Karl Malone is the only player to reach the NBA Finals three times without winning a ring since 1980.
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Czar Trivia
Thursday, June 14th, 2012Czar Trivia
Saturday, March 17th, 2012
* On March 17th, 1939 the first NCAA tournament game in history tipped off at the Palestra in Pennsylvania. The Villanova Wildcats defeated the Brown Bears, 42-30.
* On March 17th, 1989 Alonzo Mourning blocked two shots in the last six seconds of the game to permit No. 1 seed Georgetown to avoid an upset at the hands of #16-seed Princeton, 50-49.
* The patron saint of Ireland St. Patrick was born in Scotland in the year 387.
* Blue was the color originally associated with Saint Patrick, but over the years the color green’s affiliation with Saint Patrick’s Day grew. Now it’s common to sport green attire and to drink green beer in celebration of St. Paddy’s.
* Paddy is derived from the Irish male name Pádraig.
* NYC’s Saint Patrick’s Day parade has become the largest in the world. In a typical year, 150,000 marchers participate in it, and 2 million spectators line the streets.
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Sunday, January 22nd, 2012On January 22, 2006 Kobe Bryant lit up the Staples Center scoreboard like a supernova when he racked up a career-high 81 points in the Los Angeles Lakers’ 122-104 win over the Toronto Raptors. The future Hall-of-Famer’s record-making performance goes down as the second-highest number of points scored by an individual player in NBA history. Philadelphia Warriors center Wilt Chamberlain set the NBA’s single game scoring record with his 100-point bonanza against the New York Knicks on March 2, 1962.
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Friday, January 13th, 2012
Dick Van Ardsdale #5 of the Phoenix Suns moves the ball during a game played in 1968 in Phoenix, Arizona.
Along with the Milwaukee Bucks, the Phoenix Suns were one of two franchises to join the NBA at the start of the 1968–69 season, thereby becoming the first major pro sports franchise in the state of Arizona.
In 43 years of play Phoenix made the playoffs 29 times, posted nineteen seasons of 50 or more wins, made nine trips to the Western Conference Finals and advanced to the NBA Finals in 1976 and 1993.
Victorious in 56% of their games, the Suns owned the NBA’s fourth-best all-time winning percentage as of the end of the 2010–11 season.
Based on their all-time win-loss percentage, the Suns are the winningest franchise to have never won an NBA Championship.
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Monday, December 26th, 2011
New team names can be hard for longtime fans to get used to, as basketball enthusiasts in our nation’s capital well know. The Washington Wizards have undergone the most name changes of any franchise in the NBA. The club originated as the Chicago Packers in 1961 when it was added as the NBA’s first modern expansion team following the consolidation of the league from seventeen franchises to eight during the early 1950′s.
After a one-season stint as the Zephyrs (a play on Chicago’s nickname “The Windy City”), owner Dave Tragere moved the franchise to Baltimore, Maryland in 1963 and renamed it the Baltimore Bullets. In 1964 Abe and Irene Pollin (along with former NBA referee Arnold Heft) purchased the Bullets for $1.1 million. When the Pollins became the sole owners in 1968 they moved the team to Washington D.C. And upon completion of the new Capital Centre arena in 1973 the team was called the Capital Bullets.
But in 1974 Abe Pollin changed names once again to the Washington Bullets. This name stuck for over two decades until Pollin made a controversial decision to amend the team’s name for the sixth and final time due to the violent/negative connotation associated with the word “bullet.” A contest was held to choose a new name, and “Wizards” wound up winning the telephone poll that allowed callers to vote for their favorite of five finalists: Wizards, Sea Dogs, Dragons, Express and Stallions. The Bullets officially became the Washington Wizards when they moved into the new MCI Center for the 1997-98 season.
On May 10, 2011 the Wizards unveiled their new color scheme, uniforms and logo, reverting to the traditional red, white and blue colors that harken back to the team’s glory days of the late seventies and early eighties. Some diehard fans remain hopeful that a former name may someday be resurrected too.
