A Press Democrat Blog

Overtime

Ted Sillanpaa looks at the San Francisco Giants, other Bay Area sports and gives a dad's-eye view of Empire prep and youth sports trends

NBA: When an acrobatic dunk was awesome

Saturday, at 12:39 by

By TED SILLANPAA Readers who mistook my determining that LeBron James is achieving other-worldly heights as a basketball player for knocking all the generations who came before him have to understand that I remember seeing my first slam dunk on television. That’s how old I am. I remember never having seen anyone dunk a basketball. The time when a dunk, let alone anything the least bit acrobatic was a novelty, is very clear to me. I was sitting on the… Read More »

You take Jordan … I’ll take LeBron

Thursday, at 10:18 by

By TED SILLANPAA People who follow the NBA want to wait to see how many championships LeBron James wins before they even consider acknowledging him to be in the same class at the great Michael Jordan. I’ve heard some respected media members and former players who still want LeBron to win more titles before they’ll consider him in the same class as Kobe Bryant. I see no need to wait for LeBron to try to win five or six championships… Read More »

Lakers are just a mess

Monday, at 1:22 by

By TED SILLANPAA @tedsillanpaa on Twitter The Lakers are a team of dead men walking. They hung with the Heat for most of Sunday’s nationally-televised game, but LeBron James then reminded us of the huge gap between the greatest player in the world … Kobe Bryant at age 34 … and the ailing and recalcitrant Dwight Howard who might now never become the game-changing force we thought he’d be. LeBron did more than Kobe and Steve Nash, combined, playing on… Read More »

49ers’ Harbaugh did youngsters no harm

Monday, at 8:10 by

By TED SILLANPAA I spent Sunday in the last place on this planet that I would spend even one second considering about the outcome of Super Bowl XLVII. I was done with the Ravens’ win over the 49ers before the confetti finished falling to the Superdome turf. When I plugged back into the world on Monday around noon, a sports talk radio guest appeared on a station out of Sacramento to explain that 49ers head coach Jim Harbaugh had spent… Read More »

Warriors have their star, defensive tenacity … just need rim protector

Tuesday, at 1:46 by

By TED SILLANPAA The Warriors’ Stephen Curry has become the go-to, clutch-shooting star that every really good NBA team needs. It’d be foolish to think Klay Thompson can’t become a star, too, despite his early season woes. David Lee’s having a career season. Golden State has been winning consistently because head coach Mark Jackson and assistant Pete Myers are throwback NBA tough guys who finally put together a Warriors’ team that plays defense, plays it well and doesn’t back down… Read More »

Pass the ball and there’s no beating LeBron, Kobe, Durant & Co.

Friday, at 9:55 by

By Ted Sillanpaa With a berth in the Olympics gold-medal game on the line, it became a cause for concern Friday when the U.S. men’s basketball team couldn’t seem to extend its lead over Argentina beyond 13 points. OK. The bar is set pretty high for the team of America’s NBA stars. A 13-point lead in the third quarter of an Olympic semifinal should be perfectly acceptable. On Friday, though, it was anything but that. With this bunch, a 13-point… Read More »