Lillard draws parallels between silencing athletes, slavery

Don’t tell Damian Lillard to stick to sports.

The Portland Trail Blazers star has been vocal about his thoughts on politics and current affairs, and doesn’t plan on holding back just because some people think athletes aren’t qualified to speak on such matters.

The 27-year-old point guard called the notion “very saddening” and compared it to slavery.

“Looking at it now, how they just want us to go out and play basketball and you know, ‘put that jersey on and be proud’ and ‘don’t represent anything,’ ‘don’t stand for anything,’ ‘don’t have an opinion, just be respectful,’ and ‘go out there and play for me’ – it makes me think about kind of the way it was with slavery, when it was, they want the young, strong and you know, ‘His arms are long and he’s got big calves.’ It reminds me of that,” Lillard told Oregon Public Broadcasting, as transcribed by Willamette Week’s Sophia June.

“They want us to go out and do what we’re built to do. We’re good athletes; we’re physically strong; we’re very capable … They don’t want to know what we think; they don’t care how we feel about something. It’s just ‘Go out there and do what your job is.'”

Lillard has spoken out about many issues, including police brutality after an officer shot and killed Philando Castile last year. More recently, he called out President Donald Trump for his profane attack on anthem protesters.

“I think it’s sad that with all that’s going on in the world, our president is concerned with football and basketball,” Lillard told reporters at Media Day.

The two-time All-Star also trolled the president after he withdrew his invitation for the Golden State Warriors to visit the White House, because Stephen Curry did not want to go.

Asked if he’d go to the Oval Office if invited by Trump, Lillard replied:

“No. I would not.”

Entering 4th season with Wild, Suter determined to live up to massive contract

After three years with the Minnesota Wild, Ryan Suter is demanding more of himself than ever.

The 29-year-old defenseman, who’s set to make $9 million this season, is ever aware of the 13-year, $98-million contract he signed with the club back in 2012, and has no plans of giving anyone the opportunity to call that wasted money.

Suter told Chad Graff of the Pioneer Press:

I want to help the team; I want to win. The reason I came here is because I want to win. (Wild owner) Craig Leipold put a lot of faith in me, and I don’t want to let him down. Every pro contract I’ve signed was under Mr. Leipold (previously in Nashville). He has given me everything I have. And I don’t want to let him down. That’s how I live my life – there’s outside pressure, but that is nothing to the pressure I put on myself to win and to be good.

The Wild have been a playoff team in each of Suter’s three seasons in Minnesota, including back-to-back appearances in the Western Conference semifinals. Unfortunately, the Wild ran into the Chicago Blackhawks each time around. Suter knows his team is one of many to be tossed aside by the juggernaut club from Illinois, but feels well positioned

“They’re a good team. There’s a reason they won the Stanley Cup this season. And two years ago. And five years ago. How many other teams lost to them? We’re in a good spot; we just can’t take a step back. If we keep progressing the way we are, we’re going to be fine.”

Suter has led the NHL in total ice time in each of his first three seasons with the Wild, missing only five total games while earning a nod as a Norris Trophy finalist in 2013.

Leafs sign Kadri to two-year deal

The Toronto Maple Leafs signed center Nazem Kadri to a two-year deal worth $5.8 million, multiple media outlets reported Tuesday.

Kadri, 22, will earn $2.7 million in the first year of the contract and $3.1 million in 2013-2014, according to Sportsnet.
He had 18 goals and 26 assists in 48 games for the Maples Leafs this past season.

Kadri will be a restricted free agent once his new deal expires.

Goodell: NFL should listen to ‘Redskins’ protests

WASHINGTON (AP) — Commissioner Roger Goodell said Wednesday that the NFL should pay attention to those offended by the Washington Redskins nickname.

”If we are offending one person, we need to be listening,” Goodell said Wednesday in an interview with 106.7 The Fan, ”and making sure that we’re doing the right things to try to address that.”

It was a subtle change in position for Goodell, who had more strongly supported the nickname in his previous statements this year.

