The NBA Jam conspiracy

It turns out one of the great urban legends in video-game history is true.

Mark Turmell, designer and lead programmer for NBA Jam, said in an interview with Ars Technica's War Stories that the game was programmed for the Chicago Bulls to miss last-second shots against the Detroit Pistons:

Turmell said he was a big Pistons fan and that he tweaked the game code so it favored his beloved team against the Bulls.

"Making this game in Chicago during the height of the Michael Jordan era, there was a big rivalry: the Pistons and the Bulls. But the one way that I could get back at the Bulls once they got over the hump was to affect their skills against the Pistons in NBA Jam," he said. "And so I put in special code that if the Bulls were taking last-second shots against the Pistons, they would miss those shots."

Turmell said the NBA Jam arcade game was introduced at the NBA All-Star Game in February 1993, at which point the "Bad Boys" era of the Pistons was over. They missed the playoffs that season for the first time since 1982-83.

During the height of the Pistons-Bulls rivalry, they met in the playoffs four straight times from 1988 to 1991. Detroit won the first three meetings, two in the Eastern Conference Finals, but the Bulls finally broke through with a sweep in the 1991 conference finals en route to their first NBA championship.

37 Clemson players have tested positive

Clemson announced Friday that 14 football players tested positive for the coronavirus over the past week, bringing the total number of cases on the team over the past month to 37 -- roughly one-third of the roster.

Including the football players, Clemson athletics reported 19 total cases this week. Since beginning testing on June 1, Clemson has conducted 430 tests, with a total of 47 positive results.

Twenty-eight people who previously tested positive, including 23 football players, have completed a 10-day isolation period. The school said about half of those people had symptoms, though none of the positive tests had led to hospitalizations as of Friday.

Those who tested positive have been notified and must isolate for at least 10 days. Known close contacts have also been asked to self-quarantine for at least 14 days and cannot participate in voluntary activity during that time.

The state of South Carolina has seen positive cases increase in recent weeks amid the coronavirus pandemic. On Friday, the state reported 1,273 new cases, the second-highest number of confirmed cases reported in a single day in South Carolina.

Damien dismisses football and basketball coaches

Damien Memorial School has released its football and boys basketball coaches and reassigned its athletic director in a shakeup involving as many as 20 employees.

“Given all the guidance that is being provided by authorities on the reopening of schools, all of which indicates a probable change in the number of teams that will be fielded, the length of each season and presence or absence of spectators, it seemed in the best interest of all involved in our athletic program and of the school, to inform some coaches that at the present time a position is not available,” Brother Brian Walsh, the school’s president, said in a news release.

Football coach Eddie Klaneski and boys basketball coach Alvin Stephenson — the latter of whom led the Monarchs to the Division II state championship in 2019 — were terminated. The girls volleyball program also was impacted, although Don Faumuina retired after Damien won the Division II state title last year.

Rudy Alejo has been reassigned from athletic director, a position he held the past year, to full-time teacher. Alejo has been with Damien since 1973.

“In specific reference to the athletic director, if the duties of the office were to be reduced from full to part time, in deference to Mr. Alejo’s long years of service, it was felt wise to have him return to his full time teaching position,” Walsh said in the release.

Walsh cited school policy in not provided specifics about individuals terminated.

“Some coaches are employed as full time Damien Memorial staff members,” Walsh said. “School policy is that personnel decisions concerning full time staff members are never discussed.”

*** [7/1/20] ***

Damien re-hires Eddie Klaneski as head football coach and appoints him as athletic director

MLB baseball returning in July 2020

NEW YORK >> Major League Baseball issued a 60-game schedule tonight that will start July 23 or 24 in empty ballparks as the sport tries to push ahead amid the coronavirus following months of acrimony.

Each team will play 10 games against each of its four division rivals and four games vs. each of the five clubs in the corresponding division in the other league, according to details obtained by the Associated Press.

A team is scheduled to make only one trip to each city it visits in MLB’s shortest season since 1878.

In a twist, the sides expanded the designated hitter to games involving National League teams and instituted the radical innovation of starting extra innings with a runner on second base.

