Category: Sacramento Kings

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

by Jerry Feitelberg

The NBA and its commissioner Adam Silver moved very swiftly to end Los Angeles Clippers’ owner Donald Sterling his ownership of the club. The NBA banned him for life and he cannot attend any games or be around the Clippers’ offices or practice facilities and cannot attend any Board of Governors meetings. In short, he is through and the NBA imposed a 2.5 million dollar fine.

What Sterling said was totally inappropriate and we live in the 21st century. Black athletes have come a long way since 1947 when Jackie Robinson broke the color line for baseball and , in effect, all sports. Many of us remember the days when black athletes had to play in segregated leagues. Satchell Paige, Willie Mays. Hank Aaron all played in the Negro Leagues. The only job that black basketball players could get was to play with the Harlem Globetrotters. Black athletes have shown the world that they can compete and win at the highest level of any sport.

In the mid 50’s the Boston Celtics started to bring in black players. Bill Russell was the most notable but he was followed by Sam Jones and K.C. Jones. NYU’s Tom Sanders became an important piece of the great run of championships that the Celtics enjoyed in the 50’s and 60’s. I believe the Celtics were the first team to utilize five black players on the court at the same time. The University of Texas at El Paso won an NCAA championship with all black players.

Other great black players include Oscar Robertson, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Magic Johnson, James Worthy and the list goes on and on.

Most owners want to get the best players because winning is what counts in pro sports. Winning improves attendance. When you sell your product to the people there is no room for racism. People of all ethnic backgrounds are entitled to buy a ticket and watch the product on the court. When your team goes on a run, fans generally high five the people sitting round them without regard to race or ethnic background.

There is no room in sports for an owner like Donald Sterling. He will, unfortunately,

profit handsomely when his team is sold. Sterling can run his real estate business

until he dies but the NBA and all other pro sports teams do not need him or anyone else that thinks like him.

Jerry Feitelberg is a talk show host on http://www.sportsradioservice.com

—
Jerry Feitelberg
jyf1938@gmail.com

by Amaury Pi Gonzalez

OAKLAND–When I first started working with former late great Sacramento TV-radio personality Ken Gimblin was at the Oakland Coliseum during the great Haas Family A’s teams during the 80s. We were all younger of course and Ken always treated me with respect and we developed a good working relationship and he was a very good man.

I was very sadden to hear the news of his sudden passing last week on Mon 14th, and yes Ken 76 was a real veteran of the business and the Bay Area and Northern California sports, he worked in Sacramento in TV-radio and was a great reporter covering the recent arena developments of the Sacramento Kings and Golden State Warriors.

Ken supported the Kings when they first moved to Sacramento in 1985 and he had covered the team and really went full tilt in covering the team when the new owners took over the Kings this past year when the NBA allowed the Kings to stay in Sacramento. Ken had an inside track on the Kings and the new owners and followed all the court judgements in allowing the team to start buidling the new arena in downtown Sacramento.

I have great memoiries of Ken and I will miss him sincerely. This week we were supposed meet with Ken and do a radio show in Old Sacramento and this was Ken’s town and he will be there in spirit and we will remember Ken with all the great stories and although the show will go on and I got my train ticket to go and I love to take a ride to Sacramento and Ken was the one who showed me how to take the Capital Corridor to downtown Sacramento.

It was Old Sacramento where we did our last radio show together and the last time we saw Ken, we will do the show again and Ken was great and we will remember him and his spirit and he loved the restaurant we will be doing the show from at Ten-22.

Warriors and Clippers series: These two teams are playing very even basketball, the Clippers need to win on Monday night at Staples or they’ll be down 2-0. The Warriors are a team that are not intimidated by anybody, they pass, score, rebound, well. Stephen Curry is a great leader, the Warriors have a lot assets, they have a lot weapons and so do the Clippers too.

With the Clippers Blake Griffin has been a great leader and the Warriors Stepen Curry is shooting the lights out of the ball this is a series that can go all the way. It’s unlikely that Golden State is going to sweep as these teams are evenly matched. However game two is a pivitol game, the Clippers have to win otherwise the Warriors confidence will grow and the Warriors head coach Mark Jackson is a very successful and good coach.

Curry he’s the guy now sometimes he throws the wild pass and he plays with a lot of passion and he wants to win every game. Curry goes out of the way for his teammates, he’s a great element for he Warriors and everybody loves him and he’s the key he’s the franchise for this basketball club and if he stays hot and he’s a guy who can destroy anybody.

Sharks-Kings series: The San Jose Sharks are incredible, the Sharks what they did in game one against the Kings is unforgettable down 2-0 and came back and won it with seven unanswered goals in a 7-2 win. We have talked about the Sharks and coming back like that down two goals in the Stanley Cup and you don’t see that too often and that’s what the late actor Humphrey Bogart used to say “that’s the stuff that dreams are made of.”

A game like that they have to build to it, they have to build your confidence and it doesn’t matter who you are in the NHL like long time veterans Joe Thornton or Patrick Marleau if your a veteran or a rookie in a game like that it has to build your confidence. You know in the playoffs you can come back after you’ve spotted the Kings two goals and then score seven and win it, that’s almost like in baseball losing the whole game and then hitting a grand slam in the bottom of the ninth to win which the Oakland A’s have done in recent years.

It’s the sign of a good team whenever you come back from behind like that in the playoffs and it’s a mark of a champion.

Amaury Pi Gonzalez is the Spanish voice of the Oakland A’s and does News and Commentary each week for Sportstalk radio