and the call goes to the Thunder on a questionable call and everybody is going to be up in arms. It’s one of those situations where the ref is putting themselves right in the flow of the game.

The call changed the potential outcome of the game and the Thunder have to make those free throws and your talking about a very good player taking those shots and it wasn’t particularily difficult to see the Thunder hurting in that situation. This was really going to be a very entertaining series and the Thunder are up by one game 3-2 with game six on Thursday night.

Miami vs. Brooklyn: The Nets are a good team their not a glamorous team and to beat the Heat in a seven game series like this you have to be approaching greatness among the great teams in the league. That’s why the Nets were able to push the Heat to seven games.

The Spurs are a great team and they could end up playing a great team like Miami over a seven game series. The Nets have a lot of great players and they have a lot of great players who are well past their prime. Maybe they can turn it off for a night or two in the post season but to sustain enough to win a seven game series is an awful lot to ask of Nets players like Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett,Deron Williams and Joe Johnson.

Without Brook Lopez who the Nets lost much earlier this season they just didn’t have a defensive presence or a guy in the middle to really change how Miami would have to play in this kind of a series. More power to the Nets and to beat a very good Toronto team in the first round and they got a win off of Miami in the second round but if this series goes six games I’ll be surprised Miami should wrap this up in five games.

Indiana vs. Washington: This will be interesting because we’ve been talking about the Pacers and how poorly they’ve been playing you got remember the first series and how the Pacers played against Atlanta. The Pacers are stumbling and this isn’t limited to the post season this is something that has been going on for several months now.

Let’s track it back now, in the first series against the Hawks they struggled and the Hawks are not even a good team at all and in the Eastern Conference their just worthy of an eighth seed and the Pacers are just hanging on by the skin of their teeth. In this series against Washington aside from the first game they Pacers played pretty well.

As we’ve said all along the offense has a lot left to be desired but the biggest development in this series is Roy Hibbert the Pacers center was among the best centers in the league for most of the season until the end and he was a non factor against Atlanta to the point that he was benched for the last few games. The Pacers lead the series 3-2 with game six on Thursday night.

David Zizmor is covering the NBA Playoffs for http://www.sportsradioservice.com

by David Zizmor

San Antonio vs. Portland: The Spurs are the favorite going into this one and they have the level of experience over the last 15 years that Portland does not. The Trailblazers are certainly a good team and you can’t ignore them but at the same time the Blazers have very little post game experience.

Their just figuring things out and the Spurs while they have had a bit of a tough time against a very good Memphis team in the first round they have so much experience to ignore them. To watch these guys Tony Parker, Tim Duncan, and Manu Ginobili they put on a clinic.

With the way the Spurs are playing it’s not even a contest, the Blazers are trying to play up to the level but they just don’t have the firepower or the experience to hang with the Spurs, the Spurs are coming off one of the most successful wins in team history and they beat the Miami Heat last year in seven games.

Oklahoma City vs. L.A.Clippers: This is one of the most entertaining series of the four right now, OKC has a slight advantage right now, OKC when they have the home court they have the better advantage. OKC doesn’t have the same kind of distractions that the Clippers do and the Thunder have been there.

You have to remember OKC was favored to make it to the finals last year until Russell Westbrook went down in the playoffs. Westbrook is one of the best players in the NBA, the loss of Westbrook last year really derailed the Thunder’s hopes.

Now they face this Clippers team which they match up against fairly well, when the Warriors played the Clippers the W’s were down and the W’s Andrew Bogut was out for the series and they lost Jermaine O’Neal in game six and the Warriors just didn’t have the front court to handle the big guys for the Clippers. OKC doesn’t have that problem they have Kendrick Perkins up front, they have Serge Ibaka those guys play defense on the front point guys.

Miami vs. Brooklyn: In Saturday’s game three the Miami Heat had such an awful third quarter and lost to Brooklyn 104-90 the Heat lead the series 2-1. Miami had an awful third quarter where they scored 14 points and they really couldn’t recover and it was just too big a deficit to make up even for LeBron James.

