from Simon Lewis, New York
LAST NIGHT was quite an evening for the millions of armchair sports fans munching their nachos and chugging their beers in living rooms across America.
There was game six of ice hockey’s Stanley Cup finals between the Pittsburgh Penguins and Detroit Red Wings, game three of basketball’s NBA finals and on top of that there was the latest instalment of US sport’s longest running grudge match between baseball’s New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox.
The Penguins kept their prospects alive on the ice by beating the defending champion Red Wings in Pittsburgh to take that series to a deciding game seven in Detroit on Friday.
And the Red Sox stopped the surging Yankees with a 7-0 victory at Boston’s Fenway Park to join their hated rivals in a tie for the lead in the American League East division.
Both finished conveniently early to let us concentrate on the hoops down in Orlando, where the Magic dragged their previously sorry backsides into contention at last with a 108-104 victory over the Los Angeles Lakers to get on the scoreboard at last in the best of seven series in game three.
Kobe Bryant had dominated the first two games for the Lakers on home court at the Staples Centre in LA, scoring 40 points in game one as his side wiped the floor with Orlando in a 100-75 blowout last Thursday and came back on Saturday to rack up 29 in a 101-96 victory.
Back in Florida, though, for all Bryant’s promptings and his team-leading 31 points, the Magic finally had his number.
“He’s on fire, they’re all on fire,” screamed the combustible Orlando head coach Stan Van Gundy after his side finished the first quarter 31-27 in arrears. “We gotta have some discipline!”
The Magic players, led by team leader and centre Dwight Howard and forward Rashad Lewis, who both contributed 31 points, responded to their coach.
What a contrast Van Gundy makes to Lakers head coach Phil Jackson, the man who built a team around Michael Jordan and guided “His Airness” and the Chicago Bulls to six NBA championships between 1989 and 1998 and then moved west to LA and delivered three titles to the Lakers.
Jackson is a philosopher, a thinker and sharp dresser nicknamed the “Zen Master”.
Stan Van Gundy isn’t.
In his off the rack sports jackets and polo shirts he marauds the sideline, imploring his players to listen and it is no wonder former Magic star Shaquille O’Neal once dubbed his coach “the master of panic”.
In yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, no less, Van Gundy was described as looking like an actor playing a high school basketball coach.
In truth, he probably looks a lot like the growing millions of those armchair fans who are finding these NBA finals the show worth watching.
