A GRIP ON SPORTS • It is often said by lots of people an NBA playoff series doesn’t become interesting until the road team wins a game. Everyone is talking about it. Though, just maybe, it might be fake news.
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• Oklahoma City, much to our – and by “our,” I mean anyone who watched the franchise be ripped away from Seattle a couple decades ago and never want to see it experience success – chagrin, seemed to establish its dominance in two easy home wins to start the Western Conference finals last week.
The Thunder defense? Nearly impenetrable. The offense? Clicking, keyed by this season’s most valuable player, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. The outlook? What type of challenge will Indiana bring?
And then Saturday night happened.
Gilgeous-Alexander, who had scored more than 30 points in six consecutive games, was held to 14. It was third time in the playoffs he has scored less than 20, something that happened just once in the regular season. The Timberwolves’ Anthony Edwards, rendered ineffective in OKC, scored 16 points in the first quarter – two more than OKC did as a team – and Minnesota led by 31 at halftime. This one was over before it had hardly begun.
Which makes for an interesting point. How could geography, a change of venue, mean so much?
It doesn’t. But it does. The Thunder were not nearly as aggressive as they have been, as illustrated by Gilgeous-Alexander’s total of four free throws. Well, either that or the home crowd had an impact on the whistles. You decide.
Whatever the reason, the home team is 3-0 in this series. It hasn’t really begun, though it has been interesting.
• You know what else is interesting, though a little too loud for my taste these days?
Yes, the Indianapolis 500. It is the one auto race I’ve always been interested in, even before I was allowed to drive.
Back then a large majority of the big names at the Brickyard every year had American roots. Unser. Foyt. Andretti. Oh, sure, there were the British drivers, the Graham Hills and Jimmy Clarks but the rest of the world seemed content to win Grand Prix races on winding roads, not make a couple thousand left turns in America’s heartland.
Until the late 1980s, when Emerson Fittipaldi, a Brazilian with an Italian name, made the switch and opened a floodgate. Between 1989 and 2022, foreign-born drivers won the quintessential American race 25 times. Heck, in the stretch between 1997 and 2022, Americans drank from the traditional milk bottle just five times.
Josef Newgarden, sporting a foreign-like spelling to his first name but born in a NASCAR hotbed, Tennessee, has done his level-best to help make American Indy car racing great again, having won the past two years. But with the news this week Newgarden’s ride had an illegally modified spec part and his subsequent exile to the back row, one has to wonder if his back-to-back wins were actually on the level.
With the amount of scrutiny race officials supply, the answer is probably yes, but that doesn’t mean the Penske team’s faux pas – the issue caused a major shakeup in the successful organization – this year won’t derail his chance to become the first to ever win three consecutive times. No one has won the 500 after starting in the final row.
If Newgarden is off the table, who is sitting at the head?
Pato O’Ward of Mexico is the odds-on favorite to win his first. Spanish-born (and current Indianapolis resident) Alex Palou, who should have won this race already, is also among the top picks. But our choice? Helio Castroneves, the 50-year-old with a record-tying four wins already. Yes, he’s way too old. But Phil Mickelson was the same age when he won the PGA Championship in 2021. And everyone knows golf and driving are the two favorite pastimes of old folks on Sundays.
Wouldn’t it be exciting to watch Castroneves fly down the final straightaway this afternoon, a bunch of young pups in his wake, the sell-out crowd screaming, his Honda roaring – and his turn signal blinking.