It’s unfortunate for the Heat they get a stinkbomb but Brooklyn is a team that has played very well, now as everyone says the old saying goes the playoff series never starts until someone wins a game on the road. Nobody has won a game on the road in this series.

At this stage if the home court advantage holds then it’s Miami’s series and Brooklyn has had a very good series. They’ve had great players with guys who are going to go to the Hall of Fame but the Nets just don’t have the stamina to go through a seven game series with Miami.

Indiana vs. Washington: Don’t count out the Wiz, they’re kind of like the Cinderella story in the post season. They’re good enough to beat Indiana especially considering how poorly the Pacers have played over the last three or four months. Indiana’s poor play in the first round against Atlanta was not a fluke.

Washington had an awful game three against Indiana losing 85-63 they lost by 20 and scored only 63 points in a really ugly contest. Washington is a decent team but their a number five for a reason and it’s because their inconsistent and sometimes their shots comes and goes. The other night it was not falling but John Wall and Bradley Beal their pretty good shooters for the Wiz.

No matter what you say there are nights that nothing works and the other night for the Wiz was one of them. Let’s be fair their offense might not be strong these days but the Pacers still have a good defense and thats part of the reason whey the Wiz struggled.

David Zizmor is covering the NBA Playoffs for http://www.sportsradioservice.com

by David Zizmor

San Antonio vs. Portand: Portland was not the team that everyone expected it to be and made it to the second round but they had a very strong series against Houston with the Trailblazers point guard Damian Lillard right out of Oakland having a fantastic series and scoring the game winner with no time left to clinch it for Portland.

That might be the high point for the Trailblazers because Houston in round one are a good team, still the Rockets haven’t developed much of an identity and their not a team with a lot of playoff experience or success in the past. Portland and Houston as far as overall talent were fairly well matched.

San Antonio is a whole other ball game, as the Warriors learned last year you really need to stick the dagger in these guys because San Antonio will just not die. They are a fantastic team, they had a few short struggles with Dallas in the first round but San Antonio ended up winning that one like everybody expected them too.

Oklahoma City vs. LA Clippers: This is an evenly matched contest this is the two seed (Thunder) vs. the three seed (L.A.) you have the NBA MVP Kevin Durant going against one of the runners up Blake Griffin. You just have teams that are really strong from top to bottom. You have these two teams who have been there to a certain extent.

The Thunder made to the finals and they have a lot of success in the post season, they have all their players healthy which was not the case last year in the post season. Last season everybody thought Oklahoma City was the team to beat and then Russell Westbrook got injured.

The Westbrook injury didn’t stop the Thunder right away but it definitely slowed them up enough that they didn’t have the fire power when they had to face San Antonio. OKC their on a mission they had a rough opening series against Memphis. It’s not likely that L.A. is as tough as tough of an oppnent as Memphis is.

Miami vs. Brooklyn: The Brooklyn Nets are an interesting team all year long and they got off to a really bad start back in November and December. They tried to turn it around since then and who knew what was going on. Brooklyn since the beginning of 2014 has done pretty good.

The Nets have been particularily good against Miami they were 4-0 in the regular season against the Heat, of course that meant nothing in the first game where Miami knocked them off and did a pretty solid job of putting the Nets in their place. Miami didn’t have to work that hard in the first round to beat the Bobcats.

That Charlotte series went as a sweep for Miami and they had a chance to rest and heal up and to give their crickety older players especially Dwayne Wade time to prepare themselves. Miami was chomping at the bit to get at Brooklyn. The one thing that Miami really got annoyed at Brooklyn and made it very well known they tanked a few of their final games so they could get a seed that would allow the Nets to face Miami in the second round rather than Indiana.

Indiana vs. Washington: Indiana is the number one seed and Washington is the number five, but if you look at how this post season has been going the Wizards are playing really well and the Pacers have been struggling. They barely made it out of the first round against Atlanta and the Hawks were a team that no body thought was a threat in any way shape or form.