Goodell, who grew up in Washington and was a Redskins fan, said it was team owner Dan Snyder’s decision as to whether the name will be changed.

”But,” Goodell added, ”it is something that I want all of us to go out and make sure we’re listening to our fans, listening to people who have a different view, and making sure that we continue to do what’s right to make sure that team represents the strong tradition and history that it has for so many years.”

Snyder has vowed to never change the name, but momentum for a switch has been growing this year.

The name was attacked as racist at a high-profile symposium at the Smithsonian. High schools that use the nickname have come under increasing pressure to change it. A Native American tribe in upstate New York ran a radio ad campaign against the name leading up to Monday night’s season-opener.

Another group of American Indians is planning a protest during Washington’s game at Green Bay on Sunday. Some media outlets have stopped using ”Redskins.” The name is also the subject of a long-running legal challenge from a group of Native Americans seeking to have the team lose its federal trademark protection.

Ten members of Congress recently wrote Goodell asking that the name be changed. At the time, Goodell responded by calling the name a ”unifying force that stands for strength, courage, pride and respect.” At the Super Bowl in January, Goodell deflected a question on the controversy by saying: ”I think Dan Snyder and the organization have made it very clear that they’re proud of that heritage and that name, and I believe fans are, too.”

On Wednesday, Goodell said: ”I know the team name is part of their history and tradition, and that’s something that’s important to the Redskins fans. And I think what we have to do, though, is we have to listen.”

The Redskins had no comment Wednesday on Goodell’s remarks.

John Tavares To Be Next NY Islanders Captain

John Tavares is slated to be the next captain of the New York Islanders.

Islanders beat writer Arthur Staple tweeted that the young star would be given the “C” prior to the start of training camp next week.

“#Isles will have their new captain in place by the start of camp, I’m told — @91Tavares will be named early next week,” Staple tweeted.

Tavares would be the 14th captain in the history of the team and would replace Mark Streit as leader. Ed Westfall was the first Captain of the Islanders and was followed by the likes of Clark Gilles, Denis Potvin, Brent Sutter, Patrick Flately, Bryan McCabe, Trevor Linden, Kenny Jonsson, Michael Peca, Alexei Yashin, Bill Guerin and Doug Weight.

Tavares would become the sixth Islanders captain since 2000. The longest tenured leader in that span was Michael Peca who led the squad from 2001-05; since Peca, no Islander has remained captain for more than two years. Tavares is currently signed through 2017-18 and will likely remain captain during that span. If Tavares remains captain through the end of his contract he would be the longest tenured captain since Peca. He would also be the youngest Islander captain since Bryan McCabe; McCabe was 22 years old when he was awarded the role, the same age Tavares would be if he is named captain next week.

Tavares entered the league in 2009-10 and has led the Islanders offensively in every single season since. In his rookie campaign, he put up 54 points, including 24 goals. In 2010-11, he scored 29 goals and finished with 67 points. In the 2011-12 season Tavares scored 31 goals and 50 assists. In 2012-13, he scored 47 points, including 29 goals, and was nominated for the Hart Trophy for league MVP.

Walker homers, Pirates retake NL Central lead

MILWAUKEE (AP) — Charlie Morton is doing his part to ensure that the Pittsburgh Pirates end their 20-year playoff drought.

Morton won his fourth consecutive decision, a career best, pitching seven strong innings to help the Pirates retake the NL Central lead with a 5-2 win over the Milwaukee Brewers on Monday.

”I was executing pitches and going out and trying to attack guys,” Morton said. ”I was able to throw different pitches in the zone.”

Morton (7-3) gave up seven hits and one earned run. He walked two and struck out six while winning his fourth straight decision. He added a base hit, his first two sacrifice bunts of the season and scored a run for good measure.

Pirates manager Clint Hurdle said Morton turned in a ”blue-collar effort” for his club, which improved to 23 games over .500 and is now just one win away from breaking a two-decade long streak of losing seasons.

”Charlie has gotten to a very good place,” Hurdle said. ”He was efficient but he had to work today except for the sixth, when he blew them away.”

