Marlowe Blog: Nuggets provide season to remember ...more ?
NOTEBOOK: Depth benefits Nuggets with each playoff game ...more ?
Brewer, McGee provide boost off bench for Nuggets ...more ?
Steve Blake, wife receive death threats via Twitter after Lakers? Game 2 loss (Ball Don't Lie) ...more ?
After scoring 19 points and hitting five 3-pointers in a huge Game 7 performance to beat the Denver Nuggets, Steve Blake was lauded for shaking off a 12-for-33 mark in the first six games and coming up big when it counted. But after missing an open corner 3-pointer that would have given the Los Angeles Lakers a one-point lead in the closing seconds of Game 2 ? a game that the Lakers led by seven with two minutes left, a game they gave away in a manner befitting Santa Claus , according to their center ? some fickle fans changed their tune on the backup point guard and, disgustingly, brought his family into the mix.
From Dave McMenamin at ESPN Los Angeles :
After the game, both the Twitter feeds of Blake and his wife, Kristen, were inundated with criticism ranging from curse word-laden rants to threats.
"I hope your family gets murdered," read one tweet that Kristen Blake re-tweeted along with a single comment: "Wow." [...]
Steve Blake responded to the troublesome situation after Lakers practice on Thursday.
"It's pretty disappointing that there are a lot of hateful people out there, but you move on," Blake said. "I just don't appreciate it when it's toward my family. You can come at me all you want but when you say things about my wife and my kids, that makes me upset."
As horrendous and regrettable as this is, it's nothing new; as long as there have been sporting matches to lose, there have been goats blamed for losing them, and pockets of disgruntled, perspective-lacking fandom whose pursuit of doling that blame out ventures far beyond the pale of reason and decency. (And let's be clear about this: "Lakers fans" aren't to be blamed for death threats and hate speech lobbed uncaringly at the Blakes; "awful, lunatic-fringe idiots" are. Several bad apples don't spoil a gigantic, passionate bunch.)
What is relatively new, though, is how social media outlets ? primarily Twitter, since more pros actually seem to use and manage Twitter accounts themselves than handle, say, their own Facebook pages or write their own blogs ? and the immediate connections they afford fans to the objects of their obsession can factor into this mix.
JaVale McGee is getting closer to playing for the Philippines (Ball Don't Lie) ...more ?
One of the top stories of the playoffs so far, beyond that many games have been unwatchable, is that Denver Nuggets center JaVale McGee played like a capable and effective pro . There's a chance that, for as many silly plays as he's made over the years, he could become one of the best centers in the league, even if he does nothing more than block shots, rebound and catch the ball around the basket for easy dunks and alley-oops.
Now that the Nuggets' season is over, JaVale has a chance to work on his game this summer. As far as we know, he won't be doing so as part of Team USA, either with the senior team or the select squad that practices and scrimmages with them before the London Olympics. In fact, McGee might play for another nation in international competition in the future. Oddly enough, he might end up playing for the Philippines.
McGee has been trying to become a naturalized citizen of the island country for some time now, but it's been a long process. Now, however, there's legislation in the Filipino government to get it done. From Francis Respisio for local station News5 (via PBT ):
Danilo Gallinari can?t sleep, wants to prove he?s not a loser (Ball Don't Lie) ...more ?
It's something of an understatement to say that Danilo Gallinari did not come up big for the Denver Nuggets in their Game 7 loss to the Los Angeles Lakers on Saturday night, a defeat that sent George Karl's upstart squad home for the summer after the opening round of the NBA playoffs for the second straight season. The 23-year-old forward missed eight of his nine field-goal attempts in the deciding game, scoring just three points in nearly 26 minutes of play and turning the ball over four times. It was a bad scene.
More damning, Karl yanked Gallinari at the 7:07 mark of the third quarter, parking him on the bench for all but a 1:58 stretch midway through the fourth ... during which he coughed it up to Metta World Peace with four minutes left and the Nuggets down five, earning himself a trip right back to the bench. In the biggest game of the year, Denver's coach didn't feel like he could trust a player the team just signed to a four-year, $42 million extension . Less than ideal.
As Mark Kiszla of the Denver Post put it, "Gallo was a zero," and 36 hours after Game 7, he was still pretty torn up about it.
The hurt left an emotional scar. You could feel his humiliation from here to his native Italy.
"I had a bad night. It's my nature, and I was given this by my parents, to live for those big moments. I want big games to prove to myself that I'm a winner and not a loser," Gallinari told me Monday [...]
"I didn't have just the world watching that game, but also my friends, my family and everybody in my home country knew I was coming out to have a big game. And I didn't."
Feeling like you let people down is the worst. The particular strain Gallo is referencing ? basically, "the Adam Banks in 'The Mighty Ducks' strain" ? is well known to anyone who's ever tried really hard to be excellent when your parent was finally able to get off work and come to your game, but failed. It's a bummer, and it can even stick with you when your head hits the pillow, as Kiszla writes: