NBA: Finals, Game Two; Nuggets & Moving Ahead  // MLB: NL/AL Standings; Colorado Rockies---the Upside; Sports & Summer Reading.      

For more analysis, go to Mile High Sports Radio AM1510 or FM93.7, and to Denver’s best sports blogging team, milehighsports.com.  .  .  SPORTS NOTEBOOK posts its columns Tuesday and Friday of each week. Ed. & Publ., Marvin Leibstone; Copy & Mng. Ed., Gail Kleiner).  

NBA  --- Game Two of this year’s finals---“a thrashing, a pummeling, a humiliating defeat for the NBA West’s best.”  There’s no other way to describe the Miami Heat’s runaway win over the San Antonio Spurs on Sunday night, 103-84, revenge written all over it but not so much against the Spurs having beaten the Heat in Game One of the Finals, instead a vengeance aimed at those hard to decipher post-season nuances that have placed the Heat in situations where two or more straight losses in a best of seven situation has signaled the possibility of  “do or die, three games up each team,” at risk a dark and lonely ride back to Miami after Game Seven.

And, it was an unexpected kind of win for Miami, in that it wasn’t a 48 minute continuum of James, Wade, Bosh and Allen pushing up the points. Mario Chalmers, Mike Miller and Chris Andersen were the hammers when leaping ahead mattered the most. Surely the Spurs weren’t prepared for this new Heat bonding, and for the defense that evolved from it, James as if he morphed into being a polished center, with blocking and rebounding his only reason for living (eight rebounds, seven assists).

Whether the Heat spreading the power was deliberate or moment-by-moment improvisation, the Spurs couldn’t activate the pace and precision that helped them to beat the Heat during Game One, their rhythm for accurate shots was way off: neither Parker nor Duncan could put enough points on the board; the Spurs finished six points back of that which enabled their Game One victory. Though Parker and Duncan got to prime spots for the accurate hurl, Miami’s “Bigs” were there to offset, therefore too few of those shots were netted.

But the Spurs are also more than two star shooters. They can also whip up surprises, eg., credit has to be given to the Spurs defense, if indeed that is what kept James, Wade, Bosh and Allen to less than 20 points per man, what many analysts would call a remarkable feat.

Nuggets ---   MLB catcher and Yankee manager,Yogi Berra, said, “If you find yourself at a fork in the road (a crossroads), take it,” which links easily to that line from a Robert Frost poem, here paraphrased, “I came to a road that diverged in the woods, and the path taken made all the difference.”  Whichever of the two descriptions that we may be relating to on any given day, it’s a crossroads that the NBA’s Denver Nuggets are now facing, the turning back from it impossible, for a super GM, Masai Ujiri, and one of the NBA’s best ever head coaches, George Karl, they’ve become Denver history, the former having gone from Denver to the Toronto Raptors, the latter, well, his narrative within the NBA is far from over. If current GM prospect, Pete D’Allessandro (he was Masai Ujiri’s deputy) soon goes (he’s had offers), and if now free agent/guard & forward  Andre Iguodala, goes, then Nuggets owner, Josh Kroenke, will be looking at several crossings, i.e., the roads for GM, for Assistant GM, for Head Coach and the pathway for new player opportunities, all at this time quite narrow from the perspective of that which the Nuggets treasury could yield up.

Want to dream? Okay, current San Antonio Spurs head coach, Gregg Popovich, decides against retirement and he comes to Denver to remake the Nuggets and win the 2013/14 NBA Finals. How about the now retired Phil Jackson deciding to take up Colorado skiing, so while not on the slopes why shouldn’t he remake the Nuggets into all that he learned from coaching the Bulls and the Lakers? But that’s not going to happen, and anyway any possibility of it would have as a written clause that owner Kroenke stay far removed from on-court business, and that isn’t what Mr. Kroenke wants at a time when his vision is to be the main inspiration and the primary architect of a reformed Nuggets franchise, result, so he hopes: proper leadership, financial savvy, management expertise, team/front office unity, team bonding and primed performance skills pushing the Denver franchise past any post-season second round.

Soon, Josh Kroenke will be interviewing Memphis Grizzlies coach, Lionel Hollins, and also Indiana Pacers assistant coach, Brian Shaw. Though not in the category wherein we’d find Popovich or Jackson, both are above-the-margin hardwood commanders. As for the Kroenke vision, from what we’ve seen of him during the past two seasons he’s more than just likability, he’s by no means that pain-in-the-butt boss who never can admit he’s the problem, nor is he the kind of owner who simply rubber-stamps whatever his GM and coaches want.

Kroenke is “game smart,” he can lead through others, he has a handle on where the risks and benefits are, he’s not in the NBA for the power, the glory or only for the seven and eight figure$. A good bet is that he'll soon arrange for the Nuggets, and the team’s fans, to see more sunlight than shadow along and at the end of each crossing that all are facing, which is a good thing.

MLB    ---   Fifteen MLB clubs are at or above .500, and four of these are above .600. Leading all are the NL Central’s St. Louis Cardinals, the only club that reached 40 wins, now 41-22, the teams nearest the Cardinals being the NL East’s 39-24 Atlanta Braves and the AL East’s 39-25 Boston Red Sox, which this week topped the AL West’s Texas Rangers, the team that had led the AL since the current MLB season began.

Only two MLB divisions are today without a .600+ leading franchise, the NL West, led by the 35-28/.556 Arizona Diamondbacks, and the AL Central Division’s 35-27/.565 Detroit Tigers. The tightest difference between a first place and second place division club exists within the AL West, both the leading Rangers and second place Oakland Athletics having 38 wins. The greater difference between a first and second place franchise is inside the NL East, the Braves ahead of the 31-31 Washington Nationals by seven games. The greater span between a first place and last place club also exists within the AL East, the 18-45 (ugh!) Miami Marlins behind the Braves by 19 games. 

Colorado Rockies   ---  A win is a win, and by any other name is still a win, and it’s wins that gets a team to the post-season and then to the WS. The Rockies have been winning games from the baseball mastery exhibited by the few rather than by the desired many, and that could be okay if such keeps up, but there’s no guarantee of this. What will Rockies manager, Walt Weiss, do if suddenly the magic exhibited recently by Nolan Arenado, Carlos Gonzalez, Dexter Fowler and Troy Tulowitzki starts to thin, worse: vanishes? No matter right now, the Rockies are not just in third place within the NL West, they are 34-30, therefore less than two games behind first place Arizona Diamondbacks, and one behind second place team, the San Francisco Giants. Yet  there’s no guarantee that the foursome of Arenado, Fowler, Cargo and Tulo will crash and burn easily. Besides, enough of the rest of the Rockies line-up and pitching staff still contributes above the margin---Todd Helton, Michael Cuddyer, Wilin Rosario, pitchers Jorge De La Rosa, Rex Brothers.

Want to build faith in the Rockies? Get it that the Rockies had three 3-game winnings streaks in April, its first double-digit win within the first 18 days of that month, plus many more double digit wins since. The Rockies also won a series against last year’s WS championship team, the S.F. Giants, one of the three games a shutout. Too, the Rockies defeated the current MLB leading club, the St. Louis Cardinals, 8-2, in May. Also in May, the Rockies won a series vs. the AL West’s top team, the Diamondbacks. A mark of efficiency also exists with the fact that as of last Friday the Rockies were fourth best in the NL for number of doubles hit---106.

Yes, the Rockies get on base, it’s converting those doubles and other hits into runs that became a weak spot for the Rockies starting in early May and continuing into June, but becoming less of a problem lately, to wit: base-runners were there for the one walk-off run enabled by a Dexter Fowler hit in a recent series game vs. the San Diego Padres, the eight walk-off win for the Rockies this season. If this continues, it will be a plus for the Rockies in July, when they will be challenged by 13 games vs. NL West teams. Those 13 could be the make-or-break turning point for the Rockies chances to reach the NL’s 2013 playoffs and maybe the WS.   

Sports, Summer Reading --- Still available by ordering through barnesandnoble.com, or amazon.com, or directly from publisher XLIBRIS at: xlibris.com---SPORTS & THE HEROIC, 153 pages, hard-cover, paperback or on-line; author: Marvin Leibstone. This book is an ode to all U.S. sports, illuminating that which can be derived from them for the good life. Of real events, facts and portrayals of well-known athletes, plus segments that are fiction, this slim volume pulls no punches, describing the good and the dreadful that make up sports in our time, yet reminding us that sports, as a whole, can empower the very best that any of us has to offer in a complex world (Not too late as a Father’s Day gift) .  .  . ELEVEN RINGS, 334 pages, Penguin Press, available at any book store, hard-cover; author: Phil Jackson. This book is all Jackson and the men he has coached, an extremely-readable mix of the strategic, the technical and, of course, the spiritual drivers behind effective leadership, the kind that helps to win eleven rings, six for the Chicago Bulls and its coach (Jackson) and five for the Los Angeles Lakers + coach (again, Jackson). Readers of ELEVEN RINGS will find insights into what it takes to deal with and draw back the high octane egos of Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant and others, fusing the better essence of the values that can emerge from team bonding. The book also delves into what makes Phil Jackson the unique individual that he is, a man always in search of his better angels through the many mysteries of basketball, and via intellectual and spiritual pursuits---metaphorically, the guy is a mountain climber, and he has summited the very highest of peaks.

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