Morton, who struck out the side in the sixth, said it’s important that he mix in other pitches to complement his sinker, which tends to be his main pitch.

”I get hurt late in games by throwing too many sinkers,” Morton said. ”I need to throw more off-speed pitches. Guys are going to be all over my sinkers if I keep throwing one pitch.”

Morton has allowed two runs or fewer in each of his last five starts, going 4-0 with a 1.71 earned run average and is 6-1 with a 2.90 ERA since the All-Star break.

”We lacked the big hits but you’ve got a big pitcher out there,” Milwaukee manager Ron Roenicke said. ”(Morton) is really good. He throws a great sinker and pounds the right-handers in with it. It’s always down in the zone. He’s got a good curveball and a good changeup. That’s a really nice pitcher they have.”

Neil Walker hit a three-run homer and Jose Tabata added three hits, including a pair of run-scoring singles, as the Pirates moved one game ahead of St. Louis, which lost earlier in the day at Cincinnati. Pittsburgh won the opener of a nine-game road trip.

Walker broke it open with his homer off reliever Alfredo Figaro in the seventh for a 5-1 lead.

”I knew the guy threw hard and threw a lot of fastballs,” Walker said. ”I just wanted to hit something well and fortunately I did.”

Mark Melancon pitched the ninth for his 10th save in 12 chances.

Milwaukee starter Tyler Thornburg (1-1) allowed two runs and six hits in six innings.

”I felt pretty good going out there. I’m definitely happy any time you can give your team an opportunity to win a ball game,” Thornburg said.

The Brewers opened the scoring in the second when Juan Francisco sliced a double that landed just inside the left field line. Francisco scored on a single by Logan Schafer.

The Pirates tied it in the third when Clint Barmes led off with a single and later scored on a single by Tabata.

Milwaukee threatened in the third when Norichika Aoki tried to score on Jonathan Lucroy’s one-out grounder to third. Aoki was tagged out in a rundown by third baseman Pedro Alvarez, who then threw out Lucroy as he attempted to advance to second.

”First and foremost, you want to get the guy trying to score from third,” Walker said. ”Pedro made an unbelievable play. That was pretty much a momentum-shifter.”

The Brewers loaded the bases with two outs in the fourth but Thornburg struck out swinging.

Barmes led off with a double in the fifth and Tabata singled home the go-ahead run. Thornburg struck out Marlon Byrd with the bases loaded to prevent further damage.

Singles by Morton and Tabata set up Walker’s 10th home run.

The Brewers added a run in the seventh when a soft throw from the outfield skipped under Alvarez’s glove for an error and rolled into the Pirates’ dugout, allowing Aoki to score from second base.

Pittsburgh improved to 11-6 against Milwaukee this season, marking its highest win total against the Brewers since going 12-6 in 2004.

Milwaukee was kicking us around but they’ve had some challenges over there this year,” Hurdle said.

Halting a lengthy losing trend against Milwaukee has bolstered the Pirates playoff run this season, Barmes said.

”It’s huge to scrap one out here, because they’ve kind of had our number the last couple of years,” he said.

NOTES: The victory gave the Pirates three consecutive wins in Milwaukee for the first time since 2004. … Milwaukee’s Jean Segura stole his league-leading 39th base in the fifth. … Brewers relief pitcher Tom Gorzelanny left the game with tightness in his left shoulder after throwing just two pitches. … Michael Blazek, acquired by Milwaukee on Sunday from St. Louis as the player to be named in a deal that sent relief pitcher John Axford to the Cardinals, pitched a scoreless inning of relief. … Thornburg made his fourth start of the season and first since Aug. 14.

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Chicago Bliss win the LFL Legends Cup

Last Night after ten seasons the Chicago Bliss of LFL US, captured the franchise’s first LFL Legends Cup, defeating the Philadelphia Passion by a score of 34-18.

The bliss started their season off at 0-1 after a loss to Los Angeles before running the table finishing the regular season off with a 4-1 record.

