I had a lot of things and several different ideas on what I wanted to discuss during my first entry. The first was the 10-lap shootout at the All-Star Race Saturday night at Lowes Motor Speedway. If that aspect of the race is ever suggested to be changed, someone should put a copy of the May 16 event in front of the decision makers immediately. I know many are not Kyle Busch fans, but that guy can flat out drive a car and put it in places where others are afraid to. Some call him cocky, brash, arrogant, but I say if you are backing it up, and he is, I have no problem with his actions. He says and does things many are afraid to. That being said, I was happy to see Tony Stewart win Saturday evening. I have some friends at Stewart-Haas and know how much time and effort they put in week in and week out. This victory hopefully shows them that the moves over to support Tony in is his change, was well worth it.
Julius Peppers......well, I will save that and the other NFL topics (Gruden to MNF) for another week.
This first blog is going to be about, what I perceive to be, two of the largest egos in the world of sports & entertainment today: David Stern and the NBA versus Vince McMahon of the WWE ( formerly the WWF). One week from now on Monday May 25th, Game 4 of the Western Conference Finals is set to begin at 7 PM locally, while Monday Night Raw is set to begin at 6:30. I am pretty sure the Pepsi Center can not handle both events at once.
Reading some of the quotes in this article at ESPN.com offer no real solutions to the issue.
"The Nuggets and the WWE understand that the date of Game 4 of the Western Conference finals cannot be changed," "We are confident that the Pepsi Center and the WWE will resolve their scheduling conflict." - NBA senior vice president Mike Bass.
“Even though the Denver Nuggets had a strong team this year and were projected to make the playoffs, obviously Nuggets and Pepsi Center owner Stan Kroenke did not have enough faith in his own team to hold the May 25 date for a potential playoff game.” - WWE Chairman Vince McMahon.
The WWE appears to be on pretty solid ground here. They sent the Pepsi Center a signed contract on April 25th confirming the May 25th date and have sold over 10,000 tickets to the event. The NBA, which handles all playoff scheduling, is staying out of it for now and asking Nugget officials and the WWE to resolve the issue. I do not think there is an issue from the WWE's point of view, the issue lies with the NBA and the Nuggets. The Nugget officials seem to not have believed in their team and thought this was going to be a revenue-generating night of WWE action. I would have thought that the arena would have a clause in all contracts for issues such as this, but I guess I was wrong. A recent visit to ticketmaster.com shows both events on sale. I am not sure how this will be resolved, but think it could get very interesting this week before being resolved. As with most situations involving major corporations, nothing will be resolved until the legal teams get involved.
I wonder this: If NBC ( which is a partner of the USA Network, where WWE's Monday Night Raw airs) still carried the NBA playoffs, would this work out a little easier ?? The NBA has no vested interest in what is best for NBC or their partners. Want to know who ESPN supports in this matter, go no farther than to the title of the article on ESPN.com about this: WWE losing Pepsi Center on May 25. One guess what network is scheduled to air Game 4???you guessed it ESPN !! The WWE has a contract with USA Network to provide programming each Monday night. The NBA has set the playoffs up to where there is a game every night, rotating Western first, then Eastern. Why not schedule the Eastern first, then the Western, and this entire matter could have been avoided. Anyone who doubts television controls the world of sports, look no farther than this matter.