Sports X-Treme JUNE 8, 2010 LAFAYETTE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL, WASH. DC, 20015 VOL. 2, NO. 6 Lakers, Celtics Split First Two Games of NBA Playoffs by Isaac Frumkin, 4K After waiting since October, the NBA Finals have arrived. It’s the Boston Celtics against the Los Angeles Lakers. It could be like the 1980s again. In the regular season the Lakers went 57-25 and the Celtics were 50-32, while they both beat each other once. In the playofs both teams faced pretty strong competition. The Lakers played the Oklahoma City Thunder, the Utah Jazz, and then the Phoenix Suns. The Celtics played the Miami Heat, the Cleveland Cavaliers, and then the Orlando Magic. In the first game of the Finals the Lakers pulled away with a comfortable score, 126-89. With Kobe Bryant and Pau Gasol providing the one-two punch and the rest of their team getting the job done, the Lakers were almost unbeatable. The Celts won’t take this loss easily though. Despite NBA.com Polls projecting that LA would win game 2, the Celtics beat the Lakers 103-94 making it the Celtics point guard, Rajon Lakers’ first home loss since they began their playof run. Ray Allen Rondo, was on fire in Game 2. had a Finals record of eight 3s. I think that Boston will win Game 3. With a lineup of stars including Kevin “K-G” Garnett, Paul Pierce, Ray Allen, and Rajon Rondo, the Celtics will make it an exciting series against Kobe and his Lakers. Contents Strasburg Set for ML Debut Tonight..............2 LeBron James Poll.......2 Wall or Turner?...........2 Boys’ B-Ball Season Remembered..............3 NY Gets Super Bowl.....4 Stanley Cup.................4 Team Tennis................4 The Road to the Playoffs B-Ball Legend John Wooden LAFAYETTE Fans have been waiting Dies at 100 ELEMENTARY since October, but the NBA SCHOOL Born: Oct. 14, 1910 Finals are here at last...p. 1 Died: June 4, 2010 Strasburg To Pitch Against Pirates by Isaac Frumkin, 4K Olympic Baseball Team in the Surprisingly, the Nats are 2008 Summer Olympics, which bringing up a star from the minors were held in Beijing. The U.S. at what couldn’t have been a better Team earned a bronze behind time. The Nats were on a roll Cuba (silver) and South Korea recently and there’s no stoppin’ (gold). Then he was the first them now that they have Stephen overall pick in the 2009 MLB Strasburg. Draft by our very own Washington In two of his seasons-- Nationals. In late August they sophomore and junior--playing for placed him on the Phoenix Desert the San Diego State Aztecs, he had Dogs where he played until April 328 strikeouts and a record of 11 when he made his first start for The $15,000,000 man is set to 21-4. He had four complete games the AA Harrisburg Senators. pitch tonight! But what do you and one no-hitter. During 2008 he On May 4 he was promoted was selected to play for the U.S. to the AAA Syracuse Chiefs. know about him? During his first game with the Strasburg Quiz First Round Pick? Chiefs he pitched six scoreless by William Ruppert innings, striking out six batters and 1. How old is he? & Zach Schauer,4FJ allowing only one hit. Finally, the 2. Where did he attend college? Nats announced that Stephen 3. Is he a right- or left-handed John Wall or Evan Turner? Strasburg will make his MLB pitcher? It’s so hard to decide. The Wizards debut against the Pittsburgh Pirates 4. Can you name the A, AA & have finally won the first round tonight. It’s a sell-out crowd. AAA teams that he played on pick in the draft. The last time they I hope this season we’ll while in the minors recently? won first pick they got Kwame have a lot more reports on the Brown in 2001. This time, the wife Nats. Especially, in October for See Answers on p. 3 of Abe Pollin, the late owner of the the playoffs. Wizards, went to the lottery along with Abe’s NBA championship ring for good luck, and boy was it Where Will LeBron Go? lucky. by Joe Inglima, Lucas Engvall and Caleb Murphy, 4K This time their choice is between the Kentucky Wildcats’ There’s been a lot of speculation about which team John Wall and the Ohio State basketball super star LeBron James will sign with when he Buckeyes’ Evan Turner. John Wall becomes a free agent soon. Even, Ron Artest, got involved by is an uneven shooter, but is very saying publicly that he doesn’t think that LeBron should go quick and