Maddux Sports Blog

I’m posting late because I was at the Calgary Flames game tonight. I managed to score a seat from a friend of a friend – fancy, expensive corporate seats. We sat right in the front row against the glass. I wouldn’t want to sit there all the time – you can’t really see the opposite end very well – but it is a truly incredible view when the play is right in front of you. Three or four times during the game there was a big hit right in front of us, and it was amazing – your whole body shook. If you like hockey then you really need to see a game from that viewpoint – you see things you don’t notice from other places, and you get areal appreciation for the size, strength, and speed of these guys.

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Game seven in this semi-final series will be played on Sunday, May 17, 2009. What should you look for and what will it take to turn the tide either way? Well, here are five key points for each team that could be the difference between victory and defeat.

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Interesting little note for horseplayers coming out of Belmont Park. The field was set today for Saturday’s Peter Pan Stakes, a Grade 2 race over 1 1/8 miles that has become a well-used prep race for future Belmont Stakes runners. It’s a pretty solid seven horse field. There’s a horse entered named Scorewithcater, a New Mexico based runner. Normally,he probably wouldn’t get much attention – New Mexico based horses never do. This horse has one interesting distinction, though – he has beaten the Kentucky Derby winner in each of his last two outings. He outdueled Mine That Bird down the stretch in the Borderland Stakes, and then he finished third, one spot ahead of Mine That Bird, in the Sunland Derby. Given the shock that Mine That Bird pulled, Scorewithcater will almost certainly get more attention from bettors than he likely deserves. The puzzle will be to figure out if whatever happened to Mine That Bird between his time in New Mexico and the Derby is contagious, and whether this horse caught it.

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In the Eastern Conference Semifinals, the second seed Boston Celtics will meet the third seed Orlando Magic. Boston went the full run against the Chicago Bulls, the seventh seed, finally beating them in the seventh game. The Magic met and were victorious over the Philadelphia 76ers, taking their series four games to two.

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It’s not particularly surprising that LeBron James was named MVP today – he certainly deserved it. What was surprising, though, is the margin by which he won it. There are 121 first place votes cast, and James picked up 109 of them. He’s the youngest player since Moses Malone in 1979 to win the award, and the third youngest ever. Cleveland coach Mike Brown was also named coach of the year last month, and that raises a surprising stat – this is just the fourth time that a team has had the MVP, top coach and the best record in the league in the same year. Just one of those teams, the 1996 Bulls, has gone on to win the title.

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Tax day has come rolling around. So it’s perhaps unlikely to be thinking of Santa Claus right now. But that may be exactly what Celtics fans are doing. Boston may be thinking with no small amount of anguish about the team they had on Christmas Day, compared with the team they have today.

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In the Eastern Conference, the second seed Boston Celtics (62-20) take on the seventh seed Chicago Bulls (41-41). In their three-game regular-season series, the Celtics were victorious twice. There is concern as Boston lost to Chicago in the final match-up by a score of 121-127. But Boston has been on a roll, winning eight of their last 10, while Chicago has gone 7-3 over the last 10 games.

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I woke up this morning to Breaking News alerts on the two major sports news sites I normally ready, and each one was a different story. One was wildly exciting, and the other was a confirmation of a gut feeling:

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Jay Cutler is the biggest baby I have ever seen. The latest news on the Broncos’ QB front is that the team has given up and is going to trade their pivot before the draft. That news has apparently been confirmed by owner Pat Bowlen as well, so it is past the point of just being a rumor. The impetus for this latest move is that apparently neither Bowlen nor coach Josh McDaniels has apparently been able to get Cutler to return a phone call for the last 10 days. Seriously? Not returning phone calls is what you do when you are in grade school and you are having a fight with your friend. It’s not what you do when you are a highly paid and well respected professional who has yet to prove that they can actually do their job – lead the team to playoff success. I don’t think that there is a quarterback in the league that could justify this kind of immature, prima donna behaviour, but at the very least you should have to have a winning record before you do it. Teams will line up for Cutler, and he’s probably an upgrade for at least half the teams in the league, but this whole episode has convinced me that Cutler doesn’t have what it takes to go all the way. I mean, can you imagine Tom Brady not returning Robert Kraft’s calls? Or Peyton Manning screening out Tony Dungy? Ridiculous.

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So, I’ve been thinking with all of the garbage you hear about guys in professional sports who are baby-cries, idiots and cheaters, there definitely are some players that you can’t help but root for. No, I am not nominating these guys for sainthood, but I am saying that they have character, a strong work ethic and come to play everyday.

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