The Bliss would face the Mist in the Semi Finals of the playoffs. The bliss would win that game by a score of 31-14 clinching their spot in the finals against the Passion.

Sunday’s night game was the Bliss’s second appearance in the championship game, their first appearance being a 27-14 loss at the hands of the Los Angeles Temptation in 2010.

Kaberle off to KHL

Story by: Greg Wyshynski

When you think about the quintessential NHL-to-KHL player, three types come to mind: Homesick Russians looking to make bank; marginal pros that shuttle back and forth from the AHL; and former stars who have either priced themselves out of a gig or whose skills have eroded to the point where they’re more liabilities than luxuries for teams.

Guess in which category Tomas Kaberle falls?

The 35-year-old defenseman is close to an agreement with Dinamo Minsk, according to Czech publication Sport. Kaberle spent the last 15 years in the NHL, spending the majority of them with the Toronto Maple Leafs before riding the Boston Bruins’ coattails to the Stanley Cup.

Minsk Coach Alois Hadamczik tells Sport he thinks Kaberle will thrive on the larger ice and that he’s a “serious contender” for the Czech Olympic team.

Kaberle was done as an NHL player. His last two stops have been disastrous: Signing a 3-year deal with the Carolina Hurricanes, and then being traded just 29 games into the 2011-12 season to the Montreal Canadiens; and then getting a compliance buyout from the Habs with one year left on his deal at $4.25 million. He didn’t play a game after March 5, with Montreal concerned he’d get injured and hence wouldn’t be eligible for a buyout.

Wrote the Gazette: “The Canadiens cleaned up another of former general manager Pierre Gauthier’s mistakes by buying out the final year on defenceman Tomas Kaberle’s contract.”

So off he goes to the KHL, where Kevin Dallman clearly has some new competition for the Russian Norris.

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Why is the NBA reimbursing the Oklahoma City Thunder for part of Kevin Durant’s max contract?

Story by Eric Freeman of the Balls don’t lie

The 2011 lockout occurred to benefit the NBA’s small-market franchise, creating conditions in which many of the league’s premier franchises (e.g. the New York Knicks and the Los Angeles Lakers) could not outspend their rivals to gain a competitive advantage. (Cutting players’ salaries was but a happy byproduct for owners.) While the Brooklyn Nets have proven that there still is a way to get value for gobs of cash, the system seems to be working to minimize risk and keep most big teams from piling up expensive players.

Oddly enough, though, the biggest victim of the new rules has been the Oklahoma City Thunder, a small-market team lucky enough to have added three superstar talents via the draft lottery. When the Thunder were faced with a future luxury tax payment to keep the trio intact, they opted to keep Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook and trade James Harden to the Houston Rockets, inadvertently creating a potential contender within their own conference. The aftermath has been rough: the Thunder crashed out of this past postseason when Westbrook suffered a season-ending knee injury and have no clear path to adding another impact player to approximate Harden’s value.

However, OKC did get some good financial news on Thursday at the NBA’s Board of Governors meeting — the league will reimburse them for part of Kevin Durant’s max-level contract extension. From Darnell Mayberry for The Oklahoman:
The NBA’s Board of Governors on Thursday voted to reimburse the Thunder for a portion of the contract extension it signed Kevin Durant to in 2010. […]

The reimbursement, The Oklahoman has learned, has no bearing on the Thunder’s team salary. Durant’s larger-than-expected extension will continue to count against both the cap and the team’s tax computations.

Although the exact amount of the reimbursement is unclear, a league source with knowledge of the situation said it is not the full amount of the roughly $15 million in additional salary that Durant received.

Durant signed a five-year extension worth approximately $89 million in July 2010. But the league didn’t ratify its collective bargaining agreement until December 2011, and Durant was grandfathered in. Oklahoma City in 2011 protested Durant’s inclusion to no avail.

The rule that was written into the 2011 collective bargaining agreement allowed players entering their fifth seasons to receive a contract extension for up to 30 percent of the salary cap if they met certain criteria. The provision, widely known as the “Derrick Rose Rule,” was introduced to adequately compensate players like Durant and Rose who outperformed their budget-friendly rookie contracts. Under the old labor agreement, such players were eligible only for 25 percent of the salary cap.

