All Ball Sports: LeBron Brings Home the Gold

Team HBPD Hermosa Beach Police Chief Paul LeBaron, and Captain Landon Phillips joined fellow officers Detective Blumenfeld, Lieutenant Gaglia, PSO Rodriguez (front), Captain Cahalan, Officer McBride, Officer F. Reyes, and Sgt. Mateo competed in Sunday’s Hermosa Beach Triathlon. Over 1,000 triathletes competed, beginning with a quarter-mile swim south of the Hermosa pier, followed by a 10-mile bike up Pier Avenue and around the Greenbelt, and ending with a three mile run along The Strand from the Pier to the Manhattan Beach border and back. Andrew Rayner, of Los Angeles, finished first overall in 48:37, nearly 3 minutes faster than his 2021 winning time. Allyson Estes, of Hermosa, was the first woman finisher, in 57:53. Photos courtesy of HBPD

by Paul Teetor     

This past weekend Lakers fans got a chance to see something they probably will never see again: a relentless, focused and, determined LeBron James leading a talented supporting cast to a championship.

Team USA’s 98-87 victory over France in the Gold Medal game Saturday afternoon provided plenty of proof that LeBron is still, nearing age 40, one of the top five players in the world.  After the game he was named MVP, and he richly deserved it. Steph Curry led the team in scoring, but without LeBron quarterbacking the whole show Team USA would not have won either its semifinal against Serbia or the final against France.

The Final was a helluva game. France cut the lead down to three points in the last two minutes before Curry put on a dazzling display of 3-point shooting – he finished with 8 trifectas — to pump the lead back up to a misleading 11-point final gap. 

It was a tough loss for France and its 20-year-old star, Victor Wembanyama to absorb in front of a raucous home crowd in Paris, but they can be proud they got the silver medal. The future is bright for France and especially for the 7-foot-4 Wemby, the reigning NBA Rookie of the Year who finished second in the voting for Defensive Player of the Year.

The future belongs to Wemby and his San Antonio Spurs team. The present, however, still belongs to King James. 

Team USA’s 95-91 semifinal victory over Serbia and its superstar Nikola Jokic – a top 3 player in the world – was so scintillating, so inspiring and such an instant classic precisely because it showed LeBron at his very best, something Lakers fans haven’t seen since the weird pandemic championship the Lakers won four long years ago in a Florida bubble without any fans or much excitement.

It was a stunning game from the crazy start to the breath-taking finish.

It was a crazy start because heavy underdog Serbia raced out to a 17-point lead over the highly favored Americans, who looked shocked at the way they were being embarrassed by the Serbians. Jokic was dominant on both ends of the floor, but it was Bogdan Bogdanovic, a pretty good guard for the Atlanta Hawks but no All-Star, who surprised everybody with a 20-point outburst.

The US team rolled out a starting five packed with future Hall of Famers: LeBron, Kevin Durant, Joel Embid, Steph Curry and Devin Booker. But Serbia dominated the first half and had an 11-point halftime lead. It wasn’t that the Americans were playing badly – the problem was that the Serbians were playing great.

The Americans had one basic defensive strategy, and it made sense: double-team Jokic every time he got the ball. But his passing was even better than usual, and he consistently found his teammates for wide open jump shots or easy drives to the hoop.

Serbia still led by 11 points with 7:19 left. But with a sense of history in the making – the wrong kind of history for the Americans – hanging in the air, they redoubled their effort and looked to LeBron for leadership.

He delivered, big-time on the way to a triple double with 16 points, 10 rebounds and 11 assists.

The whole trajectory of the game changed with one miraculous sequence with 7:19 left in the fourth quarter. First Kevin Durant swished a 3-pointer as Jokic was trying to fight through an Anthony Davis screen. In the process Jokic shoved Davis to the court, they both ended up on the floor side by side, and the refs called a foul on Jokic, giving the ball back to the USA.

Taking it out on the sideline, Devin Booker ran around a pick, caught the in-bounds pass in rhythm and nailed a three-pointer from the top of the key as the American players on the bench exploded after looking stunned and lethargic most of the game. Incredibly, they had just scored six points in two seconds, and suddenly the Serbian lead was down to 5 points at 78-73.

The long-awaited comeback was finally on, and with two minutes left Curry hit a three-pointer that bounced out, fell back into the hoop, bounced out yet again, and finally fell through to give the Americans the lead for good.

They kept it because LeBron hit a get-out-of-my-way reverse layup with less than a minute left and Durant nailed an 18-footer to close the deal. 

Curry scored 36 points, but it was LeBron’s all-around game – 16 points, 12 rebounds and 10 assists – that pushed the Americans over the finish line. The thrilling end left coach Steve Kerr reaching for superlatives.

“I’m really humbled to have been a part of this game,” Kerr said. “It’s one of the greatest basketball games I’ve ever been a part of. They were perfect. They played a perfect game. And they forced us to reach the highest level of competition that we could find. And our guys were incredible in that fourth quarter and they got it done.”

The U.S. Women’s Team got it done too – just barely. They beat France Sunday afternoon in the Gold Medal Game, 67-66. The great Aja Wilson led the way with 21 points and 16 rebounds.    

The women overcame a 10-point deficit in the second half to win their eighth consecutive Olympic Gold Medal. French player Gabby Williams hit an apparent three-pointer at the buzzer to send the game into overtime, but a review showed her toe was on the line and so the Americans had yet another Gold Medal. 

Random Olympic Notes

Watching the Olympics on TV is not nearly as good as watching them live and in person, but since most Americans watched them from their couch it’s worth noting a couple of impressions from two weeks of saturation coverage.

Overall, the games were terrific entertainment. But All Ball has a couple of quibbles.

First, whoever approved the idea of athletes swimming in the Seine River should be fired. A body of water doesn’t go from high e-coli levels one day to being healthy and clean the next day. Several athletes got sick from the river, and they’re lucky no one died.

Second, allowing American track star Noah Lyles to run his race after being diagnosed with Covid was totally irresponsible. He was actually seen hugging his fellow runners post-race. 

And third, NBC was far too enamored with the celebrities attending the games than with the games themselves. Whether it was A-List types like Tom Cruise, B-List celebs like Jimmy Fallon or Z-list folks like Kendall Jenner, we tuned in to see the athletes who worked their whole lives for a moment in the sun – not these publicity hounds who already get too much media attention.

But a special shout out goes to Snoop Dogg, who was seen making waves in a pool with Olympic swimming legend Michael Phelps, rolling with LeBron and the U.S.A. basketball team, trading dance moves with gymnast Simone Biles and even throwing some side eye at the Mona Lisa inside the Louvre.

In their desperate desire to be seen as hip and with it, NBC execs conveniently forgot that Snoop began his show-biz career as one of the most prominent gangsta rappers on the West Coast hip-hop scene.

He used to boast about killing police officers and routinely called women “b—s,” “h-os” and “tricks.”

His 2004 hit album R&G: The Masterpiece, includes this lyric: “You gotta put that b— in her place/Even if it’s slapping her in her face/You got to control yo ho.”

But ratings were up over the Tokyo games three years ago, so what’s a little sexism, misogynism and verbal violence when the money is rolling in.

NBC should be ashamed. 

Contact: teetor.paul@gmail.com     

Hermosa Beach Police Chief Paul LeBaron. Photos courtesy of HBPD

 

Captain Landon Phillips.   

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