Don Nelson will guide the Warriors past the Utah Jazz because he has his team playing at a high level. That’s no coincidence. "Players like to play for me because I let them play," Nelson said in a matter-of-fact tone Friday. "With the really good players, I let them play their game. They might take shots the fans don’t think they should and maybe the coach doesn’t, either, but that’s their game."With players who aren’t that good, Nelson is "more restrictive," he continued, "but I never rein in the top players."
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It won’t be easy to bring Stanford back to football glory, but if anybody can do it, new coach Jim Harbaugh is the guy.The biggest hurdle for the Cardinal has been the admission’s standards, the nation’s highest for Division I-A schools, but Harbaugh looks at that with pride.
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The Raiders got the quarterback they need, JaMarcus Russell. Now, they should start him. Immediately. What choice do they have? Their other quarterbacks are stiffs. Andrew Walter is a less talented Jeff George. Josh McCown, obtained in a weekend trade, is with his third team — for a good reason. He couldn’t beat out Jon Kitna in Detroit last year.Russell has enormous talent. He’s played in top-level collegiate competition and had some big games there, most notably in this year’s Sugar Bowl.
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Barry Bonds is making a mockery of my earlier prediction that he’d hit homer No. 756 in the first week of September. He’ll probably hit it weeks earlier.Bonds is a marvel. At an age — 42, approaching 43 — when even the best athletes are slowing down, he’s hitting home runs at a pace equal to his best seasons. And they aren’t cheapies. I witnessed one of them Saturday, a mammoth blast to deadcenter that landed 30 feet beyond the fence.
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There were echoes of past Bay Area champions — the 1974-75 Warriors and the 49ers of 1981 — in the Warriors’ improbable win over the Dallas Mavericks on Sunday.Very little was expected of the 1974-75 Warriors, who traded star center Nate Thurmond before the start of the season. But with Rick Barry having his best year, with solid contributions from rookies Keith (later Jamaal) Wilkes and Phil Smith, and with coach Al Attles expertly rotating his lineup, the Warriors won what remains their only NBA title since they moved from Philadelphia to San Francisco.
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The 49ers will emphasize defense in this year’s draft, coach Mike Nolan said at a media lunch in Santa Clara on Thursday. Because the draft is deep at a position of need for the Niners, defensive end, either Nebraska’s Adam Carriker, a favorite of those doing mock drafts, or Jamaal Anderson of Arkansas is likely to be their first pick.Carriker is 6-foot-6, 296 pounds, with the kind of character Nolan prizes. Anderson, coming out early after his junior year, is 6-5, 284 and runs a 4.79-second 40-yard dash.
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The Warriors continue their drive to the NBA playoffs today against Dallas, and they have a powerful force on their side, coach Don Nelson.Though the Mavericks are the best in the NBA, the Warriors do well against them — they ended a 17-game Dallas winning streak with a March 12 win — because Nelson knows what to expect from the team he coached for six-plus seasons.
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The Raiders can’t afford to draft a quarterback with the No. 1 overall pick. Sound familiar? It should, because I wrote that two months ago, before all the draft speculation got into high gear.The Raiders are bringing in Brady Quinn and JaMarcus Russell for interviews and workouts. Possibly one of them, most likely Russell, will show so much ability and charisma that they’ll draft him.
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The Jack Tatum hit that paralyzed Darryl Stingley was neither illegal nor intentionally dirty. But when Stingley died last week, it was characterized that way by writers who did not see the game.I was at the game between the Raiders and New England Patriots in Oakland on Aug. 12, 1978. It’s fair to say that nobody there thought it was unusual when Tatum hit Stingley on a crossing pattern, causing him to drop a pass.
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Matt Cain has a terrible burden this season. Because the Giants’ plan for putting together a team is so flawed, their only chance to escape the NL West cellar is with a breakout season from Cain.It could happen. Cain has always had the kind of pitches, including a fastball that can get into the high 90s, that makes observers think he can pitch a shutout any time he starts. The only questions have been his pitch command and maturity.
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When the 49ers’ new offensive coordinator, Jim Hostler, evaluates quarterback Alex Smith, he talks first of mental toughness. "We knew when we drafted Alex that it would take him some time to develop quarterback skills," Hostler said in an interview at the 49ers’ training facility in Santa Clara."He had played quarterback only in his senior year of high school and he was only throwing 8-10 passes a game — and many of those were just checkoffs to Reggie Bush. Then, he played two years in a [spread] system in college that is not known for developing NFL-type quarterbacks.
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Barring serious injury, Barry Bonds will break Hank Aaron’s career home run record this season. In fact, he’ll probably do it in early September.Because Bonds will be 43 in July, some media critics think he’ll fall off this year. One such critic, who doesn’t think Bonds will get past 14 homers, used Muhammad Ali as an example of what happens to an athlete as he ages.Hello! Ali’s problem was that he was hit in the head too many times. Nobody has been doing that to Bonds.
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A proposed new park in Fremont probably pushes the A’s closer to a departure from the East Bay. Nothing about the park makes sense from a baseball standpoint. The site is off Interstate 880, a heavily traveled corridor even in the middle of the day, as I know from driving it to go to the 49ers’ complex in Santa Clara. In commute hours, you have to double the time it takes to get from point A to point B. It will be an absolute mess for fans trying to get to night games from either north or south of the park.
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Giants fans are going to be shocked by what they see with Barry Zito this season. Zito will be shocked, too, as he struggles to stay above .500.Zito is a flyball pitcher. Last year, he had a great defensive outfield behind him with the A’s, with three players who had played significant stretches in center field: Milton Bradley, Mark Kotsay and Jay Payton.
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The 49ers do not belong in San Francisco. Mayor Gavin Newsom’s fear of being known as the mayor who lost the 49ers is an insufficient reason for keeping them within the city limits.The 49ers were born in San Francisco, but in the 61 years since, the fan base has moved away from The City. Precise figures aren’t available, but it’s believed less than 10 percent of season ticket-holders live in San Francisco. The great bulk of fans is on the Peninsula or in the South Bay.There is precedent within the NFL for a team moving outside the city limits.
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