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Published Monday, March 02, 2009 in Sports

The NBA: Where some ‘excitement’ happened

Sports Column by STUART CROSBY

stuart@newnan.com

If the boys at NBA Marketing were looking for good matchups in the post All-star portion of the schedule, they may kiss whatever items they use for luck since the last few days have seen good games.

I haven’t a clue about the actual marketing department of the National Basketball Association, but I use the term when mentioning the league since I am not burying it or praising it.

I digress a little but there some games that had excitement over the past few days.

On Sunday, the so-called Kobe and Shaq rivalry resumed as the Phoenix Suns defeated the Los Angeles Lakers 118-111 with Shaquille O’Neal scoring 33 points and Kobe Bryant hitting for 49 points while teammate Pal Gasol scored 30.

We are used to Bryant scoring 49 or somewhere in that range and Gasol has had some good nights, but the “Big Cactus” has been carrying the Suns on his back due to injuries to point guard Steve Nash and forward A’mare Stoudamire.

This game also follows and effort by the owner of more Scrabble tiles of the letter Q than anyone I know as O’Neal scored 45 points on the Toronto Raptors in a 133-113 win that made him the oldest player to score at least 45 in a game.

Of course when he was asked about this resurgence lately, in typical Shaq-Fu style he said “I never left”.

While a couple of the association’s marquee performers had their own shows, another matchup occurred at Philips Arena as the Atlanta Hawks hosted the Cleveland Cavaliers in a prime time game Sunday night on ESPN.

While I am not naive enough to believe ESPN would televise this game because the Hawks have won 33 games, as a longtime fan of the team I am glad they showed up even though LeBron James was the feature participant for the show.

My attitude about James has changed from when he was in high school after the 2004 Olympic Games in which he was a non-factor for the United States as the team won the bronze medal.

Since then he has really improved and basically has made the club go from being “the Cadavers” to the Cavaliers.

Anyway, he became the one who had to win the game for Cleveland as he went to the line with 1.6 seconds remaining in regulation and the game tied at 87-87.

Still working on hitting free throws, James missed the first and barely made the second, but the Cavs were ahead and if Joe Johnson’s three-point attempt doesn’t go one inch past the rim Atlanta steals a win.

With the exception of poor free-throw shooting by the two teams, I felt the game was exciting throughout the evening with each team having their own share of runs that gave the fans their money’s worth.

Among the fans at the game were Spike Lee who told James to call him and next to Lee was Bill Murray who recently visited our little corner of the world.

My only problem was that the Hawks didn’t win the game and hopefully they will have recovered while they were in Washington Monday night.

The Cavaliers didn’t have to time celebrate their win as they had to sit at Hartsfield-Jackson late Sunday night and catch a flight to Miami for a Monday night with Dwyane Wade and his Miami Heat friends.

Since this column is written before the game, it was exciting to watch or it was dull thud and necessitated a change of the channel to “How I Met Your Mother” or “Dancing WIth The Stars”.

Because I like Wade, I will tell you that he came off a 46 point effort on Saturday against the New York Knicks in a 120-115 win that also saw the Knicks’ “kryptonite” Nate Robinson record 29 points.

Due to the games mentioned and a couple more, I can say “the NBA-where writing about a game happens”.

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