Here’s Jack Finarelli, aka The Sports Curmudgeon, on the state of the NBA today: “The NBA and its fans must come to grips with the fact that a new era has dawned. Professional basketball in the U.S. now is part of the Age of Load Management (ALM). The inexorable fact of life in the ALM is that a fan who tunes into a game — or purchases a ticket to see a game at an arena — cannot rely on seeing star players perform even when those star players are perfectly healthy. Now, if you think as I do that far too many NBA regular-season games are nothing more than an exhibition of dunks and 3-point shot attempts, the last thing you want to see is such a contest populated by the junior varsity.”
“Seattle Mariners infielder Tim Beckham drew an 80-game suspension for performance-enhancing drugs,” writes Dwight Perry of the Seattle Times. “Considering he’s been hitting .211 since April 7, here’s hoping he kept the sales slip.”
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One more from Perry: “Two weeks after the LPGA Tour’s Dow Great Lakes Invitational included a Anannarukarn-Thanapolboonyaras twosome, Im and An shot 62s to share the first-round lead at the PGA Tour’s Wyndham Championship. That, folks, is what you call an overcorrection.”
The B.C. Lions are 1-7 after giving up a 15-point lead and losing, 35-34, to the Tiger-Cats in Hamilton on Saturday night. They also are the CFL’s biggest tire fire, lacking a pass rush and an ability to keep quarterback Mike Reilly on his feet. . . . The Lions visit the Winnipeg Blue Bombers (6-2) on Thursday, then return home to face the Tiger-Cats on Aug. 24. You are free to wonder just how many fans will show up for that one, especially if the Lions lose to Winnipeg and go home with a 1-8 record.
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The Lions were at home to the Edmonton Eskimos on July 11. The announced attendance for what was a 33-6 loss was 17,026. But theBreaker.news checked with PavCo, the landlord at B.C. Place, and the actual attendance was 12,502. . . . On July 27, the Lions dropped a 45-18 decision to the visiting Saskatchewan Roughriders before an announced crowd of 20,950.
If you are wondering how this blog got to this point, moving from hockey to kidneys, Marty Hastings of Kamloops This Week explains it all right here.
If you haven’t seen the latest from Patti Dawn Swansson, it’s right here, including a rather timely fact check on Postmedia sports columnist Steve Simmons.
The Oakland A’s signed Nathan Patterson the other day after he hit 94 m.p.h. — or maybe it was 96 — on a radar gun in a booth at a minor-league game. Here’s Scott Ostler of the San Francisco Chronicle:
“I stepped into one of those booths about 15 years ago. Gave ’em my best Bruce Springsteen “Glory Days” speedball. The read-out was somewhere in the 50s. High 50s, as I recall. I slunk away, cursing the defective radar gun. Iced my throbbing arm for a week.
“Those speed-gun booths are to orthopedic surgeons what Halloween is to dentists. You warm up with a beer and a churro, then fire the rock as hard as you can? Snap, crackle, pop.”
File this one under ‘The More Things Change . . .’
Thread . . .
The 2019 Kamloops Kidney Walk is scheduled for Sept. 22. Dorothy Drinnan will be walking for a sixth straight year after having a kidney transplant on Sept. 23, 2013. . . . If you would like to support her, you are able to do so right here. . . . Thank you, in advance.
TAKING NOTE 