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WSU: College football has changed in the past decade. So much, in fact, the makeup of a coaching staff is hard to recognize. More NFL than high school, that’s for sure. With a front office, handling duties like roster procurement and salary cap management. That role at Washington State is filled by Ricky Ciccone. Greg Woods introduces us to Ciccone (and his role) in this story today. … Greg also covers Saturday’s biggest national news in college basketball. Cedric Coward is staying in the NBA draft. It’s a national story only because Coward entered the transfer portal after his injury-shortened WSU season and announced he would attend Duke if he didn’t stay in the draft. Otherwise? His decision would have been ignored or dismissed. … Elsewhere in the (current, old and future) Pac-12 and the nation, Jon Wilner takes his weekly look back in the Mercury News. … Stewart Mandel covers part of what is happening in this Athletic column. … Arizona State quarterback Sam Leavitt is not only a Heisman contender, he’s a philanthropist. … San Diego State knows its new conference is facing some tight deadlines. … In basketball news, the Oregon State women continue to mine the local high school ranks for players. … The Oregon softball team is headed to the College World Series in Oklahoma City. The Ducks rolled Liberty yesterday to earn their berth. … UCLA is still alive after a walk-off win Saturday, but the Bruins will have to defeat South Carolina on the road again today to move on. … Oregon won the Big Ten’s regular-season baseball title. But the Ducks didn’t make it to the conference tournament’s semifinals, knocked out in pool play. A chance to rest before hosting a regional, perhaps? … Arizona went the other route, winning the Big 12 tournament title by rallying past TCU in Saturday’s final. … Fresno State won the Mountain West baseball tournament for the second consecutive season. Don’t forget, the Bulldogs win the 2008 NCAA title.
Gonzaga: Playing in Minnesota is coming home for Chet Holmgren, who played travel basketball with another former GU star, Jalen Suggs while growing up in the Twin Cities.
EWU: Eastern women’s coach Joddie Gleason has a plan for staying current with the Eagles’ roster makeup. And still keeping true to the traditional path of attracting high school recruits. Dan Thompson has all the details in this story. … Elsewhere in the Big Sky, another transfer is headed to Montana to play football.
Preps: Dave Nichols kicks off his roundup of Saturday’s action with coverage of the local schools in the State softball championships. But he doesn’t end it there. He also has news on baseball, tennis and track and field.
Chiefs: The last time Spokane won the Memorial Cup was 2008. The group that made that happen included some of the most impactful names in Spokane hockey history. Jared Spurgeon, Tyler Johnson, Jared Cowen and others. Dan Thompson spent some time recently talking with members of the roster and he shares their journeys.
Indians: Not surprisingly, Dave was at Avista on Saturday as well. He watched as Spokane’s McCade Brown dominated on the mound, only to see the Indians’ offense and bullpen let him down. Tri-City scored twice in the eighth to rally for a 3-2 victory.
Kraken:The Florida Panthers’ 6-3 win Saturday put them on the verge of their third consecutive Stanley Cup Finals appearance.
Mariners: Two errors in the first inning led to two Houston runs. That’s all the Astros needed as they held on for a 2-1 victory. … We linked this story on Dan Wilson yesterday when it was on the Times’ site. It is on the S-R’s today. … Jorge Polanco has been slumping. Or reverting to the mean. Whatever. The veteran was given a day off Saturday. … Harry Ford is always on base in Tacoma.
Sounders: A 1-0 win at home over FC Dallas. That was Saturday’s result. Not pretty. Not too exciting but, most importantly, three points added to Seattle’s ledger in the standings. Albert Rusnák scored from the spot after a Dallas handball in the box.
Seahawks: We linked Mike Vorel’s column on the Tush Push and the Hawks yesterday when it ran in the Times. It is available on the S-R site today.
Storm:Jewell Loyd is coming to Seattle for a visit. That’s important.
French Open: There is no Rafi. Rafael Nadal, with his 14 Roland Garros men’s titles, has retired, joining the man he will be paired with in history, Roger Federer on the sideline. That leaves Novak Djokovic as the last of the troika that dominated Grand Slam events for a couple decades to try to hold off the younger challengers by himself. Can he?
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• For us, it was first Sid Collins calling Indy on the radio. I can’t remember how many times his voice wafted through our warm house back in the day. Then it became Paul Page, until he moved over to TV in the late 1980s. We moved with him, watching it more than listening in those days, though it was often taped due to softball commitments. These days? We can’t tell you whose voice you will hear today. OK, we looked it up. On the radio it is Mark Jaynes. On Fox, Will Buxton will supply the play-by-play when the green flag drops at 9:45 a.m. Now you know. So do I. But in our ears no one will ever replace Page, whose voice still seems synonymous with the race. Until later …