Of Wizards and Roses

It had been days of wine and roses at the Yard. The Bruins landed one of the top basketball recruiting classes in the nation. The Lakers and Clippers were into the second round of the playoffs. McCourt was finally out as owner of the Dodgers. The Dodgers responded with their best start since their last World Series Championship in 1988. The Galaxy was bumping with Obama about their championship at the White House. The Yard became a hockey fan as the Kings took out the top seeds in the west and made the Stanley Cup Finals as an eight seed. The Staples Center hosted six playoff games in four days. It was the first time in the history of the building that all three tenants made the playoffs. It was the best of times. A week later, the Lakers were run out of the playoffs by the OKC Thunder. The Clippers got swept by the Spurs. Matt Kemp was on the DL. The prescient had tantalized and flirted with our shallow objectives. The future grounded it fallow. The Lakers and Clippers came to the dance with much expectation. The Kings, not so much. For the first time in many years, all three teams were still playing in the building that the Lakers built. The Kings are still playing hockey in June for the first time in 19 years. The Clippers have never played basketball in June so they were just happy to make the second round for the second time in franchise history. Go Kings! It was bad enough that the young guns in Oklahoma ran the aging Lakers out of the building but then they clowned the Lakes at the post game press conference. Russell Westbrook and Kevin Durant came to the press conference in their Rerun glasses and brightly colored bowling shirts. Apparently, every NBA star except Kobe and anyone on the Celtics is required to be festooned in wide framed glasses at press conferences. No one seems to have a vision problem on the court but when facing the media, clown glasses are required. They did boat race the Lakers so the Yard needs to deal. Go Spurs! The Yard is rooting for a Spurs-Celtics NBA Final. We do not particularly like either team but we despise their opponents. It is shaky ground for the Yard to root for the Celtics but Miami is the team to tip the balance. Lebron James is the league MVP but he is not the man with the game on the line. Lebron would rather be the guy inbounding the ball with 7.6 seconds left than the guy who is receiving that inbounds pass with the clock clicking. Lebron is the man for the first 46 minutes. He is rare to take an important shot. He struggles with an important free throw late in the game. Kobe Bryant is a polarizing individual but he will take the final shot in any game any time under any circumstances. He has been doing that since he was seven years old. He will fight to get open with 1.2 seconds left to attempt a ridiculous 3-pointshot. He fails more than succeeds but he takes them all. Kobe is fearless despite his failures. He shows up at the press conference without facial apparatus or excuses. Lebron fears failures so he defers to others to take that shot. He is the league MVP for quarters 1 to 3. He is still the MVP with two minutes to go but if the game is the on the line, he is always making one more pass to anyone else. Kobe rarely gives up the ball up with the game on the line. Lebron does it instinctively. Go Celtics! Many times a team gets rid of a bad manager or a disruptive player and the team responds. We do not recall an instance when a team responded, like the Dodgers, when the owner was replaced. The Guggenheim billionaires have placed Magic in the owner’s seat as the face of the franchise. Magic is popular but the sheer joy of Frank McCourt not being in that seat has brought the fans back. Last year with Jamie and Frank were haggling over our city’s most cherished team and who would own it, Dodger Stadium became a morgue of discontent. Frank was never at the games because he was reviled. Jamie was not at the games because she was just vile. Magic sits proudly in their seats with Tommy most nights and brings his smile and spirit to LA’s first franchise. It is good to see him there but better to see Frank and Jamie nowhere. We are truly sorry the new owners had to pay those bitches so much money for a team they ran into the ground. Feces happen. After the SI article about Bruins in ruins, it was great to see UCLA basketball rise like a Phoenix out of the bong water. It had been a particularly miserable stretch after Ben Howland had generated so much expectation in his first five years. The SI article probably enhanced UCLA’s chances at landing this recruiting class of McDonald’s All Americans divas. With sordid stories of VIP limo rides to Beverly Hills mansions, plenty of weed and girls, what All American would not want a piece of that action? Hopefully, Howland can corral the show ponies into a team. Howland will never replace the Wizard Wooden in UCLA history and mythology. It is a tall task for any coach at any University. But there had always been another wizard in Westwood even when Wooden was doing his basketball magic. Harry Potter was not the only sage at Hogwarts just the guy with his name on the franchise. Wooden’s name will be everywhere at UCLA for now and for always. UCLA volleyball coach Al Scates retired this year after 50 years as the head coach. During Al’s tenure as UCLA head coach, John Wooden coached UCLA to ten titles. Al Scates coached the Bruins to 19 NCAA titles in volleyball. John Wooden won 620 games in 27 seasons. Al Scates coached the Bruins to 1,217 victories over 49 seasons. Wooden won seven titles in a row. Scates won only three titles in a row but his teams did it three times. No team in any sport has ever won three titles in a row three different times. From 1970 to 1998, Scates’ teams won fifteen titles or nearly half of the available titles. In 2006, UCLA was 12-12 and was in jeopardy of missing the playoffs for only the second time during Scates career. Al Scates had not coached a championship team since the 1998 campaign. The 67 year-old Scates coaxed a team without a single All-American to fourteen straight victories to close the season. UCLA swept #1 CSULB to become the lowest seeded team to make the NCAA Final Four for volleyball. UCLA faced Penn State in the finals which were hosted at Penn State. UCLA swept the Nittany Lions to win Al’s 19th and final championship. UCLA volleyball did not pay Scates for the first ten years. He was never paid his worth and that was never his goal. Al Scates paid it forward for two generations of Olympic medalists, beach volleyball superstars and the grand University he served for most of his adult life. God bless Al Scates! "Al Scates?! Precisely. The one and only. The man who is to volleyball what (John) Wooden was to basketball, (Red) Sanders was to football, Napolean to artillery..." Jim Murray.