The timeline here is complicated, but the basic situation is that Durant signed his extension in 2010 to begin in 2011-12, at a time when the salary-cap level for post-lockout seasons had not yet been set. As such, the exact parameters of his salary could not be set, and both parties agreed simply that he would be paid the maximum allowable salary in each season of the deal. When the new rules were enacted, Durant’s representatives petitioned to get him this designation so that he could make more money than he would have earned under the prior collective bargaining agreement. So, in essence, the Thunder are being reimbursed because Durant ended up getting more money in his deal than he thought he’d signed for.

There are several issues with this decision, but none is so glaring as a technical problem regarding Durant’s eligibility to earn this money. As explained by Tom Ziller at SB Nation, the “Derrick Rose Rule” — in which the extended athlete is called a Designated Player — does not allow teams to sign another player to a five-year extension if they already have a Designated Player on their roster. Yet, if Durant held that status, then the team never should have been able to sign Russell Westbrook to his five-year extension in January 2012. The NBA either forgot its own rules, failed to designate Durant in the proper way, or — I admit this is extremely unlikely — deliberately obfuscated the situation to help the Thunder. Either way, something is wrong here, and handing the Thunder a $15 million rebate as determined by an official vote doesn’t seem to address anything other than the possibility of a protracted, messy argument regarding the fairness and enforcement of the NBA’s salary cap and revenue sharing rules. The reimbursement itself does not affect the Thunder’s cap figures, but we should not discount the impact of $15 million, particularly if the Thunder are still in the position that made paying the Harden-related luxury tax so distasteful.

While the particulars of this case are rare and bizarre, the broader issues are all too familiar. As we saw in the battle for the Sacramento Kings, the NBA’s home office executives and owners have a tendency to decide upon rules, agree to them officially, and then bend the terms as far as possible or disregard them entirely whenever it becomes convenient do so. In this situation, the Thunder agreed to abide by the same collective bargaining deal as everyone else, suffered because of it, petitioned to avoid that penalty, and then got a verdict from the NBA that effectively disregarded those rules (and failed to clarify them) in a way that promises a more uncertain future. It’s as if the NBA enacted a system they never had any intention of following.

It’s possible that this ruling will inspire other teams to claim similar damages in need of reimbursement, but it’s somewhat unlikely given the confluence of factors at play in this case. It’s an open question, though, as to what message this sends about the kind of league the NBA wants to create. Collective bargaining exists to create a mutually agreed upon relationship between all involved parties. If the NBA is willing to look past certain rules — alternately, to not ensure they’re following them at all times — then it’s fair to ask whether the league believes in the system as constructed, or if it just considers the CBA as a rubric for getting what it wants.

Ultimately, everything comes back to the reasons for the lockout. The rules exist to help small-market teams make more money, and yet this particular Designated Player rule took $15 million from the Thunder. The Board of Governors’ not-unanimous vote — we can only hypothesize which teams did not support the decision — solved the problem by circumventing those same rules, holding to the spirit of the lockout without actually respecting its resolution. All of which is to say that, two years after the lockout, the same inter-market tensions that were its cause show few signs of dissipating any time soon.

NBA star Amare Stoudemire gets Israel invite

JERUSALEM (AP) — The president of Israel has invited New York Knicks star Amare Stoudemire to play for the country’s national basketball team because of his ties to Judaism.

Shimon Peres met with Stoudemire on Thursday to discuss the player’s charity efforts. Stoudemire, who says he has ”Hebrew roots,” has traveled to Israel before and Peres urged him to help the national team.

The six-time NBA All-Star already has significant ties to Israeli basketball. Last month, he joined a group looking to buy Hapoel Jerusalem, a team in Israel’s top league. Stoudemire is in Israel to coach the Canadian basketball team at the Maccabiah Games, a competition for Jewish athletes.

Stoudemire won a bronze medal with the United States at the 2004 Olympics but has not played for the national team since 2007.