This Weekend in Sports (08-June-2007)
NBA Finals
As expected the San Antonio Spurs have taken a 1-0 lead in the finals that started last night. They were able to hold Lebron James to only 20 points on 4 for 16 shooting. The Spurs double and triple teamed James forcing him to pass the ball or hoist up a jump shot. Bruce Bowen, one of the best man-on-man defenders, shadowed James all night and forced James towards the help defence. Tim Duncan once again had an all star performance with 24 points, 13 rebounds, and 5 big blocks. The Spurs lead by as much as 20 points at one point in the second half, but Lebron and the Cavs made a run of their own to bring the deficit within 8 points with about 5 minutes left in the game. San Antonio held on for the 14 point win. It will be interesting to see what happens in the rest of the series when the Cavaliers make some adjustments and start hitting their shots. The double and triple team defence won’t be as quick on James if the rest of the team makes the shots they are supposed to. Then that will open up the floor for King James. Keep watching this series it should be a good one!
NHL
The Anaheim Ducks are the 2007 Stanley Cup Champions. Anaheim completely dominated Ottawa, which was a huge surprise to me. By the final game it looked like all the Senators except for Daniel Alfredsson had given up. Anaheim deserved to win and the state of California will be the home of Lord Stanley’s Cup for the first time. There have been talks of expansion to Las Vegas and Kansas City over the last few days. If this comes to fruition then it might be a long long time before the cup comes back home to Canada with only 6 teams. However the Jim Balsillie the Co-CEO of Research in Motion, makers of the Blackberry, has purchased the Nashville Predators. Rumour has it that Jim would like to move the team to Canada and specifically Hamilton, Ontario or Waterloo, Ontario. This will be a story that we will be following with great anticipation.
There is an F1 Race in Montreal this weekend too!
Sadly, thesec are sports I don’t hear much about in Britain.
I was going to also write about Beckham returning to form with the national team in the Euro 2008 qualifier, but I didn’t have time to get it in. Looks like he’s going to miss a few more games with the Galaxy in the MLS if he continues to play on the England national squad. Luckily he should be able to play here in Toronto against Toronto FC and we will get to see him in action for the first time.
On another note … too bad the Canadian team failed to capture the Stanley Cup