2009 Western Conference Finals: (1) Lakers Vs. (2) Nuggets

[Lean]

Seems that lady in that LOL photo by Jackal sucked something..... big.

[Andrew]

WWE moving show from Denver to Los Angeles

World Wrestling Entertainment says it is moving its Monday night event to Los Angeles because of a conflict with the Pepsi Center in Denver. But not before the rift between WWE and Nuggets ownership grew even more.

The Nuggets are scheduled to host the Lakers on Monday in Game 4 of the Western Conference finals, but WWE had previously booked the arena for an episode of Monday Night Raw.

WWE chairman Vince McMahon said Staples Center called and offered use of its building and that his organization will return to Denver for an event at the Coliseum on Aug. 7

The war of words doesn't end there though.

"Despite the propaganda campaign launched by WWE and Chairman Vince McMahon, the KSE team maintained a professional manner throughout this process," Kroenki vice president Paul Andrews said in a release. "We had hoped for, and worked hard toward an amicable resolution — which we verbally had on Tuesday.

"We understand there will be many disappointed WWE fans in the Denver area. It's unfortunate and disappointing that WWE executives ultimately chose this path. The sensationalism employed by WWE in this instance is not surprising. The amount of publicity and coverage enjoyed by their group over the last few days has clearly become their new business goal instead of finalizing what we thought was a favorable solution and ultimately allowed their fans to attend the event."

He has a point, and few people seem to believe as strongly in "any publicity is good publicity" as Vince McMahon but I think Kroenke Sports should get off their high horse here. They made a pretty big blunder here and whether or not they were professional in offering a solution, they weren't being too professional by letting this happen. Sure, mistakes do happen but it's pretty careless of them all the same considering the money (and contracts) involved.

The comments on the article are as always amusing and proof that it's not just geeks that post on the Internet, since the term "geek" implies intelligence and eggheadedness. It doesn't surprise me to see people rip professional wrestling and call wrestling fans rednecks/white trash, for some reason we humans feel we need to justify our own likes and dislikes by making assumptions about people with different tastes and tarring them with the same stereotypical brush.

These people miss the point completely, of course. Of course as a real sport, an NBA Playoff game has greater importance as far as location and scheduling. It's not about the two conflicting events that had been scheduled though, the event that conflicted with the Nuggets/Lakers game could've been absolutely anything with varying degrees of popularity and cultural/social relevance. The issue here is that Kroenke Sports messed up and messed up badly, being unable to honour an agreement that had been put into place well in advance.

Oh well. What's done is done and we all know we're the only ones on the Internet who make sense. Bring on Game 2.

[Lean]

I guess Vince have to argue with them the "Mr. McMahon" way.

...and we all know we're the only ones on the Internet who make sense.

But, but, I want to see Koko B. Ware wrestle in Denver. Plz plz plz?

[Oakrhum]

McMahon added the Monday show would include a 5-on-5 match pitting "Lakers" against "Nuggets" and his character would likely confront a character of Stan Kroenke, who owns Kroenke Enterprises, in the ring.

Nice.

[benji]

However, Kroenke Sports claims McMahon had previously agreed to a deal to shift the event to Sunday.

"We negotiated in good faith with Vince and believed we had a deal in principal as of Tuesday," Kroenke Sports executive vice president Paul Andrews said. "In fact, it was so clear to us that we did that we asked Vince to do a joint press release. He said, 'Paul, I have no problem with a joint press release.' Then, he asked us if he could get five tickets to the Denver Nuggets' game on Monday night so he could apologize to Mr. Kroenke [Nuggets owner Stan] in person.

"That was Tuesday. We find out by a press announcement today by Vince, who I believe is the master of propaganda, that he's moving the event to the Staples Center. He didn't even contact us to tell us he hadn't accepted the deal we negotiated the night before, so we're quite shocked, frankly."
...
The conflict has provided some great press for WWE, but McMahon said his preference was to do his show as planned.

"I didn't want this publicity," he said. "They threw me out and so what are we going to do? We have to garner some degree of publicity."

Kroenke Sports said WWE preferred the publicity to a compromise.

"They haven't returned any of our calls for over a 24-hour period since we had what we believed to be an agreement Tuesday night," Andrews said. "We've reached out to them all day for feedback and then we get an announcement they're going to L.A.

"The sensationalism and media attention were more important than the fans of Denver."

[Oakrhum]

They're WWE anyway.

[Andrew]

Dahntay Jones has picked up 4 fouls in less than six minutes. Even more minutes for JR Smith.

[Oakrhum]

Dahntay Jones has picked up 4 fouls in less than six minutes. Even more minutes for JR Smith.

I think he only committed 2 of that 4 fouls. JR Smith has 3. 3 legitimate fouls.

[Lamrock]

Having no faith in Denver because they are the underdog and I'm rooting for them, its looking like a 2-0 Laker lead.

Hopefully the Cavs can beat Orlando so the trophy isn't handed to Kobe and the lake show.

[Oakrhum]

Denver is catching up.

[Lamrock]

Jinx is working. J/K. Don't want to jinx the jinx.

[Oakrhum]

Denver can win this if the Lakers will continue to sleep defensively. They had a good defense at the start but not at the latter parts of the first half. Carmelo on the contrary, is slowly waking up. And Linas..

Meanwhile..



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I've seen about 10 delayed calls this night.

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Another non-call that benefited the Nuggets. But it really is a Lakers loss.

[MikeMan™]

Yeah Baby ! Denver Won !
Three more wins to go !

[Andrew]

I've got a feeling that segment is going to outshine the Donald Trump/Rosie O'Donnell skit from a couple of years back in cheesiness.

