NBA Conference Finals Set

With the Boston Celtics’ dramatic game 7 victory over upstart 8-seed Philadelphia on Saturday, the stage is set for both conference finals series in the NBA playoffs.

Kevin Durant of the Oklahoma City Thunder | Keith Allison (flickr)

In the East, Boston will face off against LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, and the Miami Heat in a rematch of last season’s Eastern semifinals, a series that Miami took 4-1 after Boston point guard Rajon Rondo dislocated his elbow. The Heat easily dispatched the New York Knicks in round one, and then faced an up-and-coming Indiana Pacers team in a round two series characterized by hard fouls, chippy play, and multiple suspensions. The Heat won in six (after struggling early and going down 2-1), but they remain without their third star, power forward Chris Bosh, out indefinitely with an abdominal strain. James and Wade will have to take on an even larger scoring burden than usual.

The Celtics, meanwhile, are in the midst of another improbably postseason run, sustained largely by the transcendent play of Rondo and the 33-year-old Kevin Garnett. The Cs are contending with a bevy of injuries of their own, with two of the members of their hall-of-fame Big Three hobbled by injuries—Paul Pierce is playing with a sprained MCL, and Ray Allen is battling bone spurs in his ankles. The Celtics also lost starting 2-guard Avery Bradley, a second-year guard who emerged this year as one of the best perimeter defenders in the NBA, to season-ending shoulder surgery during the Philadelphia series. Bradley’s absence leaves their bench woefully thin, and means their options for checking Wade start with the near-crippled Allen and end with offensive nonentity Mickael Pietrus.

Miami has the upper hand in this series, but if Boston can slow James or Wade down they have a chance, albeit a slim one. The x-factor is Rondo-he had a triple-double and destroyed the 76ers down the stretch of game 7, and point guard is one position the Heat have trouble containing.

Out West, the conference finals matches up two franchises that are models of success: the San Antonio Spurs and Oklahoma City Thunder. The Spurs, led by a rejuvenated Tim Duncan and a playing-out-of-his-mind Tony Parker, have been the best team in the league for half the season and have yet to lose in the playoffs. The Thunder have been nearly as good, sweeping the defending champion Dallas Mavericks and only dropping one game in the second round to the Los Angeles Lakers.

Neither team has really been tested yet these playoffs, but the Spurs have won eight of the last ten meetings between the two teams, and have the clear advantage of experience, coaching, and a remarkably adaptable offensive system that sniffs out opponents weaknesses and attacks them relentlessly. Still, the Thunder have three young stars in Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook, and James Harden who are capable of exploding at any time, and the team with the second-best record in the league can’t be counted out just yet. The matchup to watch will be Parker versus Westbrook, which has gone decidedly in the Spurs’ favor this season.

There are lots of compelling storylines in play for the Finals: a potential meeting between Durant and James, who are often held up in contrast to each other (Durant the choirboy, James the villain); the possibility of James, the best player in the world for about 5 years now, finally breaking through and winning a title, potentially in a rematch with the Spurs, who eviscerated his Cavaliers the one time he made the Finals with Cleveland; a contest between two proud, aging teams in Boston and San Antonio, and two of the greatest power forwards of all time in Duncan and Garnett (not to mention Duncan’s personal animosity, brought about by Garnett’s history of baiting and “weird trash talk,” according to a rare interview with Sports Illustrated).

The playoffs have had relatively little drama so far, outside of the bevy of injuries in the Eastern Conference—but with luck, that’s about to change.

Syracuse C Fab Melo Ruled Ineligible for NCAA Tournament

Fab Melo, Syracuse University’s starting center and the reigning Big East Defensive Player of the Year, has been ruled ineligible for the NCAA men’s basketball tournament.

The university released a statement Tuesday, saying:

Syracuse University sophomore men’s basketball center Fab Melo did not travel with the team to Pittsburgh, and will not take part in the NCAA Tournament due to an eligibility issue. Given University policy and federal student privacy laws, no further details can be provided at this time.

Melo previously missed three games in January, reportedly due to academic ineligibility. The Orange were 2-1 during that stretch, suffering its first loss of the season to Notre Dame and falling from the top ranking in the nation, which it had held for six consecutive weeks. Syracuse struggled at both ends of the court, and even once Melo returned to the lineup failed to return to early-season form.

According to an ESPN report, this suspension is related to Melo’s earlier ineligibility. ”He was initially cleared after the first suspension but the NCAA has since revisited the case and deemed him ineligible again,” a source told the network.

The center’s absence is a huge blow to the Orange’s title hopes. The No. 1 seed in the East region, and the No. 2 seed overall behind Kentucky, Syracuse finished the season 31-2, its most recent game a loss to Cincinnati in the semifinals of the Big East tournament.

While Kentucky is the heavy favorite to win the tournament, the Orange were one of several teams considered to have a realistic shot.

