MLB: COLORADO ROCKIES, "LOW IN THE HIGH COUNTRY" // NBA FINALS: GAME ONE, "SPURS BRUISE HEAT, 110-95."

sports-notebook.blogspot.com . . . 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 . . . MLB: COLORADO ROCKIES, “LOW IN THE HIGH COUNTRY” // NBA FINALS: GAME ONE, “SPURS BRUISE HEAT, 110-95.” . . . MLB---HOPE lifted suddenly during the bottom of the fifth for the Colorado Rockies that were down to the Arizona Diamondbacks in a June 4, 2014, game that began, at Denver’s Coors Field, with a home run off of Rockies RH Jordan Lyles, then three more runs taken from Lyles, DB’s 4-0. In that fifth inning, Rockies SS Troy Tulowitzki, he of the National League’s top batting average, .353, delivered a home run and two RBI’S. Later, Rockies RF Michael Cuddyer doubled, sending in runs bringing the Rockies up from hopelessness. But this showing of hope did not float; it sank---the DB’s counterattacked, final score a humiliating 16-8 and what became the Rockies sixth straight loss. On Thursday, June 5, hope surfaced once more. Behind the DB’s again, bottom of the seventh, and again at Coors Field, Rockies RF Micahel Cuddyer, CF Correy Dickerson and OF Drew Stubbs put up singles that yielded runs, but again hope spiraled downward and disappeared to a DB’s win, 12-7, a seventh straight loss for the Colorado club and a DB sweep, this from a Rockies team that until then owned the NL’s best at-home record, 16-8, now 16-10, with the 28-31/.475 Rockies glued further to the NL West’s third place, 10 games behind NL West leading team, the 39-21 S.F. Giants. Doubly sad for the Rockies is that they were swept by a DB club that is still the NL West’s last place club, tied with the AL East’s 23-38 Tampa Bay Rays as worst within both the American League and the NL. Also, one more recorded Rockies loss would today tie them re. losses with the NL Central’s last place team, the 23-34 Chicago Cubs and the AL West’s last place 26-35 Houston Astros, both 11 games behind their respective division leading teams. Presently, there are 16 teams with 30 or more wins to date, and then there’s the 29-31 Kansas City Royals right behind, thus the Rockies are ranked 18th among the 30 MLB clubs. But, the big ugly is the Rockies rapid slide, contributing to a Rockies 4-12 away-from-home record for the month of May. So, the Rockies have lost seven games in a row, three of these at home. Continuation of the fall could see the Rockies within the bottom 10 of both leagues well before the season’s All Star break, mid-July. The spell has to be broken. Attempting recovery is mandatory. However, it won’t be easy in the short run, because between now and the All Star Break 27 of 36 Rockies games to be played will be against teams that are at the top of MLB rankings, including seven games that will be against the current NL number two team (. . . number three, both leagues), the 36-25 Milwaukee Brewers, and four games versus the NL East’s leading club, the 31-27 Atlanta Braves, and three vs. the NL West’s and NL + AL number one club, the Giants. Can hope for the Rockies re-visit for the long run? Possibly, in that after the All Star Break 41 of 65 remaining regular season Rockies games will be against clubs now ranked at or below the margin, including seven three-game series (21 games) vs. teams now well under the .500 line that separates them from baseball’s winning side. Yet, being swept by the DB’s?? Not a good sign for sustainment of hope before or after the All Star Break. . . // . . NBA---THERE are many ways to win an NBA game, and the San Antonio Spurs seemed to apply the usually unexpected ones in a 110-95 win last night over Eastern Conference championship franchise, the Miami Heat. For example, there were a lot of Spurs netted baskets from attempts at recovery when the Heat had set up a defense that appeared to be impenetrable. The Spurs attempted to punch through anyway, couldn’t but got to positions where they could pass to the rear or the sides, with Spurs Tony Parker or Tim Duncan free for the shot. Not exactly a version of the great Ali’s rope-a-dope concept but the theme of that was there. The Heat was sucker-punched just enough times for the Spurs to leap ahead in the last half in a game that was much the trading back and forth of two-pointers. No question about it, beating the Heat machine means guerrilla warfare, lots of surprise attacks, and sometimes these grow out of necessity, from OMG we’re trapped inside the close shadows of Chris Bosh and LeBron James, got to enter “road-runner mode,” “got to go to the back, Jack, gotta get rid of the ball, Saul,” and pronto! “Say, there’s Duncan at the corner---pass, then rush in close for the assist, bam! Slam! What? No need, Duncan just netted a three.” The Spurs were a leading conference and division team throughout the regular season and became Western Conference champion partly from ability to improvise cleverly when facing exceptionally tough competition, that is, sticking to tightly related probabilities, not going too often to where the team is forced to try the impossible. There’s not a lot of Spurs time or space wasted on the low probability shot during a Spurs offense, and this is often followed by the Spurs fast transition to a defense that remains highly focused, committed to the immediate block or rebound, seemingly from Basketball-101’s belief that in defense “positioning is everything, horizontally as well as vertically,” well gained from “speed in rotation,” and getting to this when against a team like the Heat demands lightning-quick transition out of the offense to defense, which the Spurs can pull off. Of course, the resulting Spurs fast break looks to maximum sharing of the basketball, five players trying to perform as one, lots of passes and assists having high premium in each player’s mind, this as primary as exploitation of the open and easy stance for the field goal. The Heat, they are blessed with James, Chris Bosh, D. Wade, Ray Allen, all high above-the-margin shooters, one or two of them often in support of the one on a streak, James more often than the others. With last night’s loss, James still put up 25 points and may have added to that were he not injured in the game’s last moments. When James left the wood, the Heat were only two points back, less than four minutes to go for the Spurs to expand that, and they did. But a factor in the Heat loss was a breakdown in arena air-conditioning, causing the temperature to weaken the Heat, which also affected the Spurs, less so certainly in the fourth period, when the Spurs accrued 19 points more than the Heat. Yet no Spurs player accrued more points than James, the Spurs Duncan finishing the game with 21, Spurs Tony Parker with 19, Manu Ginobili with 16. But the Heat’s Wade put up 19, Bosh, 18, Allen, 16. Here’s the remaining NBA Finals schedule: Sunday, June 8, Heat at Spurs, 6 PM; Tuesday, June 10, Spurs at Heat; Thursday, June 12, Spurs at Heat; Sunday, June 15, Heat at Spurs; Tuesday, June 17, Spurs at Heat; Friday, June 20, Heat at Spurs. END/ml