The Lakers have their 15th World Championship, and it is a spectacular time to be a Los Angelino generally, and a Lakers fan specifically. The parade will be one of the highlights of the year in SoCal, and I'm excited to be a part of our broadcast on 710 ESPN with a position at the Coliseum.

After the Lakers seized control of the NBA Finals with a 99-91 Overtime win at Amway Arena Thursday night, Magic head coach Stan Van Gundy gave his standard “regular guy” press conference. I love Stan’s routine. He thrives at being under-estimated, and despite his more-than-passing resemblance to Ron “The Hedgehog” Jeremy, his round physique and a voice that, at times, sounds like a new character on Sesame Street, he is a crafty, smart, resourceful NBA head coach.

The expression “The fierce urgency of now” was originally coined by Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1967, and received a boost from now-President Barack Obama, who revived it during his campaign for the Presidency. It can be applied to many real-life situations and is apropos for Game 3 of the NBA Finals at Amway Arena.

Before Game 2 of the NBA Finals Sunday at Staple's, Rick Fox played a little game of H-O-R-S-E with a jockey named Iggy Puglisi to promote the fact that tickets are now on sale for The Breeder's Cup, which will be held for a second consecutive year at Santa Anita. I was the master of ceremonies for this odd competition. It was ultimately won by Foxy, but Iggy hung around for awhile. Puglisi had a decent little set shot, but Rick was killing with long bank shots, and he even threw in a little Skyhook as a tribute to Kareem. Here are some photos.

On May 18th, Lakers legend Jerry West was quoted as saying that LeBron James had “surpassed” Kobe Bryant as the NBA’s best player. That next day, May 19, Kobe “went off” for 40pts leading the Lakers past Denver 105-103 in Game 1 of the Western Conference Finals against Denver.

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Abrams’ ‘Star Trek’ Goes Where No ‘Trek’ Has Gone Before! $33M in 29 Hours & Almost $77M Possible by Monday!
5/09/2009 12:40am

Rebooting Bond with Daniel Craig was Bold. Christopher Nolan’s Reinvention of Batman was genius. But some thought it was overly-ambitious, even audacious, to attempt to restart the Star Trek franchise. It has begun to pay off already for Paramount Pictures, and there will dividends for years to come.

Several sources at competing studios have told me that J.J. Abrams’ all-new reboot of Star Trek (Paramount), which debuted last night at 7pm at many of its 3,849 locations, may have grossed as much as $6.5M-$7.5M. Studio honchos are “locked down tight” about actual numbers, but that is in the same ballpark as Transformers (Dreamworks/Paramount), which grabbed $8.8M in its previews starting at 8pm on Monday, July 2 during the summer of 2007. (What portion of ticket sales fall into Thursday and what percentage fall into Friday will likely be an open question even after final numbers are in.)

The all-new J.J. Abrams reboot of Star Trek (Paramount) will win the second weekend of the Hollywood Summer Box Office season by at least a couple of light years over Fox’s fast-fading X-Men Origins: Wolverine, but some of the astronomical numbers I’ve seen floating around in the blogosphere are very over-heated. Make no mistake, this movie will open extraordinarily well, but it’s not going to play out as a typical front-loaded blockbuster. Moviegoers need time to shake off the disappointment of the final TV series Enterprise (starring Scott Bakula and canceled after four seasons) and the disastrous 2002 final film Star Trek: Nemesis ($43.3M domestic). It will take time for a new generation of fans to discover the magic of Gene Rodenberry’s vision of the future through Abrams’ magical lens.