By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
PACIFIC PALISADES, Calif. — He said he was delighted to be in the same final grouping as Rory McIlroy, who just had moved atop the world golf rankings. This way, Adam Scott told us, he would, “see how I stack up.”
Copyright 2020, The Maven
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
Copyright 2020, The Maven
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
PACIFIC PALISADES, Calif. — Bill Veeck was a promoter. He also owned different baseball teams, the St. Louis Browns (who were to become the Baltimore Orioles), the Cleveland Indians and the Chicago White Sox. He understood sports and the public’s acceptance or rejection.
Copyright 2020, The Maven
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
PACIFIC PALISADES, Calif. — He was 2-under-par after one hole. An eagle 3 to open, an auspicious beginning. But you on know the sporting cliché. It’s not so much how you start, it’s how you finish.
Copyright 2020, The Maven
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
PACIFIC PALISADES, Calif. — What’s not to like? Rory McIlroy asked the question, and indirectly he provided the answer. Which, of course, is “Nothing.”
Copyright 2020, The Maven
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
PACIFIC PALISADES, Calif. — It used to be Bing Crosby. Then Bob Hope. But is there a singular figure from the dozens of 21st-century entertainers and sporting heroes both famous enough and connected to the game to host his own golf tournament?
Copyright 2020, The Maven
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. — For a moment there, when he was 3-under-par on the first six holes, it seemed Phil Mickelson, back on the course he loves, was going to show us again it didn’t matter how old he was or how few fairways he hit — that it was magic time once more.
Copyright 2020, The Maven
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
PEBBLE BEACH, Calif.--You know the line, that in golf it ain’t how, it’s how many, that what matters is the score not how you got it. Except the way Phil Mickelson plays golf.
Copyright 2020, The Maven
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. — It was Jason Day’s darkest hour. He was in pain. He was in doubt. Nothing is more important to any athlete in any sport than his body.
Copyright 2020, The Maven
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. — He finished strong, a birdie on 17. Sure, Jordan Spieth after a 2-under 70 is a mile out of the lead. But he played a much tougher course, Spyglass Hill, than the guy, Nick Taylor, who shot a 63 at Monterey Peninsula.
Copyright 2020, The Maven
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. — For years, golf was not a game for left-handers. In part because left-handed clubs were as rare as snow on the Monterey Peninsula.
Copyright 2020, The Maven
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
MIAMI — This is what the great ones do. They win a game that could have been lost, maybe should have been lost. The 49ers and their fans know all about it. They watched Joe Montana and Steve Young do it for them in the good old days.
Copyright 2020, The Maven
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
MIAMI — Jimmy G made the ultimate observation: “We know why we’re here.” He and everyone else.
Copyright 2020, The Maven
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
MIAMI — Our major sporting events are both a blessing and a curse. We choose to remember the victories. We can’t forget the losses.
For Kyle Shanahan, one defeat in particular stands out. So does one play.
Copyright 2020, The Maven
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
MIAMI — This time Richard Sherman had the stage to himself, as if it ever seems to matter. He’s one of a kind, a man who can talk a great game and play an even greater one, who went from the tough streets of Compton to the campus of elite Stanford and then to star in pro football.
Copyright 2020, The Maven
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
MIAMI — Jimmy Garoppolo understands, which in the game of football is no less a measure of his position than an ability to perform.
Copyright 2020 The Maven
By Art Spander
MIAMI — Of course there was a question about the backpack. But by Deion Sanders.
Who better to exploit the silliness and salesmanship of the Super Bowl’s media function — relabled Opening Night — than a man who played in the game and now works for the NFL Network, Deion Sanders, old Prime Time himself?
Either Deion has been out of touch or the guys behind the telecast goaded him into asking Kyle Shanahan about the incident, but there was Deion standing next to Shanahan. Network types get individual access, which ordinary journalists do not.
So there is Sanders, who helped the 49ers win Super Bowl XXIX, right where No. LIV will be played Sunday — it’s now called Hard Rock Stadium, formerly Joe Robbie Stadium.
Let’s just say Deion was more impressive with a football in his hands than a microphone. But that doesn’t seem to matter.
Opening Night (sounds like an opera, not a media show) on Monday was at Marlins Park, the baseball stadium, appropriate perhaps because the one that was held three years ago, prior to Super Bowl LI, was at Minute Maid Park, where the Astros play home games.
Shanahan was offensive coordinator for the Atlanta Falcons, who would blow a big lead and lose to New England. But more significantly everyone knew he was about to be named the Niners' new coach.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one, but I came late, put down my backpack with my laptop and joined the group around Shanahan. Then, I picked up my backpack and went to write. Only, when someone tracked me down, it wasn’t my backpack, it was Shanahan’s.
Hey, it was dark and both packs were green. Both of us ended up with the proper backpacks. We’re three years on. But Shanahan has returned to a Super Bowl.
After Shanahan on Monday night tells Sanders there will be a different approach to this Super Bowl than the one three years ago, Deion casually mentions the backpack.
“I was pretty upset,” said Shanahan. “One minute I have it, the next minute it’s gone.” He wasn’t worried about the Patriots learning his game plan — “That was on an iPad and could be deleted” — but about the $15,000 in tickets he had acquired an hour earlier.
I never opened the pack. But I opened a wound. The story became huge. It’s still large. When half-jokingly a week ago, I asked Shanahan if for nostalgia’s sake he would bring the backpack to this Super Bowl, he said, “If I do, I’m going to keep it locked up to my arm so you can’t get it.”
Sanders, as if he had been on the moon, asked, “Wasn’t there an incident with a backpack? “
“Someone picked it up,” said the coach, cleverly using no names.
The issue now is not the backpack but quarterbacks and running backs. Can the Niners move the ball with the effectiveness they did against Green Bay in the NFC Championship game? San Francisco did it almost entirely on the ground.