That was a tough break for the Lakers and a lucky one for the Nuggets, it's probably going to be over-scrutinised by a lot of people but there were sketchy calls on both sides - some of which would admittedly be difficult calls for the officials to make depending on the angle - throughout the game. A game at such a crucial stage of the season that tolerance for human error is very low. Let's call the first two games a wash as it now becomes a best of five. I am glad that it was a close one down the stretch though, both Conference Finals series are too good of a matchup for blowout victories.

[MikeMan™]

Lakers got Lucky in Game One ( Denver fluked out in the last minutes )
Nuggets got Lucky in Game Two ( Referee Calls , Steve Javy Sucks !)
However , a win is a win .

[Lean]

There were many no-calls and delayed calls, for both teams. The win is a close one but still went down in shooting free throws. Highly-physical as they use forearms and slight pushes in the drives.

[CMJ3]

Damn! i thought we were out of it by the end of the 1st quarter, hats off to the Denver boys i was proud you got some fight in ya. Billups was huge down the stretch so many veteran type moves i feel so much better having him on the team compared to when Iverson was there. Bring on Game 3 and another Nuggs win!! (i hope).

[Scotty]

Here's what i posted on another forum, cbf writing another big opinion lol

There was a huge lack of consistency by the reffs. You go down 1 end Kobe makes a play with a little contact puts in the layup and gets the and 1 call. Go down the other end, Melo makes a similar play with the same or more contact and puts in layup and no call. Then you could have Kobe get fouled on the J attempt, no call and then Billups gets fouled on slight contact on the J below. They were too inconsistent...

But man was that frustrating to watch. How bout K-Mart? For the first half he fumbled about 7 passes... :bulgy-eyes:

-Kleiza was a God send. And Spyda i disagree. Dunno how often you've watched the Nuggz this season, but Kleiza was nothing like he was in 07-08. Couldn't make an open 3 if his life depended on it during the reg season, so this was a huge surprise, but props to him, he was huge.

-Then there was Melo- obviously had some great patches and the commentators are right. He just needs to be on the floor, pretty much 24/7 for us to win. His shooting numbers weren't great, especially his 3's (0/6), but he didnt take a shot that he was incapable of making and im fine with that. The 3's were all good looks, so im not mad about that, although i did drop a few f bombs when he missed a few open ones...

-Obviously Chauncey was huge. It's great to know that you've got a player like him that can pretty much suck anyone into fouling him and most of the time he'll make the free throws, despite his FT shooting being down as of late. He along with Melo needs to be on the floor as much as possible...

-Also another thing i wanted to bring up with Melo is that although he's been playing well when taking it to Kobe on the defensive end, other than that he is a piss poor defender and will never deserve any credit for his D, if he doesn't run back on defense or follow his opponent (like an Ariza) around in the half court. Once Ariza crosses the pain to the other side, Melo stops and waits for some reason and leaves Ariza open for 3. He did it numerous times. Some resulted in 3's, other times Melo closed out late and Trevor drove, like that big slam and that sick And 1... So yeah it really pisses me off when Melo slacks off on D and it almost kills me when i see him walking back on D or dont even see him appear on the defensive end or when he gets the ball stolen off him and he doesn't even run back to stop the fast break that he caused... Im usually like 'get the f[COLOR="White"]u[/COLOR]ck back Melo, you fu[COLOR="White"]c[/COLOR]ken lazy dic[COLOR="White"]k[/COLOR]head'...

-Oh and last thing, great work by Denver hitting their FT's.. How's it feel LA missing all the FT's, cause i know it pissed me off immensely in Game 1...

Anyway Great win, cant believe we ended up winning that, but great all the same...

Lets go Denver at home!

[dopeboy]

Nice to see Denver winning game 2. Maybe it'll be Cavs - Nuggets final after all. At least, I want it to be.

[MikeMan™]

Nice to see Denver winning game 2. Maybe it'll be Cavs - Nuggets final after all. At least, I want it to be.

You'll never know if the Cavs will bounce back . . .

[dopeboy]

True, but I don't know if LA will bounce back either, if you can call being 0-1 or 1-1 in the series as bouncing back. They lost only one game, so that doesn't mean a lot at this point. At least I think that Orlando will break at one point (they'll play worse, to be exact). They can't play any better than they did in game 1. Cavs can.

[shadowgrin]

The good part is that Chauncey is playing great when he does playground stuff. Sad part is the Nuggets might have other minor problems that needs to be resolved.

[Jackal]

This is what I meant by consistancy in officiating. First few quarters anything that resembled a touch foul was called (4 quick ones on Jones) and then the other quarters it suddenly became extremely physical with non-calls. They've seriously got to be more consistent.

Ariza was kickass in this game, honestly. Even Jordan did well off the bench, Sasha should practice a lot more, his shooting is downright horrible at the moment. LA's bigs are dominating, I was extremely pleased by how active Pau & Lamar were. Great game played by Carmelo, I thought he would have a sub-par evening after the first quarter, but he got it going and lit a fire in the Nuggets. Kleiza really stepped up off the bench as well, made it a lot more difficult to congest the lanes thanks to his range.

On another note...what the fuck is up with Doris Burke's face? It looks like she got Barbara Waltered (too tight of a facelift) and can barely move her face. She's downright annoying to watch. I feel pain in my cheeks watching her talk. Damn.

[MikeMan™]

The Nuggets will need their bench in the next game if Carmelo cools down . . . ( That's for J.R. Smith )

[Scotty]

^Well that hasn't happened. Jr's 0/6 atm. I got a bad feeling about the way the game is going atm...