The number of playoff teams will remain at 10, though that still could change.

The trade deadline will be Aug. 31 and the deadline for postseason eligibility is Sept. 15.

Active rosters will be 30 during the first two weeks of the season, 28 during the second two weeks and 26 after that. They will not expand to 28 on Sept. 1, as originally intended this year.

With no minor leagues, teams would be allowed to retain 60 players each, including a taxi squad. Up to three players from the taxi squad can travel with a team to a game, and one of the three must be a catcher.

MLB is keeping the innovation of the three-batter minimum for pitchers, but decided to keep the injured list minimum for pitchers at 10 days rather than revert to 15, as initially intended. But the new rule remains in place that a pitcher must face at least three batters or finish the half inning.

Greatest wrestling match ever?

WWE's decision to push the Edge vs. Randy Orton match at Backlash as the "Greatest Wrestling Match Ever" has been a topic of ridicule in recent weeks. Both Orton and Edge thought the line was a rib when they first heard about it and Twitter is riddled with wrestling fans poking fun at it, but WWE has refused to back down from the claim. They've even gone so far as to call up legends like Ric Flair, Shawn Michaels and Kurt Angle to come on Raw, agree with WWE's claim and then make their pick for who wins. However, it looks like "The Nature Boy" is changing his tune.

Here's what Flair said on Raw on a couple of weeks back — "So the WWE reaches out to Naitch. And they say, 'Naitch, what in your opinion will be the outcome of what many consider to be the greatest wrestling match ever, Edge vs. Orton?' I said to myself, 'Ever since I quit limousine riding and jet flying, kiss stealing and wheelin' dealin,' and hung up my tights, the greatest in-ring performer today is Randy Orton. My main man, and the man who will beat Edge at Backlash."

And here's what he wrote on Twitter on Wednesday:

Edge And Randy Think They Are Going To Have The Greatest Wrestling Match Ever? Have They Not Seen My Match With Ricky Steamboat? Now That Was The Greatest Wrestling Match Ever. What Does The @WWE Universe Think? #GreatestWrestlingMatchEver

Flair's trilogy of matches with Ricky Steamboat in the late 80s is viewed by many as the greatest trilogy of matches ever, particularly their 2-out-of-3 Falls Match at Clash of Champions VI in 1989. WWE even slotted that match at No. 4 when they picked the "100 Best Matches to Watch Before You Die," trailing only Steamboat vs. Randy Savage at WrestleMania III, Bret Hart vs. Steve Austin at WrestleMania 13 and The Undertaker vs. Shawn Michaels at WrestleMania 25. Flair pops up on that top 100 list 14 times, including all three of his matches with Steamboat. Meanwhile Edge appears onhe list five times, while Orton appears four times.

Edge admitted in an interview with ESPN this week that he wishes WWE hand't decided to set the bar so impossibly high with their marketing.

"If I were to look at it on paper and go right, first proper wrestling match back in nine and a half years and they want to bill it as the greatest wrestling match ever ... I mean, that's pretty pressure filled," Edge said. "But I can't look at it that way, I really can't. I just have to understand that it's promotion and it's hype. I always go out with a mindset to try and have the best match that I've ever had. So I don't look at it in terms of a contest — will it measure up to Steamboat vs. Savage or will it measure up to Shawn [Michaels] and [The Undertaker]. All I can do is measure up against myself, and especially at this juncture in my career, I'm just happy to be out there.

"This shouldn't even be happening. Let alone for the company, and let's call it straight, Vince, to think that he can bill this the 'Greatest Match Ever.' Would I have preferred they not billed it as that? Absolutely. But I also know there are times where heels get dug in the sand and there's no changing it," he added.

***

Seven Great WWE Matches Edge vs. Randy Orton Needs to Be Better Than at WWE Backlash

Kurt Thomas

Kurt Thomas, who became the first American to win a world championship event in men’s gymnastics when he captured gold in the floor exercise at Strasbourg, France, in 1978, died on Friday. He was 64.

Thomas’s wife, Rebecca, who owned and operated a gymnastics center with her husband in Frisco, Texas, near Dallas, confirmed the death, telling International Gymnast magazine that he had a stroke on May 24.

