Ballgame’s Points

On Feb. 12, the Celtics had just finished holding off the Bulls at TD Garden in a nationally-televised Sunday afternoon game. The day belonged to Rajon Rondo, who messed around to the beat of a 32-10-15 triple-double as an injured Derrick Rose glowered from the opposing bench. Rose or no Rose, the Bulls’ fate had likely [Read More...]

The following should not come as a newsflash: Football is a savage game, waged by self-proclaimed gladiators. The sport has no room for the soft or merciful, a statement that is more applicable to the game’s greater culture than to those who contest it at its highest level. Indeed, before passing judgement on the New [Read More...]

A few leftover thoughts from a divisional weekend that went more or less by the book in the AFC while veering wildly off script in the NFC. Let’s focus on the latter. History will determine where 49ers 36, Saints 32 ranks among the all-time classics. In terms of dizzying back-and-forth finishes to an NFL playoff game, [Read More...]

Before jumping into previews of this weekend’s divisional games, some brief postmortems on a pair of the one-and-dones from wild-card weekend … Marvin Lewis better think long and hard before throwing a challenge flag next time he leads a team to the playoffs. The Bengals’ head coach blew both of his challenges in the first half [Read More...]

Wild-Card weekend is nearly here and there’s lot to break down, so let’s get right to it. Pittsburgh Steelers (12-4) at Denver Broncos (8-8) If Ben Roethlisberger wasn’t playing with a high ankle sprain, Rashard Mendenhall wasn’t out with a torn ACL and Ryan Clark didn’t carry the sickle-cell trait, it would impossible to see this [Read More...]

Before diving headfirst into Wild Card weekend (complete game-by-game breakdown to come Thursday), let’s first take a broad view of the 2011 NFL season, one which almost didn’t happen (but not really). 1. Parity officially took hold in 2011 Of all the professional sports leagues, the NFL routinely features the most turnover among playoff participants. This [Read More...]

With the NBA lockout threatening to swallow up the entire 2011-12 season - and slam shut the closing window on the Celtics’ chances at one final title run - it seems like a good time to relish the presence of football, and what has thus far been a riveting 2011 campaign. Consider the following: • [Read More...]

I was at my buddy’s place for the “The Decision”, aka King LeBron’s “Fate of the Union” address. As Jim Gray built the suspense for the millions (and possibly trillions) of spectators glued to their television sets, we came to the following conclusion: There was no way LeBron was going to Miami. Not if he was [Read More...]

There’s always a large swath of the American public that takes little interest in the Olympic Games. Some haven’t the time to follow them; others are irked because “30 Rock” and “The Office” go on a two-week hiatus. Many simply don’t care. For those who do give a hoot, the 21st Olympiad was pretty [Read More...]

The concept of karma can be a tricky topic to tackle. (Who hasn’t seen The Matrix?) Apart from the religions of Hinduism and Buddhism (and Neo and Morpheus), karma — or the general idea of destiny — is most readily applicable to the quasi-religion of sports. Two years and two days ago, on Feb. [Read More...]