09.05.2011
Lakers, Mavericks book 2nd-round NBA matchup
Kobe Bryant on Thursday scored 24 points and Andrew Bynum added 18 points and 12 rebounds to power the Lakers past New Orleans 98-80 while Dirk Nowitzki scored 13 points and grabbed 11 rebounds to lead Dallas past Portland 103-96.
Spanish star Pau Gasol contributed 16 points for the Lakers while reserve Lamar Odom added 14 as the defending champions, who lost game one at home, eliminated the Hornets four games to two in their best-of-seven series.
"The size and depth of our team wore them down in the end," Lakers coach Phil Jackson said. "It took us a little time to figure out this team."
The Lakers will open round two at home Monday against the Mavericks while Oklahoma City will meet either top seed San Antonio or bottom seed Memphis in the other West second-round series.
Memphis has a chance to eliminate the Spurs at home in game six on Friday.
At Portland, the Mavericks won a road playoff game for the first time since the opening round in 2009 and snapped a run of 18 losses in their past 20 road games after the Trail Blazers pulled within one point in the closing minutes.
"We talked about how this was our night," Dirk Nowitzki said. "We kept our head down. It was tough. We didn't give up. Guys just kept going. It was a solid effort.
"We couldn't win a road game last year. This year we finally got one and we're moving on."
German star Nowitzki scored 14 points in the fourth quarter, eight on free throws in the final seconds to keep Portland at bay as Dallas won the series four games to two.
Jason Terry added 22 points off the bench while Shawn Marion added 16 for Dallas. Gerald Wallace led the Trail Blazers with 32 points and 12 rebounds.
After New Orleans won the opener at Los Angeles, the Lakers' bid for a third consecutive NBA crown looked to be on the rocks, but they battled back to take four of the next five games to advance.
"We're good at making adjustments and learning, so the more a series goes on the more we learn," Bryant said. "That comes from our coaching staff (and) that comes from us and the amount of experience we have, being able to pick teams apart the later we go in a series."
Los Angeles outscored the Hornets 21-4 in second-chance points, those that come after a missed shot and offensive rebound. Bynum's seven-foot frame filling the zone was more than the rnets could handle in grabbing missed shots.
One year after the Orlando Magic inflicted the most lopsided four-game playoff sweep in NBA history on Atlanta in the second round, a much-improved Hawks squad took a measure of revenge in the Eastern Conference.
Joe Johnson scored 23 points and Jamal Crawford added 19 to power Atlanta past Orlando 84-81 in their playoff game, advancing the Hawks to a second-round series with the Chicago Bulls.
"When you lose to a team by an average of 25 points a game, you are looking for redemption," Crawford said. "What better redemption than to play them again.
"We were up to the challenge."
The Hawks eliminated the Magic four games to two in their Eastern Conference best-of-seven first round series, advancing to round two for the third year in a row while the Magic suffered its earliest playoff exit since 2007.
The other East second-round series will send the Miami Heat against the Boston Celtics. That winner will face Atlanta or Chicago for a berth in the NBA Finals.
"They never give us a chance," Atlanta's Josh Smith said. "They never talk about the Hawks. They talk about Orlando, Chicago, Boston and Miami. We're always sneaking under the radar."
Kirk Hinrich added 11 points while Al Horford had 10 points and 12 rebounds for the Hawks, who led 82-77 before Jameer Nelson sank back-to-back layups that pulled Orlando within a point with 34 seconds remaining.
Atlanta's Marvin Williams missed a late 3-point shot but Johnson batted the rebound to Crawford, who sank two free throws with 8.2 seconds remaining.
"I just wanted to make a play," Johnson said. "I just crashed the glass and tried to somehow get a hand on it. I did."
J.J. Redick missed a tying 3-point attempt, Smith blocked a 3-point try by Jason Richardson at the buzzer and the Magic were finished.
"The biggest thing was the rebounding," Magic coach Stan Van Gundy said. "It was sort of fitting we couldn't get a rebound on the last stop."
Hinrich suffered an injury and was carried to the locker room in the final minutes with what Hawks officials said was a strained right hamstring.
Dwight Howard scored a game-high 25 points and grabbed 15 rebounds for Orlando while Hedo Turkoglu added 15 for the Magic.
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Wenger urges 'responsible' FA approach on Wilshere
Wenger has been at loggerheads with English Under-21 coach Stuart Pearce for months, making it clear he believes Wilshere should not be selected for the tournament after a gruelling 50-match season for the Gunners.
The Arsenal boss said Friday although he would never attempt to stop Wilshere from international football, he urged England officials to protect the 19-year-old from the possibility of burnout.
"I would never say that Wilshere cannot play for England, first of all because I don't feel I have the right to do that," said Wenger.
"I educate English players to play for their country, if they can, but I would ask Fabio Capello to consider the consequences of a boy who is 19 years old who has played around 50 games at the end of the season, who has played for the first team and then a tournament on the back of it.
"What will the consequences be for the next season?
"I don't know but I feel the youth system is there to promote the players to play in the top team.
"It is the federation's decision and the federation has to act in a responsible way," Wenger said, adding that it was unfair to leave the decision to Wilshere.
"You cannot ask Jack if he wants to play - do you really think he will say no? I don't think that's realistic.
"I am happy that he wants to play every single game for his country.