Atlanta ended up forcing the Pacers to play seven games in the first round, let’s face it the Hawks are not a good team. They lost their best player Al Horford earlier this season and they have had good enough pieces to make themselves mediocre and in the Eastern Conference that’s good enough to make the eighth spot in the playoffs.

Atlanta was not a good team and if they were in the west they would have been far far out of the playoffs and Indiana looked completely befuddled at times and they look like they didn’t know what they were doing. The Hawks had some of the worst offense in the entire season in that game.

David Zizmor covers the NBA for Sportstalk radio

by Amaury Pi Gonzalez

LOS ANGELES–The LA Clippers advanced to the next round after eliminating the Warriors in a very emotional series at Oakland and in Los Angeles. Unfortunately this very good seven game series, won by the Clippers, was overshadowed by the now famous recording of the owner of the LA Clippers making some racist remarks.

BREAKING NEWS: And this is not CNN. There still racism in America and it is also living inside of our pro sports.

As a Hispanic-American I have experienced racism in the past, and those like me will understand it more than those that have not been discriminated.

As a man that was born in Cuba, who loves this country, my country, served in the US Army during the Vietnam years, and have been a proud citizen of the United States of America, and have a successful career in my line of work, I know that racism comes in many forms. But, whichever form it comes it is never good.

I feel sorry for the ignorant people that are racist, and they can be white, black, brown, yellow. Racism/Bigotry is not “owned”by any particular race. As a matter of fact, I have always said that considering that in our country there are more different races than any other country in the world, we still get along very well. Main reason? We are a country of laws.

I never met the owner of the LA Clippers, and as a Christian, I do not make an opinion of somebody I do not know. If he is a racist, that is not enough of a “crime”to force him to sell his team. And I still do not know(I am not an attorney)how can they force somebody to sell his/her team, because of a racist remark, in a country that respects free enterprise and private ownership.

A couple of years ago, Ozzie Guillen was the manager of the Miami Marlins and he made a remark to a magazine, saying: ” I like Fidel Castro”. As a Cuban-American sports journalist-broadcaster, I was interviewed by the USA Today, on the Ozzie Guillen situation then. I said to the newspaper -quote- “I believe in free speech, that is one of the reasons I left a communist country, Cuba, to come and live here, and as much as I disagree with what Guillen said, he has the right to say what he wants, this is America”.

To say “I love Castro”in Miami, is something very stupid, but it is not a crime. That year Ozzie’s team also finished last, and Ozzie was fired. I always liked Ozzie, interviewed him many times, when he was a player, a very good shortstop, and also when he as a manager with Chicago and Miami.

To this day, Ozzie Guillen is the only Major League Baseball manager, born in Latinamerica that has won a World Series.

People in powerful positions say many things to many people, however, racism (in my opinion)is something that is in somebody’s heart, it is not something that you wake up one morning and all-of-a-sudden you are a bigot.

This case of the owner of the Clippers and the other people involved is becoming a circus, all-of-a-sudden, a team that not long ago was great material for late night comedians, because they were the epitome of a losing franchise(at least in the court, not necessarily in the business side)now there is a long line of people that want to buy the LA Clippers, from Oprah and Magic Johnson, to Oscar de la Hoya. Some of Los Angeles’ best soap opera’s have not been produced in Hollywood studios, but(like the OJ case)in real life courts of justice.

I am afraid this one is also heading there.

Amaury Pi Gonzalez is the Spanish TV voice for Angels baseball and does News and Commentary each week for

http://www.sportsradioservice.com

by Jerry Feitelberg

The Sacramento City Council whose planned vote on the new arena will be put on hold as it was scheduled to be voted on May 13th. Details of the new arena plan were not finalized and won’t be ready by the 13th. Without such documents of the plan the city council will have to wait to vote on the plan.

It was however assured that the Kings and developers will have a plan in place in the very near future perhaps as soon as late May or early June. With such an enormous project in hand the final touches of the designs and doucments of the plan are still in the process of being matched up with the foot print of the new arena site at downtown plaza.