Thomas followed up his breakthrough at the 1978 championships by winning five world championship individual medals in 1979, including gold in the floor exercise once more and in the horizontal bar, at Fort Worth. He finished sixth in the all-around standings, based on his totals in the six individual events and his individual triumphs.

He joined with Bart Conner as trailblazing figures among American men in a sport in which women had garnered most of the attention and in which China, France, Japan and the Soviet Union had dominated men’s international gymnastics.

Thomas was known for his daring and innovative moves in what came to be called the “Thomas Flair” on the pommel horse and the “Thomas Salto” in the floor exercise. In the “Flair,” he flew into a series of wide-swinging leg moves in which he would kick his feet high into the air. The “Salto” involved a dangerous backward move in a tucked position.

But he never won an Olympic medal. He had yet to reach his prime when he competed at the 1976 Games. And though was a favorite at the 1980 Olympics in Moscow, he didn’t get a chance to compete: The American team boycotted the Games in retaliation for the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan.

Thomas took part in professional gymnastics shows and worked as a TV commentator at gymnastics events later in the 1980s, when the Olympics were still limited to amateurs. He tried a comeback, at 36, when the Olympic ban on professionals had been lifted, but he was unable to get past the United States trials for the 1992 Games.

Conner, who won the gold medal on the parallel bars at the 1979 world championships and at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, wrote on Twitter that “Kurt was a fierce rival, who went on to become a cherished friend.”

Kurt Bilteaux Thomas was born in Miami on March 29, 1956. His father, who managed a meat company, died when he was 7, and he and his siblings were raised by their mother, Ellie, a secretary.

“I wanted to be a doctor and then a policeman, and then a pro basketball player or football,” he told The New York Times in 1979.

But at 14 he watched the Miami‐Dade Junior College gymnastics team at a practice and was impressed. “I saw this guy swinging on a high bar, and I just thought it was kind of a neat sport,” he said.

Thomas played on a newly formed gymnastics team at his high school and won a scholarship to Indiana State University in Terre Haute.

He was a multiple N.C.A.A. champion, winning the parallel bars and all-around in 1977, and parallel bars, horizontal bar and the all-around in 1979. He helped take the men’s gymnastics team to the 1977 national collegiate championship and ranked behind only Larry Bird, the future basketball Hall of Famer, as a campus celebrity.

Thomas received the Sullivan Award as the nation’s leading amateur athlete in 1979 and was inducted into the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame in 2003.

In addition to his wife, Rebecca (Jones) Thomas, his survivors include their children, Hunter and Kassidy, as well as a son, Kurt, from a previous marriage.

In the run-up to the 1980 Moscow Games, television was raising Thomas’s profile.

In April 1979, he made an appearance on Dick Cavett’s TV show, in which he provided instruction to Cavett, who had been a gymnast in his high school days.

The previous month in New York City, before a packed house and an estimated 35 million television viewers, Thomas won all‐around honors at the American Cup games in Madison Square Garden for the second year in a row despite a sore thumb, which he had injured in his final collegiate home meet the week before.

After the Garden event, where several Americans made it to the finals, Thomas said: “We’ll be heard of in Moscow, you can bet on that. It’s time for the world to look out for American gymnasts. We’ve arrived.”

But the Moscow Games went on without the United States, and what could have been his greatest international triumph was not to be.

***

The champion gymnast stepped away from competition in 1980 for other pursuits. Thomas worked as a commentator for ABC Sports during the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. He also starred in the 1985 film Gymkata, in which he portrayed Jonathan Cabot.

In this action film, Thomas had to infiltrate the fictional country of Parmistan in order to compete in "The Game," an endurance race with obstacles. However, his character faced terrorist attacks and had to respond with "Gymkata," a mix of gymnastics and karate. He ultimately took part in The Game and defeated the villainous Zamir.

Missing John Wooden

My last visit with John Wooden took place in a cluttered San Fernando Valley condo with shag carpeting, a broken bedroom television and no internet.

The greatest coach in basketball history lived there.

