Jay Littlepage: Life In Balance?

On sports With the summer solstice upon us it's fitting that the "winter" sports in the US have ended.  Hockey in Raleigh in the summer? Hard to get my brain wrapped around that...

Unlike some of my buddies who were rooting for the Dallas Cubans to win for non-basketball reasons, I was rooting for good games and good backstories (when you live in the Denver market that's what you are left with when it's not Broncos season).  While I can rarely sit through an entire game anymore what I did catch of this series was entertaining - other than when Shaq was at the free throw line (an astounding 37% for the postseason).  Dwayne Wade completes his ascendancy as he ownz0rs the Mavs.  With LeBron I think we have our Magic and Bird for the next decade.  And good backstories - Gary Payton gets his ring.  Zo sips well earned champagne, 6 years after a kidney transplant.  All in all, a good way to end the season.

Before you put away your NBA replica jerseys for the season and pull on your baseball caps, be sure to tune in to the World Cup.  While the US is not quite ready to challenge for the cup they have risen to a legitimate top 10 team in world rankings.  They laid an egg against the Czech Republic in their first game but followed with a great effort against the Italians, keeping their chances alive of making the knockout round despite losing 2 players to red cards.  Unless you've played the game it's difficult to fathom how hard it is to play with only 8 position players - it is a big pitch to cover.  But they salvaged a draw against one of the best teams on the planet. 

The refs in the US/Italy game had a bad day.  The red card against Eddie Pope was a yellow at best.  They continually called Italy offsides, and replays showed at least 3 of the calls to be bad.  My biggest annoyance was that no cards were pulled on the Italians for diving (melodramatically falling to the turf at the slightest bump) - an art form Italy is known for, and that FIFA swore to crack down on.  Oh well.  Thursday i'll be rooting hard for them, because an Italy win over the Czechs and a US win over Ghana puts the US is in the round of 16.  Go Azzuri!
Posted by jaylittlepage ( Jun 21 2006, 07:58:26 AM MDT ) Permalink