"The question raised by him playing are the consequences for the country, for England."
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Salutes mark bluesman Robert Johnson's centennial
His posthumous CD sales number well over a million. His name moves merchandise.
To mark Johnson's centennial, Sony Music Entertainment has re-released his recordings in "Robert Johnson: The Complete Original Masters — Centennial Edition," which includes replicas of his original singles and a 1997 documentary. He's also being recognized this week at the Blues Music Awards in Memphis, Tenn.
Delaware-based Dogfish Head Craft Brewery has created a wicked concoction, "Hellhound On My Ale," a title that's a nod to one of Johnson's songs.
"I'm amazed by it after all these years," Steven Johnson said of his grandfather's musical legacy. "It seems like it just passed down from generation to generation."
Steven Johnson will be part of a big party that began Thursday in Greenwood, the small Mississippi Delta town, where Johnson had been playing his music on a street corner shortly before his death.
The free celebration will feature an art exhibit, tours of Johnson's haunts and other historic blues sites, as well as live music Friday and Saturday from Bobby Rush, The Cedric Burnside Project, Keb' Mo', Alvin Youngblood Hart and others. The event is sponsored by the Greenwood Convention and Visitors Bureau.
Steven Johnson, who's also a minister and plays his grandfather's music onstage, will deliver a sermon Sunday inspired by the myth that Robert Johnson stood at a Delta crossroads at midnight and sold his soul to the devil in return for his talent. He will preach it at Little Zion Missionary Baptist Church, where Johnson is thought to be buried, although there are two other reputed gravesites in the area.
The Robert Johnson Blues Foundation has other events planned throughout the year, including an international salute to Johnson May 13-17 in Lyon, France.
Robert Leroy Johnson was born May 8, 1911, in Hazlehurst, Miss.
For years after Johnson's death, little was known about his life. With the scant details, the enduring mystery of the crossroads legend and the handful of powerful recorded songs, Johnson slipped into myth.
Few are still alive who knew him, save the nearly 96-year-old bluesman Honeyboy Edwards, who was unable to give an interview.
"Of course, he died when he was 27. He didn't give a whole lot of people much of a chance to get to know him," said Steve LaVere, a blues historian and Grammy-winning record producer who once held the publishing rights to Johnson's music.
LaVere's website, Delta Haze, has a biography of Johnson's life culled over the years from interviews of musicians, friends and relatives of the bluesman.
"Johnny Shines said he was very quiet, very much to himself. Robert Lockwood said he was a strange person. If you know any real artistic people, they think a whole lot and they just don't express themselves a lot except through their art," said LaVere, who's curating the exhibit at Cottonlandia.
Eric Clapton described the power of Johnson's music in his autobiography.
"At first the music almost repelled me, it was so intense, and this man made no attempt to sugarcoat what he was trying to say or play. It was hard-core, more than anything I had ever heard. After a few listenings, I realized that on some level, I had found the master, and that following this man's example would be my life's work," Clapton wrote.
The Rolling Stones' Keith Richard told The Associated Press in 2008 that Johnson was so deft that when he first heard the bluesman's solo guitar work, he thought two people were playing.
LaVere credits Johnson's talent not to a soul-selling crossroads deal, but to a self-imposed apprenticeship under another little-known musician, Ike Zimmerman.
"Ike showed him how to play and Ike was a studied musician. They used to spend all night knees to knees, and Ike would teach him how to sing and present himself," LaVere said. "He left the blues early on and became a sanctified preacher and died in Los Angeles in 1965."
Glimpses of Johnson's life can be found at the exhibit, including aged photographs of Johnson's second wife, Callie Craft, and one of his girlfriends, Willie Mae Cross Powell, who's mentioned in Johnson's tune, "Love in Vain Blues."
A copy of the scrap of linen where Johnson may have scribbled his last words is under glass. It reads in part, "I know that my redeemer liveth and he will call me from the grave."
During his lifetime, Robert Johnson's best-known song, "Terraplane Blues," sold only a few thousand copies. After Columbia Records, one of Sony's labels, released a two-CD Robert Johnson box-set in 1990, it sold over 1 million copies and snagged a Grammy Award.
Thirty-one gold records for Johnson's music, recorded by him and other artists, are part of the display. This year, John Mayer was nominated for a 2010 Grammy Award for his cover of Johnson's "Crossroads."
In Greenwood, Baptist Town is the poverty-plagued neighborhood where Johnson once played. It's a few miles from where he's believed to have been poisoned by either a jealous man or a woman scorned.
Sylvester Hoover, a neighborhood blues historian and tour guide, likes to point to the now vacant lot where Johnson briefly lived and where he'd play guitar on Saturday mornings and draw a crowd.
Hoover theorizes Johnson was poisoned by a jealous woman, not a jealous husband.
"A man from the Delta would've shot him, not give him poison," Hoover said.
Robert Johnson's drink was whiskey, but today his name will be associated with beer. "Hellhound On My Ale," hits shelves this week in 25 states, but not Mississippi. Its alcohol content is too strong to sell there.
Sam Calagione, president of Dogfish Brewery, said he believes Johnson continues to be underappreciated.
"I think there are blues historians and aficionados who recognize his place in the firmament, but I think there are music lovers today who might love Jack White or Keith Richards and not recognize they owe a debt to Robert Johnson," he said.
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