My last visit with John Wooden was set up by dialing his listed home phone number because he had no cell. He confirmed our appointment by scribbling my name on a calendar because he had no secretary.

The greatest teacher in sports history was never paid than $32,500 a year.

My last visit with John Wooden on the occasion of his 90th birthday ended not with a handshake or hug, but verse. Before walking alongside me to his front door, he read a line from a poem.

“If death should beckon me with an outstretched hand, and whisper softly of ‘an unknown land,’ I shall not be afraid to go.”

Even as he prepared for the end, John Wooden moved about this world with warm simplicity, uncommon dignity and unceasing grace. There was always one more lesson to impart, one more bit of inspiration to endow, one more poem to share.

On this 10th anniversary of the death of a 99-year-old man forever known as simply “Coach,” it is instructive to know that Wooden would have cringed at his national obituary. The first sentence in the Associated Press story used a nickname he hated as much as that sweet soul could hate.

“Wizard of Westwood,” the wire service called him, and upon reading that he would have banged his rolled-up program against his thigh in frustration.

“I hate being called a wizard,” he told me once. “I am not a wizard.”

He was a high school English teacher. He was a country preacher. He was a homespun philosopher. His angriest invective was, “Goodness gracious sakes alive!”

Coach steered UCLA to a record 10 NCAA titles, twice as many as any other men’s coach, including a mind-boggling seven straight.

He also drove a 15-year-old Ford Taurus.

“I think being famous is somebody who did something good for mankind,” he said. “Mother Teresa was famous. Nobel Prize winners are famous. Basketball coaches aren’t famous.”

The story of his Hollywood arrival was famously odd. Wooden took the job at UCLA only because of a Midwestern snowstorm.

It was 1948, and Wooden was a small-town Indiana kid coaching at Indiana State and hoping to stay in the middle of the country by joining the University of Minnesota. But a blizzard knocked down some power lines and delayed the Gophers’ offer by about 30 minutes. By the time they finally called, Wooden had already agreed to join the Bruins.

In 1975, he retired under equally legendary circumstances. It was immediately after UCLA had defeated Louisville in the national semifinals. On the spot, he decided he’d had enough. He told the media that the title game against Kentucky would be his last. His farewell tour lasted one day. UCLA won that game, and he was gone.

During his tenure, he ruled with pearls of wisdom found in both his legendary Pyramid of Success and Seven-Point Creed, but his favorite sayings can best be described with a brown paper bag.

When Luke Walton was growing up, his father Bill would decorate his school lunch bags with Wooden’s tiny philosophies.

One day the bag might read, “Be quick, but don’t hurry.”

The next day it might read, “Failing to prepare is preparing to fail.”

Luke, who went on to play for and coach the Lakers, acknowledged, “My dad is like, a real Wooden freak.”

Bill Walton and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar were the two biggest stars who were greatly affected by Wooden. Abdul-Jabbar wrote a book about their relationship called, “Coach Wooden and Me.”

Walton, meanwhile, gives speeches about how Wooden taught him to tie his shoes.

During my last visit with Wooden, the phone rang, the answering machine picked up, and suddenly there was a familiar voice singing “Happy Birthday.” The caller finished the song, said he was calling from Australia, and kept talking as if he knew it would take the aging Wooden a few minutes to shuffle to the phone. Sure enough, Wooden eventually made it to the machine and picked up.

“Bill, Bill, I love you too,” he said to Walton.

Coach wasn’t perfect. His UCLA tenure was not all pretty. His teams were shadowed by the presence of businessman Sam Gilbert, who violated numerous NCAA rules by funding the activities of many UCLA stars while Wooden was the coach.

There was never any evidence that Wooden knew what was happening, but there were always suspicions that he surely had hints, and one day several years before Wooden’s death, longtime Times sports editor and columnist Bill Dwyre gave him a chance to set the record straight.

Over breakfast, Dwyre told Wooden that his obituaries would all contain the name, “Sam Gilbert,” and that this was his chance to control the narrative.

“I said, ‘Tell me right now, what you knew, what you saw, and I will write the story, and that will be the database everyone uses when you die,’ ” Dwyre recalled.

