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ROCKIES // BRONCOS // NBA                          

ROCKIES   ---    NOT many aspects of a baseball game are more dispiriting than the early minutes of a first inning having your team behind 2-0 from an opponent’s home run and an RBI. Then comes the top of the second and your fielders blunder to the point of laughter, so now it’s Thursday, September 15 and the San Francisco Giants are walloping the Rockies 5-0 during the first of a four game series being played at Coors Field, the whipping a hurtful experience for the Rockies because the day before they beat the Milwaukee Brewers on the road, 6-2, a team that as of Wednesday held the same 87-63 record as the NL-West’s leading club, the Arizona Diamondbacks, ahead of NL-W fourth place Rockies by 16 games.

Rockies RHP Jhoulys Chacin was in bad form last night, allowing hits and runs and unable to tame Giants third baseman Pablo Sandoval, who against Chacin managed a home run and an amazing triple, a double and a single. Yet the Rockies experienced glimmers of hope even without Todd Helton and Troy Tulowitzki, and though a guy named Gonzalez played in right field and came to bat and wore number five it just couldn’t have been the Carlos Gonzalez, for this fellow was dull at the plate and missed a catch that the real Gonzalez usually bags easily. Well, Carlos Gonzalez is entitled to an off night, he’s been having a good year, batting .297 as of Tuesday, with Helton and Tulowitzki ahead of him .302 and .304 respectively.

That brief tackle on hope for the Rockies began with a home run belted by Helton’s sub, Jordan Pacheco, and there were solid hits from Dexter Fowler, Mark Ellis and Chris Iannetta, and base-running raised the final score to 8-5, a relief in that those early innings signaled a shutout. And, the Rockies infield upgraded mid-game with several double plays, though a squeeze play between second and third base in the sixth inning fell apart needlessly, and Chacin’s wild pitches delivered extra bases for the Giants runners.

Friday's game two vs. the Giants became another Rockies  loss, and with no Rockies highlights to speak of although team defense appeared in better shape than the night before. Now the Rockies would have to take two games to tie the four game series vs. the Giants . . .  Of the now 12 games left to the season, five are against the Giants, followed by three vs. San Diego, then three vs. the weakest team in either MLB league, the Houston Astros. For the Rockies to finish the current season without heads hanging too low, the team must win the lion’s share of its remaining games by a better than weak margin.

BRONCOS   ---   BRONCOS Head Coach John Fox wants fans to remember that last week’s loss to the Raiders was only by three points, a score differential that does lift the Broncos  from suspicion of owning week-by-week embarrassments ahead of the season’s remaining games. Truth be told, the four pre-season games proved that the Broncos potential for winning more games than it will lose this year is alive and well and can result in many Sunday victories as long as the team executes what it knows to do effectively, and that means avoidance of the flaws that existed last week. So, if Broncos quarterback Kyle Orton starts and shows that his evasion, timing, throws and handoffs are still slow and no more accurate than last Sunday, then the Broncos head coach replacing him early on with Quinn or Tebow will make sense. But until that happens, Orton deserves better pass protection and his receivers need improved blocking. Too, the running game has to be the Broncos offense priority unless insurance exists from early on touchdowns and field goals and there’s an open WR for an easy throw. As for the Broncos defense, it has to be relentlessly seamless, no slack allowed, the pass rush a priority, Dumervil-style (maybe without Dumervil), as each cornerback runs and guards as if Usain Bolt surpassing a PB (possibly without Bailey).              

  

NBA  ---  IT’s practical wisdom on all fronts, it’s about preserving and sharpening skills, building strength and court endurance, and making money. It’s not betrayal, all these NBA athletes being ex-pats and playing for teams in Turkey, China, Israel, France and elsewhere outside the U.S. of A.

We shouldn’t be angry about it, it’s not as if these basketball greats will be playing for the Taliban Tombsuckers, the Qadaffi Screwballs or the al-Qaeda Nutcases. Actually, some of these athletes will pick up useful concepts about their game, in the manner that N.Y. Knicks star Carmelo Anthony gained greatly when countering foreign players during his tenure with the U.S. Olympic team. Besides, it’s like contributing to a grand balancing act in that more than half of America’s professional basketball teams have one or more players from a country outside the U.S.

So, who has been approached to be America’s basketball ambassadors in upcoming international games, and who may or may not have signed as of today? Here’s a quite partial list: 

• Deron Williams – Turkey
• Dwight Howard – Spain
• Kobe Bryant – Europe
• Amare Stoudemire – Turkey
• Kevin Durant –  China, or Europe
• Will Bynum – Europe
• Tony Parker – France
• Sonny Weems – Lithuania
• Dwayne Wade – Europe
• Reggie Williams – Spain
• Ty Lawson – Lithuania
• Kenyon Martin -  China
• Wilson Chandler - China
• J.R. Smith - China
• Allen Iverson - Turkey   

NBA execs once big on the idea of extended profits from further internationalization of pro- basketball could now be mulling over that old adage, “Careful what you wish for.”

End/ml