Silva: Each NFL team enters the offseason with a series of pressing needs. Sometimes a team can address them all, sometimes they ignore them all. But if a team's smart, they'll listen to us. These are the most crucial aspects for NFC teams.
SportsTalk: Albert Pujols signs with the Angels and Prince Fielder joins the Tigers. Which team is better now?
Ryan Callahan scored for the fifth time in four days and defenseman Ryan McDonagh snapped a second-period tie to lift the New York Rangers to a 3-2 victory over the Washington Capitals on Sunday.
Kobe Bryant hit a baseline jump shot with 4.2 seconds left and the Los Angeles Lakers wrapped up a six-game road trip by holding on to beat the Raptors 94-92 on Sunday, their eighth victory in nine meetings with Toronto
Arc's five up, five down: After No. 11 Michigan State's 58-48 upset of No. 3 Ohio State, you'd be a fool to discount the Spartans' national title chances now.
Miami coach Al Golden says the worst is behind him, but his headaches figure to continue now that former booster Nevin Shapiro, now in jail, says his involvement with the Hurricanes program will result in stiff penalties.
Golf's dream pairing - Woods and Mickelson - is on the course in the final round at Pebble Beach. Jason Sobel has hole-by-hole reports.
The United States completed a 5-0 rout of Switzerland in the Davis Cup on Sunday, with 19-year-old Ryan Harrison and John Isner winning closing singles matches.
Euro Roundup: First-place Manchester City won 1-0 at Aston Villa on Sunday on Joleon Lescott's goal in the 63rd minute, maintaining its two-point lead over Manchester United in the Premier League.
Tessa Worley of France fought off gusting winds to win a second consecutive World Cup giant slalom Sunday in the Andorran Pyrenees. Overall leader Lindsey Vonn was more than a second behind and finished eighth.
Robins: It’s the Year of the Dragon on the Lunar calendar, and this Chinese influence could extend to it also being the year of the Pekingese on the green carpet at the 136th Westminster Dog Show on Tuesday.
Getty ImagesKenny Smith, former point guard and current sage of TNT’s NBA coverage, was asked about the importance of the home-court advantage in the playoffs.
“You’re asking the wrong guy,” he said. “I was on a team that didn’t have home-court advantage and won the championship. We came in with a sixth seed and won the title.”
Then he asked: “Do you write better at home?”
Good point, although it’s apples and oranges, since attaining a home advantage is considerably easier in that case than it is for, say, the Boston Celtics, Los Angeles Lakers, Cleveland Cavaliers or Orlando Magic to do so for the upcoming NBA playoffs.
Smith played on a Houston Rockets team that won the championship in 1994 and ’95. In ’95, the Rockets did indeed enter the postseason as a No. 6 seed, and went on to sweep the Magic, which had home-court advantage in the finals.
But that was then. The example foremost on the minds of hoop aficionados these days is last year’s NBA Finals, won by the Celtics inside a frenzied Garden. The Celtics held court in Games 1 and 2, stole one in L.A., then closed the deal in Boston.
Since then, pundits have pondered the Lakers’ fate, and opined that, if they had had home-court advantage, the outcome might have been different. That viewpoint may be somewhat insulting to the Celtics, whose leadership troika of Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen was ravenously hungry for a championship and therefore Boston might have won regardless.
Yet it’s safe to say that performing in a building packed to the gills with bloodthirsty partisans sympathetic to the home team while being brazenly hostile to the invaders from the Left Coast may have given the Celtics a beneficial boost.
This NBA season has been a doozy, marked by enough action and storylines to qualify as a Hollywood franchise. But with less than a month and a half to go, the remaining intrigue centers around which of the major powers obtains home-court advantage throughout the playoffs.
“Home court is what you play for,” said Dirk Nowitzki of the Dallas Mavericks. “You get home court so your crowd can lift you in tough situations.”
Home court didn't help Nowitzki and the Mavericks a whole lot in the 2006 NBA Finals against the Miami Heat. Dallas did win their first two games at home, but the Heat then reeled four straight wins, including the clincher at Dallas in Game 6.
There may not be a head coach in the NBA who understands the value of the home court better than Mike Brown of the Cleveland Cavaliers. His club has the best home record in the NBA at 26-1 (entering games on March 4), the lone setback coming at the hands of the Lakers on Feb. 8.
Yet despite the Cavs’ success in familiar surroundings, Brown said he and his team are not fixated on obtaining the best record in order to have home-court advantage.
“I have not really placed much emphasis on it at all,” said Brown, whose Cavaliers visit Boston on Friday night. “We’re a one-day, one-game, one-practice, one-shootaround team at a time. We have a standings board for the Eastern Conference at our practice facility in the lockerroom area, and at the Q in the lockerroom area, so guys know where we stand with other teams in the East.
“If we focus on one day, one game, one practice, one shootaround at a time, all that will take care of itself. We should end up with a nice record at the end of the year that should give us home court, if not all the way throughout, at least most of the way through the playoffs.”
Entering games on March 4, the Lakers had the best record in the NBA at 49-12. Cleveland was next at 47-12, followed by the Celtics at 47-14. The Magic, although a longshot for the best overall mark, is hanging around at 44-16. The Lakers own the tiebreaker against the Celtics and Cavaliers, having swept their series with those teams, but not against Orlando.
Smith feels the home-court advantage, while not vital for teams laden with veterans, is helpful for those that have inexperienced bench players.
Kobe Bryant hit a baseline jump shot with 4.2 seconds left and the Los Angeles Lakers wrapped up a six-game road trip by holding on to beat the Raptors 94-92 on Sunday, their eighth victory in nine meetings with Toronto
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Wesseling: Each NFL team enters the offseason with a series of pressing needs. Sometimes a team can address them all, sometimes they ignore them all. But if a team's smart, they'll listen to us. These are the most crucial aspects for AFC teams.
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Silva: Each NFL team enters the offseason with a series of pressing needs. Sometimes a team can address them all, sometimes they ignore them all. But if a team's smart, they'll listen to us. These are the most crucial aspects for NFC teams.