After much thought, Wooden finally answered.

“I really didn’t know much Bill,” he said. “I’ll just let it go the way it goes.”

And so it went, with Wooden’s legend only growing stronger after his death, the power of his legacy and the goodness of his message overcoming all negative insinuation.

Did you know that, because of his love for fundamentals, his favorite sport was women’s basketball? Did you know he gave away all but one of his 10 championship rings, but kept a bronze medallion he won for academic-athletic achievement as a student at Purdue?

Did you know he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom only after a prolonged letter-writing campaign by 30 former players organized by a freewheeling spirit who Wooden used to bench for breaking rules, a guy named Andre McCarter?

“I was the least likely guy to do this,” McCarter said at the time, later adding, “What Coach taught me, it transcended basketball.”

In his final years, through his undying love for his wife of 53 years, John Wooden even transcended devotion.

After Nell Wooden died in 1985, he refused to attend the Final Four for nearly 10 years without her. He continued living in his throwback condo because she decorated it. When UCLA decided to dedicate the Pauley Pavilion court in his name, Wooden insisted Nell’s name also be included, and listed first.

In his final years, on his bed, on the pillow Nell once used, there sat a neatly arranged pile of love notes. Wooden wrote one to her on the 21^st of every month to mark the day of her death.

“I haven’t been afraid of death since I lost Nell,” he said. “I tell myself, this is the only chance I have to be with her again.”

And so, high above the Nell & John Wooden Court, Coach has been reunited with his bride for 10 years now, leaving the rest of us to cling to the wisps of his timeless teachings, forever trying be quick without hurrying, how we miss him still.

-- Bill Plaschke, Los Angeles Times, June 4, 2020

NBA approves plan to finish season at Disney World

After several months on hiatus, the NBA made significant headway in returning to play. On Thursday's board of governors call with league commissioner Adam Silver, the owners approved a plan to finish out the remainder of the 2019-20 season at Disney World in Orlando, where eventually, a champion will be crowned, according to The Athletic's Shams Charania. The vote required three-fourths support to pass, and it received a 29-1 vote from owners on the call, according to ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski.

The league is targeting a start date of July 31, where 22 of the 30 NBA teams are expected to participate in Orlando. That will include the 16 current playoff teams as well as the New Orleans Pelicans, Portland Trail Blazers, Sacramento Kings, San Antonio Spurs, Phoenix Suns and Washington Wizards. Teams will play an abbreviated version of the regular season that will consist of eight games, as well as a play-in tournament for the eighth seed in both conferences. The tournament will only happen if the No. 9 seed finishes within four games of the No. 8 seed, in which case the No. 9 seed will have to beat the No. 8 seed twice to earn the final playoff spot in their conference.

Wes Unseld

June 2 (UPI) -- Hall of Fame basketball player Wes Unseld -- the 1968-1969 NBA MVP -- died Tuesday. He was 74.

Unseld's family announced his death in a statement released by the Washington Wizards. Unseld had a history of health issues, which included a recent bout with pneumonia.

"He was the rock of our family -- an extremely devoted patriarch who reveled in being with his wife, children, friends and teammates," the Unseld family said.

"He was our hero and loved playing and working around the game of basketball for the cities of Baltimore and Washington, D.C., cities he proudly wore on his chest for so many years."

Unseld was a two-time All-American at Louisville before he became the No. 2 overall pick in the 1968 NBA Draft. He averaged 13.8 points, 18.2 rebounds and 2.6 assists in his first season with the Baltimore Bullets.

The 1968 Rookie of the Year and MVP went on to make the All-Star team five times, lead the league in rebounds and win 1977-1978 NBA Finals MVP.

Wilt Chamberlain and Unseld are the only players in NBA history to win NBA MVP and Rookie of the Year in the same season. Chamberlain claimed both honors in 1960.

Unseld averaged 10.8 points, 14 rebounds and 3.9 assists for his career. His 13,769 career rebounds are the most in NBA history for a player listed at 6-foot-7 or shorter on BasketballReference.com.

He was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1988. His No. 41 became the first number retired in Washington's franchise history in 1981.