The city proposed $225 million subsidy is being detailed under the watchful eye of the Kings ownership and city officials as they’re looking at everything from the windows of the arena to the planned entertainment grounds and surrounding areas outside of the building. The Kings have assured the city council that the delay will not disrupt the October 2016 finish date.

“The definitive agreements are in the last stages of completion and will be finalized soon” the city said. The contract requirement is $1 million and had to be completed according to the city ten days in advance of the crucial May 13 city council vote and the agreement was not ready yet because the Kings were still working on some details of the agreement.

“There are a lot of documents, a lot of comprehensive documents, they all have to work together. It’s going to take a little more time.” said Sacramento Assistant Manager John Dangberg. Kings president Chris Granger said the deal is about 99.9 percent done. The Kings will be contributing $222 million and the City is in for $255 for a total of $477 million on the project.

Jerry Feitelberg is covering the arena developments for the Sacramento Kings and Golden State Warriors for http://www.sportsradioservice.com

by David Zizmor

OAKLAND–The stars are getting aligned already and you know how it is in Los Angeles as the immediate lifetime suspension of L.A. Clippers owner Donald Sterling and his being forced to sell his ball club has the likes of former TV talk show host Oprah Winfrey, record producer David Geffen and Oracle’s Larry Ellison are ready to get the checkbook out and would like to buy the Clippers once they go up for sale. The former talk show gab host Oprah will be an investor and the club will be ran by Geffen and Ellis.

Winfrey spokeswoman Nicole Nicols confirmed the report and said that Oprah was interested in the club as soon as she found out that the NBA was forcing Sterling out. Oprah’s representitives contacted the league office and also confirmerd the story with CBS.

If the sale is successful it would be Ellison’s second shot at trying to be an owner of an NBA team. Ellison tried to get on with the Golden State Warriors which boiled down to a bidding war with Warriors current owners Joe Lacob and Peter Gruber who won the bid for. Ellison is in good company this time in trying to buy the $1 billion plus basketball team with Oprah and Geffen. Ellison might have competition one more time as Magic Johnson is trying to put a group together a group and throw his hat into the ring in trying to buy the club. Magic is co-owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers.

The strange thing about the Sterling story is when I first wrote about this last week on Saturday morning this was just bubbling up and it certainly seemed like a big deal at the time but who knew how big of a story this was going to be, Sterling who is a real estate businessman, a former injury attorney, and now former owner of the Clippers. When the story first broke it was big but there was no idea at the time that this story was going to explode world wide like it did with President Barack Obama commenting on it from Kuala Laumpar.

Now this story grew and it was on every major TV network for the last five days and with Sterling in an interview with reporter Jim Gray telling Gray that he’s not selling the club this could turn into a real war between the NBA and Sterling as Sterling plans to fight the NBA in court. It’s just strange that there was nothing more on the news cycle that was more important as this story dominated the news for the last week.

Sterling also was involved in settling out the largest discrimination suit in U.S. history in 2009, in 2006 that case started. Also there were other cases involving Sterling regarding sexual harassment and discrimination over the years. This was adding up since 2006 with these dicrimination cases over the years and this part of Sterling is really to no one surprise.

Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson had been active back when he was a player with the players union and Johnson was a player more than a decade ago. Johnson the current mayor of Sacramento is obviously a politician and obviously has symphathy with the players union. Some say Johnson has a bigger role than the mayoralship he may have higher political ambitions than the mayorship after he finishes in Sacramento.

He might be a little cynical and say this is a launching point to get bigger publicity that covers more than just the state of California that remains to be seen. Johnson was contacted by the Los Angeles Clippers and union president Chris Paul partly becuase of Johnson’s experience in the player’s union. Johnson responded by being the public face for the union and part of this is because the union and the NBA does not have a current president.

There is a player president and that’s Paul but there is not an official player representative, there used to be an NBA president and that was Billy Hunter but he got fired following the last collective bargaining agreement because the agreement was so bad for the players. So with Hunter gone there is no one representing the players so Johnson was asked to step in.

David Zizmor covers the NBA for Sportstalk radio