Arrow-right Camera
The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

A Grip on Sports: July heats up as the NBA and NHL seasons finally wind down

Phoenix Suns center Deandre Ayton, left, dunks against Milwaukee Bucks center Brook Lopez during the second half of Game 1 of the NBA Finals Tuesday in Phoenix. Phoenix won 118-105.  (Associated Press)

A GRIP ON SPORTS • The NBA finals began Tuesday night. The NHL championship series could end tonight. Neither feels right on a muggy, hot July day.

•••••••

• Season creep is a thing, isn’t it? It wasn’t all that long ago the college football regular season ended before the college basketball season began. Or on the same Thanksgiving weekend. But that’s so 20th Century. This is a new time, a new world.

The NBA and NHL playing into July isn’t actually normal, even in the new normal, but was made necessary, we were told, by the last two COVID-19-changed years. Then again, shorter seasons, shorter playoffs, earlier end didn’t compute in the league offices seemingly short of money. So we see finals in July.

Just as the NFL is about to start up. And that seems to be the only deadline for anyone.

Avoid the NFL as much as possible.

No one wants to be in the same room as a 500-pound gorilla, the role pro football plays in our nation’s sporting landscape. Heck, no one wants to be in the same building, but the NFL’s own season creep has meant urban renewal all over the place.

The league draft is a big deal. So are offseason workouts. In some cases, bigger deals than regular season contests in other sports.

It is the way of the sports world. The PGA decided a couple years ago not to fight it anymore. The world of pro golf basically shuts down after the first week of September now, with the latter four months of the year reserved for mundane, appeal-only-to-the-hard-core-fan events. And those events are actually part of next year’s season.

Baseball doesn’t have that option. It can only hope its World Series features two popular teams and doesn’t creep into November due to inclement weather. But it really doesn’t matter. If a baseball game has to overlap an NFL contest, there is no contest in the public interest.

It’s the NFL’s world. Everyone else is playing for second place.

• One has to wonder how well the Olympics will draw eyeballs this year. The Games are a year later than usual. They start in late July and run through the middle of August, so they miss the NFL, which has to help in this country. But working against the Tokyo event is the pandemic’s resilience in the host nation, leading to a sterile environment surrounding the games.

Will Katie Ledecky – a name that just wouldn’t pop into my mind yesterday while talking with Larry Weir for the latest Press Box podcast; I could remember her hometown and the fact she attended Stanford, but not her name – trying to set another world record seem the same in an empty aquatics arena? How about track and field, which seems to feed off the crowd as much as any sport?

Then there are the drug problems that have sliced into the U.S. track squad, eliminating a couple of gold medal hopefuls, most notably Sha’Carri Richardson, who was suspended 30 days for using marijuana. Yesterday the USA Track & Field coaches decided not to add her to the squad to run the 4x100 relay, though she will be eligible by when they occur and she did win the Olympic Trials in the 100 meters. If this were a text, I would insert the thinking emoji here as I can’t understand why that decision was made.

In announcing Richardson wouldn’t be on the team, USA Track & Field said “All USATF athletes are equally aware of and must adhere to the current anti-doping code, and our credibility as the National Governing Body would be lost if rules were only enforced under certain circumstances.”

Excuse me, but was Richardson suspended for a year? Nope. It was 30 days, a period that will end before she would compete again. How does such a decision, as the statement also said, “maintain fairness for all of the athletes?”

•••

WSU: Talk about season creep, Theo Lawson today delves into possible starting lineups for Kyle Smith’s basketball team. Can’t we wait until football starts? … Former Washington State guard Ike Iroegbu will be part of Nigeria’s Olympic basketball team. Current Cougar, Efe Abogidi, didn’t make the cut. Theo has more on that as well. … Elsewhere in the Pac-12 and college sports, Jon Wilner has one of his occasional stock reports, with the conference’s football recruiting down and the new commissioner up. … Oregon State got some good news on the basketball front as three players pulled out of the draft pool and returned to school. … The new Colorado players are happy to be able to practice. … Utah is filling out its nonconference schedule. … Arizona has quite a group at the U19 basketball competition. … In football news, Oregon’s Kayvon Thibodeaux made another All-American team. And a former Duck is headed to SMU. … Colorado has a deep group of running backs. … On the baseball front, Arizona’s hiring of Chip Hale has been given a seal of approval by one columnist.

Gonzaga: Chet Holmgren asserted himself on both ends of the floor Tuesday as the U.S. U19 basketball team pulled away in the second half to defeat Australia. Jim Meehan has more in this story.

Indians: The pitching wasn’t great in Hillsboro, Ore., last night. So Spokane dropped the series opener to Vancouver, 9-3. Dave Nichols has more in this story.

Mariners: What are the M’s going to do with Justus Sheffield? He was pummeled once again in Seattle’s 12-1 series-opening loss to the Yankees and has been off his game for a month. There is a decision that has to be made. … We are not alone in thinking J.P. Crawford should have been an All-Star.

Sounders: Not losing is OK but winning is much better. Especially when you have the goals Seattle has.

Kraken: Seattle named two assistant coaches. … The Lightning failed to strike when they had the chance to close out the Canadiens in Montreal. They get another chance tonight.

Sonics: Yes, Seattle’s NBA team doesn’t exist. Now. But the Sonics will return someday. And the memories of seasons past are still clear to some. … Phoenix was a rival back then. The Suns are now leading the NBA Finals after an opening 118-105 win over Milwaukee.

Storm: Ezi Magbegor is making the most of her recent increased opportunity.

•••       

• Once again we want to let you know we won’t be here Friday. As for the rest of the week, we are sure to be gathering links, passing them along and then trying to figure out what to write about. It is the way this time of year. Until later …