In an eerie parallel, the last time Syracuse went into the NCAA tournament as a 1 seed, in 2010, its title hopes were dashed by an injury to starting center Arinze Onuaku. That undermanned Orange squad lost to 5th-seeded Butler in the round of sixteen.

It has been a turbulent season for the Orange. In November, the university fired longtime assistant basketball coach Bernie Fine after allegations that he sexually abused two ball boys. A federal investigation is still ongoing, though no charges have been filed. More recently, a Yahoo! Sports investigation alleged that multiple violations of the university’s internal drug policy had been overlooked in the past decade, and that athletes who should have been ineligible nonetheless played in games. The university said it was aware of the violations and had self-reported them to the NCAA.

Syracuse opens the tournament against 16-ranked UNC-Asheville in Pittsburgh on Thursday.

Conservative Provocateur Andrew Breitbart Dies At Age 43

Outsized, controversial conservative personality Andrew Breitbart died suddenly early Thursday morning at age 43 in Los Angeles, CA, of natural causes.

Andrew Breitbart | Gage Skidmore (Flickr) | CC

Breitbart was an innovator in the realm of web-based news and politics, and did much to shape the online political sphere since the early 1990s. He was the first protege of the reclusive Matt Drudge, publisher of The Drudge Report, a news aggregation service that holds an outsized influence over the news media and the shape of political discourse.

Eventually, Breitbart left The Drudge Report to start his own network of websites, including his own aggregator, Breitbart.com, and the ‘Big’ network.

He also helped Arianna Huffington develop the Huffington Post, now one of the most influential news websites in the world.

In recent years, Breitbart thrust himself into the public eye with a series of controversial actions.

In 2009, Breitbert used his Big Government website to air footage that purported to show his protege, James O’Keefe, and a woman posing as a prostitute seeking advice from an ACORN employee about how to avoid prostitution laws. The video appeared to show the employee providing advice; further investigation determined that the video had been selectively edited, and that the answers provided were largely required by law.

However, ACORN, a community organizing group that had long been accused by conservatives of perpetrating voter fraud, was eventually forced to shut down because of the controversy. Breitbart defended the video, and O’Keefe.

Similar controversy sprang up in 2010 when Breitbart released another selectively edited video, this one apparently showing USDA official Shirley Sherrod speaking at an NAACP event about instances in which she had discriminated against white farmers. As it turned out, her remarks were taken out of context, but she was forced to resign her position and ultimately sued Breitbart for defamation.

Breitbart also brought about New York representative Anthony Weiner’s resignation from Congress when his Big Journalism site posted a lewd picture that Weiner had sent to a follower on Twitter.

His confrontational, grandstanding style and frequent disregard for ethics won him few friends on either side of the aisle. He alienated conservatives with his involvement with gay republican organization GOProud.

His death shocked the political blogosphere, as his peers, friends and enemies, sought to put his life and death into perspective, and, in particular, tried to separate the person that he was from his actions in the public sphere.

“[T]he one thing you can say about Andrew is that he had fewer boundaries than others,” Andrew Sullivan, the Daily Beast’s high-profile, independent-minded political blogger, wrote on Thursday. ”The fight was everything. He felt. His anger was not feigned.”

Breitbart is survived by his wife and four children.

Apple announces OSX Mountain Lion

Apple announced the newest update to their OS X operating system Thursday, February 16. Mountain Lion, OS X version 10.8, is the first update since version 10.7, Lion, was released on July 20, 2011.

Mountain Lion contains some radical departures from previous builds of OS X. Notably, it is deeply integrated with online social media services such as Twitter, Flickr, and Vimeo. Twitter is especially prominent. Virtually anything can be instantly tweeted, but sharing images and videos through other services is easy as well. While the OS is integrated with the struggling Google+ social network, integration with Facebook is noticeably absent. Apple has in the past announced partnerships with Facebook, but nothing extensive has ever come about. Given that Facebook also functions as an app platform, it seems likely that Apple doesn’t want to partner too closely with a direct competitor, even one that dominates the social networking landscape.

While the new OS doesn’t unify all of Apple’s various mobile and desktop devices, as was rumored it might do, it does bring them all closer together. Mountain Lion is much more thoroughly synced with iCloud, a service that allows users to store files on a remote server and access them from any device, eliminating the need to keep track of what’s on which device. Apple’s IM service, iChat, has been scrapped and replaced by iMessage, which is capable of instant messaging but also sending text messages directly from the desktop to an iPhone or iPad. The OS also encourages the use of apps, as well as improved app security, and many other mobile features such as the iOS Game Center and Reminders have their own desktop version now.

Visually, Mountain Lion has received some tweaks from previous builds. Bouncing icons in the Dock have been replaced by a system of notifications that spring up on the right side of the screen. The OS also supports AirPlay systems, including AppleTV, allowing streaming from the desktop to HDTV screens.

All in all, this is radical shift for OS X, bringing the Mac desktop experience much more in line with the iOS experience of the iPhone and iPad. It’s still a distinct experience, but the changes are ones that Apple users will undoubtedly welcome.