By
Jordan
Wattington
Hello Gwinnett,
What a month for sports! June has been a fantastic month because mini-camps opened up for the NFL and the NBA had their NBA Finals between the Cavs & the Spurs!
In the NBA, the San Antonio Spurs walked away with the championship by sweeping the Cleveland Cavaliers. The first two games, San Antonio clamped down on LeBron James. The final two games of the series, LeBron got better and so did the Cavs. Well, for a little while anyway. Daniel Gibson was heavily guarded by the finals MVP, Tony Parker. Cleveland, who is a rebounding team was out-rebounded in the series, 175 to 164. Tony Parker led everyone in points per game (ppg) with 24.5. Robert Horry has won his seventh NBA championship (3-Lakers, 2-Rockets, and 3-Spurs). Congratulations to him and the Spurs organization! Congratulations to LeBron James for leading the Cavs to the NBA finals, for helping them defeat the Detroit Pistons, and for giving those Cavs fans hope. I’m sure he’ll bounce back. NBA great, Shaquille O’Neal was swept by the Houston Rockets in his first NBA Finals appearance. The key for the Cavs to move on is to keep Larry Hughes healthy and find a true point guard who can score and make big plays for himself and others.
As the NBA Draft is getting closer, there is still the question of who are the Atlanta Hawks going to draft 3rd and 11th in this year’s draft in New York. Experts say either Brandan Wright or Al Horford is going 3rd in Atlanta. They also say Julian Wright is going to the Hawks at the 11 spot. Well, everyone knows about Greg Oden and Kevin Durrant who are more than likely going to Portland and Seattle with the 1 and 2 picks in the NBA Draft. These two players are guaranteed to turn around whichever team they get drafted by. Good luck to them and all of the players in this year’s Draft. I just found out that the Hawks will be wearing new uniforms for the upcoming season. Hopefully, the new uniforms will help the Hawks play winning NBA basketball.
The Atlanta Braves have been slumping of late, and have fallen to a .500 record as of the writing of this article. Luckily for Atlanta, the New York Mets have also hit a slump at the same time. Otherwise, the Braves would have fallen out of contention for the NL East division title. They are currently in 3rd place, 4.5 games behind their division rival, the New York Mets. In their last ten games, the Braves are 3-7, losing two out of three games to the Red Sox. The Detroit Tigers then came to town and swept the Braves as well. The Braves are in a terrible offensive slump, and were shut out in 4 of 5 games, and only scored 1 run in the game that they scored in, on a Chipper Jones homerun. Frustration set in between Chipper Jones and John Smoltz regarding Chipper’s nagging injuries keeping him out of the lineup. They have worked out their differences, however. Andruw Jones has been in a serious slump this season. He’s hitting .199 with 11 homeruns and 42 RBI’s. He currently has more strikeouts than hits. This comes during his free agent season, where players will usually have a career year. Could he be feeling the pressure? One bright spot on the Braves is Jeff Francoeur, who has raised his batting average from .260 last year to .275 this year and he is leading the Braves in RBI’s this season with 46. Hopefully the Braves will win more and the Mets will lose more!
NFL commissioner, Roger Goodell has really enforced the zero tolerance rule. One of the suspended players, Adam (“Pac-Man”) Jones, who is suspended for the whole 2007-08 season, faces charges of a Las Vegas strip-club shooting during the NBA All-Star Weekend. On June 18th Pac-Man was questioned by Atlanta police about a strip-club shooting incident. Jones will plead not guilty to two felony charges stemming from allegations that he threatened to kill club employees and that he bit a bar bouncer, his lawyers said. If convicted, Pac-Man could face a maximum of 12 years in prison and a $10,000 fine. Hopefully, he can stop all of this foolishness and cut his suspension from a full year to only 10 games. Another troubled NFL player, Tank Johnson, was waived by the Chicago Bears on June 25th. Hopefully he can get himself together and find a team to play for.
Football season is just around the corner. I am sure that many players in Gwinnett are getting ready to play. I am looking forward to the upcoming NFL & NCAA seasons. Best wishes to all for a successful season.
Thanks again for your time in reading this month’s column. See you next month!