agile. He averages 16 anywhere. “He’s done great things with Cleveland. Why points per game. Evan Turner won should he go anywhere?” Artest told the New York Daily News almost all the individual awards on Thursday, June 3. But New York basketball fans disagree and averaged 20 points per game. with him. The Knicks would love to have LeBron. So would We think they’ll pick John Wall, the New Jersey Nets and the Chicago Bulls. Heck, what team but you never know. wouldn’t want to have him? We polled the 3rd-4th grades to ask students where 3rd Grade 4th Grade they thought Lebron James would go as a free agent. We limited their choices to the Bulls, Knicks, or Nets because Bulls: 26 Bulls: 29 those three teams are contenders who seem willing to pay for Knicks: 8 Knicks: 32 his tremendous talents. The results of the poll are to the left. Nets: 9 Nets: 12 Boys’ B-Ball: Looking Back by Coleman Ayers, 5G Although the school year is almost over and the basketball season ended months ago, I thought I might do a wrap-up of the season. Try-outs I will start out with tryouts. On day one, we started running laps and doing basic exercises like lay-up lines. On day two, we pushed it a little more, doing more laps and some scrimmages. On day three and four, there were fewer kids because there was a cut. We started to work really hard. We wanted to give our coaches, Mr. Johnson and Ms. Shapiro, an idea of the level of hard work and skills that we had. After the fourth day of various workouts, the coaches narrowed it down to the final team. The Team Coleman Ayers, Amir Barnett, Ross Brandon, Andrew Fenty, Matthew Fenty, Cameron Gadson, Tom Giagtzoglou, Cameron Goode, Martin Haggray, Chris Hamann, Matthew Harris, Alex Joyce-Johnson, Lionel Kearse, Nick Neptune, and Jordan Phillips The Season The season started with a couple of practices. The practices were an hour and a half long. We worked ourselves hard to get better and to get the potential to make a run for the finals. The first game was against Murch at Bear Arena. It was a very hard game, with the crowd pushing us to victory. The second game was against Horace Mann. Again, it was at Bear Arena. We pretty much blew them out winning by around 20 points. As we continued to work hard in practice and on the court, we started to get a feeling that we had the skill to win it all. In our third game, we played Tubman Elementary. On the third game of our almost-all-season-long home stretch, we beat them by 26 points with many highlights. In the final game of our home stretch, we played a tight game against Takoma, and won by a couple points. At 4-0 we were ready for two games on the road, and then the playoffs. Our first road game was against our rival, Shepherd. The game was pretty close but we pulled away with not much stress. In our next game, we played Whittier. The game was very tight until the end where Whittier had a last second shot after we made two clutch shots. Whittier made the short shot to go ahead by two. We tried a last second shot from half court. Airball. We were 5-1 heading into the playoffs. The Playoffs In our first playoff game we were very nervous, but we rolled by Barnard in the West Elementary gym. The next and probably most exciting game, was at Francis MS, against John Eaton. The game started with us pulling ahead by five points against this undefeated team. The game went back and forth with many exciting moments, including a end-of-the-half buzzer beater. At the end of the game, John Eaton went ahead and hit clutch free throws at the end. We missed another half court buzzer beater, and our season was over. Although we were upset, we had an awesome time. I thank the coaches for a great season. The Greatest Coach Ever John Wooden, age 100, died last week. He’s in the Basketball Hall of Fame as a player and a coach, AAA but he is considered the greatest coach of all time in all sports. His quotes are seen in football, Syracuse Chiefs = = Chiefs Syracuse AA, AA, Senators = = Senators baseball, soccer and locker rooms worldwide. Here are a few. Try to find more of them on your own! A, Harrisburg Harrisburg A, = = •Ability is a poor man's wealth. 4. Phoenix Desert Dogs Desert Phoenix •It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. Right-handed 3. •Winning takes talent, to repeat takes character. o State o g Die San 2.