I’ve seen some great baby races.
This one at yesterday’s Pelicans game was an all-timer:
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Kyrie Irving gloats in LeBron James’ face about overturned call (video)
Kyrie Irving and LeBron James sound like they’re on good terms now. There was even chatter last summer about Irving joining the Lakers before he ultimately signed with the Nets.
But they’re also not that far removed from their ugly breakup, Irving requesting and receiving a trade from the Cavaliers.
So, there was plenty of attention on their dynamic during the Lakers’ win over the Brooklyn last night.
In the second quarter, Irving got whistled for fouling LeBron. The Nets successfully challenged, and Irving sure let LeBron know about his clean strip.
Instead of LeBron getting free throws, Brooklyn won a jump ball. Irving’s Nets definitely bested LeBron’s Lakers in the call-reversal sequence.
But Irving is now just 2-10 career against LeBron.
Pelicans owner Gayle Benson’s New Orleans Saints allegedly helped Catholic church with PR amid sexual-abuse scandal
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NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The New Orleans Saints are going to court to keep the public from seeing hundreds of emails that allegedly show team executives doing public-relations damage control for the area’s Roman Catholic archdiocese to help it contain the fallout from a burgeoning sexual-abuse crisis.
Attorneys for about two dozen men suing the church say in court filings that the 276 documents they obtained through discovery show that the NFL team, whose owner – New Orleans Pelicans owner Gayle Benson – is devoutly Catholic, aided the Archdiocese of New Orleans in its “pattern and practice of concealing its crimes.”
“Obviously, the Saints should not be in the business of assisting the Archdiocese, and the Saints’ public relations team is not in the business of managing the public relations of criminals engaged in pedophilia,” the attorneys wrote in a court filing. “The Saints realize that if the documents at issue are made public, this professional sports organization also will be smearing itself.”
Saints attorneys, in court papers, disputed any suggestion that the team helped the church cover up crimes, calling such claims “outrageous.” They further said that the emails, exchanged in 2018 and 2019, were intended to be private and should not be “fodder for the public.” The archdiocese is also fighting the release of the emails.
Ties between local church leaders and the Saints include a close friendship between New Orleans Archbishop Gregory Aymond and Gayle Benson, who inherited the Saints and the New Orleans Pelicans basketball team when her husband, Tom Benson, died in 2018. The archbishop was at Gayle Benson’s side as she walked in the funeral procession.
Gayle Benson has given millions of dollars to Catholic institutions in the New Orleans area, and the archbishop is a regular guest of hers at games and charitable events for the church.
The Saints and Pelicans share staff, including Senior Vice President of Communications Greg Bensel.
Attorneys for the men suing the church say “multiple” Saints personnel, including Bensel, used their team email to advise church officials on “messaging” and how to soften the impact of the archdiocese’s release of a list of clergy members “credibly accused” of sexual abuse.
“The information at issue bears a relationship to these crimes because it is a continuation of the Archdiocese’s pattern and practice of concealing its crimes so that the public does not discover its criminal behavior,” the plaintiffs’ attorneys wrote. “And the Saints joined in.”
The Associated Press, which has extensively covered clergy sexual abuse in a series of stories over the past year, filed a motion with the court supporting the release of the documents as a matter of public interest.
“This case does not involve intensely private individuals who are dragged into the spotlight,” the AP argued, “but well-known mega-institutions that collect millions of dollars from local residents to support their activities.”
A court-appointed special master is expected to hear arguments in the coming weeks on whether the communications should remain confidential.
A Saints spokeswoman Friday said team officials had no comment.
Attorneys for the Saints acknowledged in a court filing that the team assisted the archdiocese in its publishing of the credibly accused clergy list, but said that was an act of disclosure — “the opposite of concealment.”
A handful of Saints emails that emerged last year in the clergy abuse litigation included an October 2018 exchange in which Bensel asked an archdiocese spokeswoman whether there might be “a benefit to saying we support a victims right to pursue a remedy through the courts.”
“I don’t think we want to say we ‘support’ victims going to the courts,” Sarah McDonald, the archdiocese’s communications director, replied, “but we certainly encourage them to come forward.”
The fight over the emails is part of a flurry of claims filed against the archdiocese over its employment of George F. Brignac, a longtime schoolteacher and deacon who was removed from the ministry in 1988 after a 7-year-old boy accused him of fondling him at a Christmas party. That accusation followed claims that Briganc abused several other boys, including one case that led to his acquittal in 1978 on three counts of indecent behavior with a juvenile.
Church officials permitted Brignac, 85, to act as a lay minister until local news accounts of his service in 2018 prompted his ouster and an apology from the archdiocese. The AP last year reported that Brignac, despite his supposed defrocking, also maintained access to schoolchildren and held leadership roles as recently as 2018 in the Knights of Columbus.
Following a new wave of publicity — in which Brignac told a reporter he had touched boys but never for “immoral purposes” — Brignac was indicted last month on a rape charge that could land him behind bars for the rest of his life. The prosecution came more than a year after a former altar boy told police that Brignac repeatedly raped him beginning in the late 1970s. Police said the abuse began when the boy was 7 and continued until he was 11.
The archdiocese, meanwhile, has settled several lawsuits against Brignac and included the former deacon in the list of more than 50 names it released in late 2018 of “credibly accused” clergy.
A lawyer for the archdiocese said earlier this month that the plaintiffs’ attorneys seeking the release of the Saints emails were engaged in a “proverbial witch hunt with respect to decades-old abuse.”
The attorney, E. Dirk Wegmann, told the special master that the plaintiffs only want the Saints emails released so they can give them to the media and “unfairly try to tar and feather the archdiocese.”
The National Football League, which was advised of the matter by plaintiffs’ attorneys because the Saints’ emails used the team’s nfl.com domain, has not commented on the case. NFL policy says everyone who is a part of the league must refrain from “conduct detrimental to the integrity of and public confidence in” the NFL.
Full 2020 NBA All-Star starter voting, from LeBron James to Jeff Green
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LeBron James and Jeff Green were on opposite ends of the spectrum while Cavaliers teammates.
Now, they’re on opposite ends of 2020 NBA All-Star starter voting.
LeBron James (Western Conference frontcourt), Giannis Antetokounmpo (Eastern Conference frontcourt) and Luka Doncic (Western Conference guards) each led their categories in all three voting segments – fans, players and media. LeBron claims the overall crown with the most fan votes.
On the flip side, Green got no player votes, no media votes and just 219 fan votes. Presumably, the Jazz waiving Green last month halted his votes, but that put him last on the complete All-Star starter voting list.
The big winners were the actual All-Star starters:
- Trae Young
- Kemba Walker
- Giannis Antetokounmpo
- Joel Embiid
- Pascal Siakam
- Luka Doncic
- James Harden
- LeBron James
- Anthony Davis
- Kawhi Leonard
But now you can see how everyone stacked up with the NBA’s formula – which sums double a player’s rank in fan voting, his rank in player voting and his rank in media voting then divides by four for a “score.” Fan vote serves as tiebreaker.
Here’s every player’s rank in each category (total votes), sorted by score:
Eastern Conference guards
Eastern Conference frontcourt
Western Conference guards
Western Conference frontcourt