After a nail-biter of a Super Bowl, an overtime NCAA men's hoops final and a resurgence of ratings in the NHL Stanley Cup, the NBA Finals are poised to continue a fantastic 2008 sports year. This is your father's NBA Finals. And get your grandfather in the room, too. The Los Angeles Lakers and Boston Celtics — two of the league's most storied franchises (and one of the most heated rivalries in all of sports) — are set to battle for league supremacy. Before Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls took over the world in the 1990s, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird owned the '80s, with the Lakers and/or the Celtics appearing in the NBA Finals every year, save one. Gone are the short shorts and the knee-high socks. This year, the Lakers' Kobe Bryant and the Celtics' Kevin Garnett lead a new generation of roundball phenoms battling for the Larry O'Brien Championship Trophy. ABC analyst and former New York Knicks coach Jeff Van Gundy sees the series going the distance. "Whoever wins i...
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The 2007 NBA season opens this week with a quadruple-double: four straight nights of doubleheaders on TNT (Oct. 30 and Nov. 1) and ESPN (Oct. 31 and Nov. 2).Tomorrow night’s opening game sees the Portland Trailblazers face off against the defending NBA champion San Antonio Spurs (Oct. 30, 8 pm/ET). After that, the Houston Rockets will take on the Los Angeles Lakers at 10:30 pm/ET. ESPN’s coverage on Halloween includes the Dallas Mavericks at the Cleveland Cavaliers (8 pm/ET) and the Seattle SuperSonics at the Denver Nuggets (10:30 pm/ET).On Thursday TNT has the Detroit Pistons at the Miami Heat, plus the Phoenix Suns taking on the Sonics. Friday’s ESPN games are the Washington Wizards at the Boston Celtics, followed by the Suns hosting the Lakers.Changes at the broadcast table include ex-Indiana Pacer Reggie Miller assuming a full-time game-analyst role for TNT, and ESPN’s hiring of former Knicks/Rockets coach Jeff Van Gundy as an analyst."I was beginning to thin...
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The Colorado Rockies swept the Arizona Diamondbacks last night to win the National League Championship Series and advance to their first World Series. The Rockies will play the winner of the American League Championship series. (The Cleveland Indians lead the Boston Red Sox two games to one in that series.) Game 1 of the World Series will air next Wednesday (Oct. 24, 8 pm/ET) on Fox.... ESPN has added Jeff Van Gundy to its NBA broadcasting team. Van Gundy, who was head coach of the Houston Rockets through last season and was previously coach of the New York Knicks, will call games on ESPN and ABC alongside play-by-play man Mike Breen and analyst Mark Jackson. Van Gundy worked for TNT and TBS during the 2002-03 season, in between his coaching gigs.... The 2007 PGA Grand Slam of Golf begins today on TNT (4 pm/ET). The two-day tournament features this year's champions of the Masters (Zach Johnson), U.S. Open (Angel Cabrera) and British Open (Padraig Harrington) as well as Jim Furyk, wh...
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