Hurley’s team play bad fit for NBA
Given that Danny Hurley’s UConn championship teams succeed by sharing the ball, looking inside for the open man, don’t rely on 3-point bombs and play determined defense, why, at any price, would he sacrifice that to coach any NBA team, let alone LeBron James’ Lakers?
Hurley is also an overly excitable unchained coach given to right-here, rightnow scoldings of his players. NBAers don’t easily suffer such coaches.
➤ Reader/neat factsfinder Herb Eichen notes that in recently lost NBA greats, Jerry West and Bill Walton, each had odd achievements.
West, for the 1969 Lakers vs. the Celtics in seven games, was the only NBA Finals MVP for a losing side.
Walton, with Portland in 1978, was the only player to win the MVP then, with Boston in 1986, win the NBA’s Sixth Man Award.
➤ The Yanks weren’t scheduled to play on Memorial Day because that would mean playing the day after a game in San Diego to play the Angels in Anaheim, two hours away.
But playing a late Sunday ESPN game vs. the Dodgers followed the next night by a game in Kansas City was no problem.
➤ Ray Ferraro, ESPN’s lead Stanley Cup analyst, perhaps as a matter of neglect, has been a valued presence. He concisely speaks useful sense and his “oot and aboot” Canadian accent makes for authentic audio.
From Ferraro’s ice-side position during Game 2 of the Oilers-Panthers final, a weird collision of circumstances: he spoke of slumping and now hobbled — Nurse! — Edmonton defenseman Darnell Nurse who was seen leaning over the boards from his seat on the end of the bench to listen to Ferraro speak of him.