So you've just won the NBA Championship title, its the off-season and time to relax ... what to do? If you're Jordan Farmar back-up point guard for the LA Lakers apparently you head to Vegas for the World Series of Poker!
In my other life outside of basketball and work, I'm an aspiring poker player and have been keeping a close eye on the World Series. I was quite surprised to see this hand come up on Poker News and had to do a little research to veryify it was indeed Farmar from the Lakers:
Farmar Commits, Reaps Reward
A player in late position raised and both Jordan Farmar (small blind) and Robert Varkonyi (big blind) called, creating a pot of about 6,000. The flop came . Farmar and Varkonyi checked, the preflop raiser continued with a bet of 5,075, Farmar called, and Varkonyi got out of the way.
The turn was the . Farmar checked, his opponent made a hefty bet of 17,075, and Farmar said "I can't turn back now" as he made the call.
The river was the . Farmar again checked, and his opponent pushed all in for 27,000 -- just a couple thousand more than Farmar's stack. Farmar called relatively quickly, turning over for two pair. His opponent mucked.
Farmar picks up a lot of chips on that one, as well as some kudos from some of his tablemates for the river call. He catapults up to 95,000.
Great work from Jordan and this pot put him in to the top 10 chip-counts of day 1d with a few sessions left to play. I'd be surprised if his run continues too much further, but if it does I'll certainly keep you updated.
Jordan Farmar at the World Series of Poker, pictured with Lou Diamond Phillips, Marlon Wayans, Torrie Wilson, (ex-NBA'er) John Salley
In the NBA, after the regular season comes the playoffs and finals ... and then there is the third season which consists of the draft and off-season action. The off-season you'd imagine is pretty dull after the finals but this is where the wheeling and dealing of trades and free-agency comes in to play.
NBA teams can officially begin courting free-agents from 12am July 1 and surprisingly a number of them don't waste anytime. Here's a great line from the guys at Dime today: … The Celtics are really putting on the full-court press for Rasheed Wallace. As soon as the negotiation period opened at 12 a.m. Wednesday, Danny Ainge was knocking on ‘Sheed’s front door, and later in the day the team sent KG, Pierce, Ray and Doc over to recruit ‘Sheed some more. NBA free agency can defy reality: Under what other circumstances would anyone ever knock on Rasheed Wallace’s door past midnight? He’s liable to answer with a .38 or a tire iron …
So the big trades/free-agent signings so far are:
Pre-draft, Orlando trader Rafer Alston, Courtney Lee and Tony Battie to New Jersey for Vince Carter and Ryan Anderson
Detroit will sign Ben Gordon from Chicago and Charlie Villanueva from Milwaukee
LA Clippers trade Zach Randolph to Memphis for Quentin Richardson
And the breaking rumour today is that the LA Lakers will sign Ron Artest while the Houston Rockets will sign Trevor Ariza (not actually a trade although it looks like one).
Will these two be playing for the same team next season?
Yesterday the LA Lakers won the NBA title defeating the Orlando Magic 99 - 86.
Full credit to the Lakers for doing what needed to be done to win the Championship Series. Orlando had their chances losing two overtime games but they just weren't good enough.
Some of the numbers from game 5:
Lakers
Kobe Bryant 30 points, 6 boards, 5 assists, 4 blocks, 8 of 8 from the free-throw line Lamar Odom 17 points, 10 boards, 3 of 3 from downtown (off the bench) Pau Gasol 14 points, 15 boards, 4 blocks
Magic
Rashard Lewis 18 points, 10 boards, 4 assists (just 6 of 19 from the field) Dwight Howard 11 points, 10 boards, 3 blocks
I'm heading home shortly in time to catch the second half on OneHD. I'll give a more complete wrap of my thought on the Lakers' title win tomorrow.
In the meantime, if you haven't seen the highlights yet:
After stinking up game 1, narrowly losing in overtime in game 2, the Orlando Magic had to be looking forward to playing at home in game 3. Sleeping in your own bed, not having to travel, playing on your own court, in front of your own fans, on your own rings ... hopefully it would all add up to a much needed win.
As I mentioned earlier in the week, if the Magic are to win, they need their shooters to fire ... and FIRE they did in game 3. The inconsistent Rafer Alston found his range hitting 8 of 12 from the field, Hedo Turkoglu was 7 of 12, Rashard Lewis was 8 of 14 (including 3 triples) and Mickael Pietrus came off the bench shooting 7 of 11 from the field.
Dwight Howard continued to spend more time at the free-throw line than anywhere else as the Lakers again played their version of Hack-a-Shaq with him. He was 5 of 6 from the field and 11 of 16 from the line.
The Magic shot a ridiculously good overall clip of 62.5% for the game ... but still only won by 4 points.
The Lakers shot 51% but managed to hang with the red-hot Magic behind 31 points, 8 boards from Kobe Bryant (although he made just 5 of 10 from the line) and 23 points on 9 of 11 shooting from Pau Gasol.
Lamar Odom, who had been massive in the first 2 games was held to just 11 points, 2 boards due to foul trouble.
Due to One HD showing replays the day after, I haven't watched game 3 yet but will do so tonight. From a basketball shooting perspective, it should be great checking out the Magic shooters on fire and LA still managing to keep it close.
Here are the highlights of the game (I am avoiding watching them):
We've just had the Queen's birthday long weekend here in Australia so its been a few days since I last blogged. The upside of the long weekend tho, was that I got to watch game 2 of the NBA Championship Series between the Orlando Magic and the LA Lakers.
I got a call from some friends and we had an afternoon feast of sport. First there was the AFL game between Melbourne and Collingwood, then it was the NBA and the night wrapped up with Titans against the Dragons in the NRL.
After the disaster that was game 1 for the Orlando Magic, I was hoping they would bounce back in game 2. The game was again in LA so the Lakers were certainly the favourites and their confidence was riding high.
The first quarter was a dour, low-scoring affair with the scores tied at 15 at the first break. The Lakers pushed ahead in the second quarter before Rashard Lewis and Hedo Turkoglu found their shooting rhythms and the Magic came back.
The last quarter was back and forth and Orlando looked like they could steal it but two costly misses from Magic rookie Courtney Lee in the final minute meant we were headed to OT.
Orlando continued to turn the ball over in the extra period and LA hit their free-throws down the stretch and secured the win.
For the Magic, the good news was the form of their big 3, Shard, Hedo and Dwight. The bad news was the rest of their team shot just 8 of 30 from the field and had 20 turnovers to just 12 for LA. The Magic need better production from the likes of Alston, Lee and Pietrus.
For the Lakers, Kobe was good (29 points, 8 assists but 7 turnovers) without completely dominating like he did in game 1. The Lakers have to be delighted with what they're getting from Lamar Odom (19 points, 8 of 9 from the field, 8 boards off the bench) and Pau Gasol (24 points, 10 boards).
We're down to 4 teams left in the NBA and its looking more and more like a Cleveland vs Lakers Championship Series. This has to be the match-up David Stern would and the powers that be in the NBA was hoping for. Last season it was the battle of two rival teams, Lakers and the Celtics, this year it could well be the match-up of two of the current superstars, Kobe and LeBron. In the lead up to, Nike has a very funny series of commercials airing at the moment.
