Lots of sports action in Tempe this weekend, which for our purposes starts tonight at the Wells Fargo Arena, where the ASU Sun Devils should be in a close, if not so artistic, battle against the equally lowly Utah Utes. With Lockett, ASU was a marginal-at-best team. Without him, well,…
[jump] Phoenix was up 73-52 at the beginning of the third quarter after running circles around the Bucks in the first half as their starters racked up a double-digit lead by landing 62 percent of their buckets. That includes Michael Redd, who scored 14 points during his first visit to…
If the current crop of trade rumors are troubling Steve Nash, the Phoenix Suns point guard certainly isn’t showing it. He’s been playing with plenty of verve and renewed vigor since recovering from a bruised thigh, including nabbing a franchise assist record last week and helping Planet Orange to a…
A Maricopa County jury convicted Harold “Bud” Lee Jr. of three felony counts related to gambling on Friday, including conspiracy and illegal control of an enterprise. The 68-year-old Lee, who once served as a Phoenix Justice of the Peace, was allowed to remain free from custody until his sentencing, now scheduled for…
The Phoenix Suns split their road-home series this weekend with a 99-81 loss on the road to the Houston Rockets on Friday and a 95-89 home win over the lowly Charlotte Bobcats. After the weekend’s action, the Suns stand at 9-14, which is 3.5 games out of a playoff spot…
The Arizona Wildcats’ triple-overtime road win last year over California-Berkeley was one of the best college games we’ve seen in awhile, and not just because our alma mater came out on top by a score of 107-105 We were looking forward to last night’s rematch (the only time the two…
Steve Nash is pushing 38, and he’s been taking a particularly brutal physical beat-down this year on what is a lousy Phoenix Suns team. Still, he’s one of the all-time gamers, and rather than rest his aching leg against a truly pathetic New Orleans Hornets team, Nash played 29 wildly effective…
Last night’s highlight of ASU’s basketball game against Washington at Wells Fargo Arena didn’t come during the 40 minutes of play, which should give readers an idea of the outcome. The best part of an otherwise forgettable evening came during halftime of the Sun Devils’ 60-54 loss to the Huskies…
The Toronto Raptors had lost 14 straight games to the Phoenix Suns dating back to 2004. Clearly, the good old days have long past for the Suns, who lost 99-96 to the perennial doormat Raptors on Tuesday night at US Airways Center. It was only the fifth win of the…
So MVP Dirk Nowitzki is at some weight-loss farm near Dallas as his NBA world champion Mavericks try to pull it together in this strike-abbreviated season. Go figure, the desperately trying-to-pull-it-together Phoenix Suns visited Texas last night, and still lost a tough one to the Dirk-less Mavs, 93-87.It was a…
Anyone who’s been to the Dumpster…er, “Waste Management” Open golf tournament knows that one of the more irritating parts of the experience is figuring out what to do with your cell phone — more specifically, how to sneak it in.Starting this year, however, the tournament’s no cell-phone policy is no…
Pierre Newton may have had a “career” game last night up in Boulder, hitting a late three-pointer for the ASU men’s basketball team near the end of a Pac-12 contest against Colorado. The problem for the Sun Devils was that Newton was in the game at all. He is a…
Steve Nash, rumored to be a free-agent target of the New York Knicks in the upcoming offseason, scored 26 points against the Knicks on Wednesday night in New York as the Phoenix Suns broke a five-game losing streak. The 91-88 final score extended the struggling Knicks’ losing skid to four…
Sadly, many of us who followed Muhammad Ali’s (aka Cassius Clay) boxing career and life for about a half-century suspected that he wouldn’t see a 70th birthday. Surely, we told ourselves privately, he never would outlast his nemesis, Smokin’ Joe Frazier, the Philadelphia fury who died late last year. Ali fought 41…
As a result of the four-game skid, Planet Orange is lingering near the bottom of the Pacific Division and Western Conference standings with a 4-8 record. The first loss of the weekend came on Thursday night when the Cleveland Cavaliers came to US Airways Center on conquered Phoenix 101-90. While…
Arizona State’s men’s basketball team played well most of the way last night against a pretty tough Oregon team, but ended up on the short end of a 67-58 loss. The Sun Devils hung tough until the last few minutes of their first Pac-12 home game, but simply didn’t have…
The ASU Sun Devils play their first home game of the young Pac-12 season tonight in Tempe against the Oregon Ducks, a contest that will tell us a lot about what to expect for the rest of the season. The beleaguered Devils, who are 5-10 overall and 1-2 in the…
Conversely, when the team fails to make the century mark, it results in a loss, much like last night’s 99-83 defeat by the Los Angeles Lakers at the Staples Center. Despite getting a rousing start (including leading 19-10 after a trio of buckets by Channing Frye) and staying competitive with…
We’re not going too far out on a limb here by saying it’s going to be another long year for ASU’s men’s basketball team. The Sun Devils play hard for head coach (he of the recent contract extension) Herb Sendek–but the team is thin and the remaining players on the…
The Phoenix Suns used the weekend to even up their season record at 4-4 with home wins over the Portland Trail Blazers on Friday and Milwaukee Bucks on Sunday. The Suns topped 100 points in each contest, with Steve Nash scoring 17 points in Friday’s 102-77 nationally televised blowout and…
There’s a very sound reason we don’t engage in sports gambling but on the rare occasion: We learned the hard way a long time ago that we come too close too often to striking gold–but almost inevitably lose. We wrote yesterday that, in our imaginary betting world, we would take the…
Time was, the annual trek to So-Cal by Arizona State and Arizona’s men’s basketball teams was something to fear. Actually, that would have been just a few years ago, when UCLA was oh-so-close to winning a national championship or two. But that (as the cliche goes) was then and this…
