Week that was: Warriors and plenty more
Stephen Curry’s gametying miracle in Game 3 of the playoffs towered over a crowded Bay Area sports landscape last week, obscuring a raft of stories that would normally play above the fold.
The world champion Giants swept the billionaire Dodgers, with two consecutive walk-offs. Three A’s pitchers combined on a one-hitter against the Angels, and lost. And the NFL plans to make Market Street a party street for the Super Bowl. None of it mattered. Let’s not forget the Sharks parted ways with the most successful coach in the team’s history. And Barry Bonds is no longer a felon. Meanwhile, the world’s greatest female golfers were in town, and the very best male golfers are coming to town next to tackle Harding Park with a world championship on the line. That’s all well and good. But with their first-round sweep, it’s the Warriors’ world right now, and everyone else has to get in line.
If anyone wants to argue over which city has the nation’s most dynamic sports market, give me
a call. I have the gray hair and high blood pressure to prove it’s the Bay Area.
Notes and quotes from a remarkable week in Bay Area sports ...
Steve Kerr is proving to be the most insightful, approachable head coach in all of sports. He’s the polar opposite of the Patriots’ Bill Belichick. The anti-Popovich.
After the Warriors’ uneven performance in their Game 2 victory over the Pelicans at Oracle Arena last week, Kerr sounded a little concerned afterward, providing us with the following gem.
“We've got to get better with our decision making,” Kerr said. “We always sort of walk the line, this team, between explosive and careless. I thought in the first quarter we were trying for hero shots.”
Three nights later, the team played even more carelessly, falling behind by 20 points and looking all-around horrid before the explosion began. Curry and Draymond Green led the charge, scoring and rebounding like madmen in the fourth quarter.
Then Curry hit a hero shot for the ages, dropping in a three-pointer to tie the game with 2.8 seconds left while enduring a typical French Quarter mugging in the process.
The Warriors went on to win in overtime. And Kerr became a fan of hero shots.
Curry’s heroics represent the latest in an astonishing string of all-time Bay Area sports moments. Brandon Belt’s home run to win in the 18th inning of a frozen playoff game in Washington, D.C. Joe Montana to Dwight Clark on the back line of a muddy Candlestick end zone. Travis Ishikawa’s home run to win the pennant. Pablo Sandoval’s three jacks against Detroit in the World Series. The list goes on, topped by Madison Bumgarner’s superman performance in Game 7 against Kansas City in October.
But where does the Warriors’ stunning, 20-point comeback in the fourth quarter rank among Bay Area miracles? Says here that was the greatest comeback since Larry Ellison fixed (we kid, Larry, we kid) the America’s Cup.
The Giants’ Justin Maxwell hit his way into the heart of San Franciscans last week, delivering a game-winning, sweep-ensuring single in the 10th inning on Thursday afternoon, just hours before Curry’s epic rainmaker.
With few others delivering in the lineup for the Giants these days, Maxwell is keeping right field warm for Hunter Pence, who still has no timetable to return from a broken arm.
And with that hit, Maxwell will definitely be part of a future “This Date in Giants History,” with KNBR’s Brian Murphy waxing poetically about the journeyman’s efforts to thwart the dastardly Dodgers.
In case you hadn’t heard, the Giants refurbished their clubhouse this offseason, bringing in more hardwood finishes and a cool, gray and brown color scheme to the room that Bonds built.
As one veteran scribe put it, “It feels like a nightclub in here.”
If Bonds were still around, he’d have the VIP section.
Speaking of Bonds, the disgraced home run king got a little less disgraced when a federal appeals court overturned his only felony conviction, for obstruction of justice.
This clears Bonds’ path back to the Giants, or any other club that might have been scared off by his conviction.
While Larry Baer and the Giants insist that there was no impediment even prior to the overturned conviction, that’s hard to believe in this corner. Bonds believes he can resurrect his image, eventually making it all the way to the Hall of Fame.
For that path to take root, he’ll need to win his appeal in the court of public opinion.
The LPGA Tour came to Lake Merced Golf Club, with marquee players including Lydia Ko and Michelle Wie in the spotlight. But it was Juli Inkster who stole the show for Bay Area golf fans.
As a great Chronicle headline put it, “In her 50s, Inkster still in 60s.” The San Jose State alum and Los Altos resident, 54, shot a 68 on Thursday to put herself in early contention.
The next day, 17-year-old Brooke Henderson shot a 65 to take the lead. A three-shot difference with a nearly fourdecade handicap. Not bad, Ms. Inkster.
Speaking of golf phenoms, Masters winner Jordan Spieth comes to San Francisco this week for the World Golf Championships-Cadillac Match Play, to be contested at Harding Park.
At 21 years, 9 months and 6 days (which he’ll be next Sunday), Spieth could become the youngest winner of a World Golf Championships event. Even younger than Tiger Woods.
We finish this roundup with a look at next year’s Super Bowl, which is only 41 weeks away. The San Francisco Bay Area Super Bowl 50 Host Committee unveiled plans to block off a portion of lower Market Street and all of Justin Herman Plaza to throw a mega party for eight days. They’re calling it “Super Bowl City.”
Regardless of who’s playing in the game, the committee expects that more than 1 million people will flow through the city, dropping somewhere in the neighborhood of a half billion dollars on the local economy.
Not surprisingly, there’s not a whole lot planned for the South Bay, the new home of the 49ers. There’s also no plan to hold events in the East Bay, present home to the Raiders.
But what if, by some miracle, the two teams meet up in Super Bowl 50? It would be quite the happening. And quite the long shot.
According to the bookmakers at Bovada.com, the odds of the Raiders and Niners playing in Santa Clara in February are 675 to 1.
I’d put $10 on it.