Pack that up.
SANTA CLARA,Calif. — And so they are back, if not to the top of the mountain, then at least close enough, to once more be a part of the NFL elite, a team and a franchise that, through reputation and resilience, is nothing less than a champion.
The journey for the 49ers was at times confusing and at other times disappointing as they lost games and, a few years ago, seemingly lost their way.
But a young quarterback, a young coach and a relatively young general manager helped restore the greatness.
They remain one brick short of a load, another Super Bowl victory to go with the five wins that made them the team of the '80s. The opportunity for that was achieved Sunday in the NFC Championship game at Levi’s Stadium, where a boisterous crowd made it a home field in more than just name. The Niners, aggressive, obsessive, overwhelming, built up a 27-0 halftime lead and whipped the Green Bay Packers, 37-20.
They still have one more step to go, and a tough one it will be against a Chiefs team that stomped the Tennessee Titans, 35-24, in the AFC title game. Yet considering how the Niners got to where they are, logic and forecasts are best ignored.
Everything was going south until Kyle Shanahan was hired from Atlanta to be head coach and John Lynch, a onetime All-Pro defensive back left broadcasting to join him as GM. Then the Niners traded for Jimmy Garoppolo, who was backing up Tom Brady with the Patriots.
In 2017, the first year of the new regime, the Niners lost their first nine games. In 2018 they were 4-12, when in the third game Garoppolo was lost for the season with an injury.
But in 2019, with the QB returning, with a rookie defensive end named Nick Bosa and with a determination to play knock-'em-down football, the Niners turned back the clock and now boast a 15-3 record for the season.
If there’s one person who would seem to represent the 49ers perserverance, it is running back Raheem Mostert. He was not drafted, then from 2015 to 2016 was with five different teams.
On Sunday, needing to replace the ailing Tevin Coleman, he set an NFL record by becoming the first player ever to rush for at least 200 yards (he had 220) and score four touchdowns in a playoff game.
“I never gave up,” said Mostert, who grew up in Florida — where Super Bowl LIV will be held on February 2 — and then went north to play at Purdue. In the pros, he bounced between the Dolphins, Ravens, Browns, Jets and Bears in a year and a half.
Then, fortunately for both, came the 49ers.
“It’s hard to believe after all this I’m not only going to the Super Bowl," Mostert said, “but it is in my home state.”
The Niners, as they did in the divisional win over Minnesota, just kept running the ball. They had 42 rushes compared to only eight passes. Stone Age football, perhaps, but obviously successful football.
Said Niners receiver Debo Samuels of Mostert, “Man, it was crazy. It seemed like every run that he did, he was about to score. I was just out there going crazy.”
While Mostert, who carried 29 times and averaged 7.6 yards a run, was going wild.
”I did have a lot of doubters and naysayers,” said Mostert. “But this is surreal. I can’t believe I’m in the position I’m in and did the things I did tonight. The journey’s been crazy.”
For Shanahan, it’s been the result of hard work. “These guys are a bunch of fighters,” he said of his team’s intensity.
Then, considering Mostert, he could have added, “and runners.”
By Art Spander
SAN FRANCISCO — They did what they could, what they were capable of, which pleased their coach, Steve Kerr, if not the fans. It was another loss for the Warriors, the 10th in a row, their longest winless streak in 17 years.
And yet not just another loss.
This season is going nowhere. We knew it the night Steph Curry broke his hand, the fourth game of the schedule, against Phoenix here at Chase Center. And we know it now, two and a half months later.
You can’t lose your stars, in a league where stars control the game, and not expect to lose games.
After that, with Kevin Durant gone and with Klay Thompson in rehab, the question was what the kids on the court could do, the young kids like Eric Paschall and Jordan Poole, the older kids like Willie Cauley-Stein and D’Angelo Russell.
They could stumble and bumble and look awful, as they did a couple of nights back against Dallas. Or they could perform as well as possible against a team acknowledgably superior, take the lead, be there at the end and then fail in overtime, as the Dubs did, 134-131, on Thursday night against Denver.
It’s a familiar story, if a sad one. The other team is better, and even though the Nuggets were without key players, Jamal Murray and Paul Millsap, even though they had played the previous night, even though they trailed by 19 points in the first quarter, they won.
A year ago, two, three, four, five years ago, the Warriors would have won. But this is now. This isn’t then. And Kerr seemed less concerned with the defeat — hey, they have the worst winning percentage in the NBA — then the undeniable fact his team was wonderfully competitive.
“I thought our guys were great tonight,” said Warriors coach Steve Kerr. They were.
Not great, compared to the Warriors who had the Splash Brothers, who had the settling influences of Andre Iguodala and Shaun Livingston, who had the unstoppable Durant and the fiery Draymond Green.
But great for what they provided.
Great for giving the Warriors insight to what they can do — and what they can’t.
The Nuggets came in with a 28-12 record, the Warriors 9-33. What happened was hardly a surprise. Denver outscored the Warriors by 12 points, 40-28, in the fourth quarter. Good teams find a way. So do teams that aren’t good.
“They were going to (Nikola) Jokic, who might be the best center in the league,” said Kerr. Jokic had 23 points, 10 in the fourth quarter, 12 rebounds and two blocked shots.
“One of the best offensive teams in the league,” Kerr said of Denver, “and they are a tough team to guard. So the key in the fourth quarter, any time you are trying to close the game, you want to execute and not turn the ball over. We had a couple of turnovers that really hurt us.”
A couple turnovers that maybe don't happen with more experience and a teammate or two, in addition to Draymond Green, who will seem less flustered when under pressure.
“Defensively,” said Kerr, “we battled, and we were trying. But (Denver) got going. They are capable of doing that. I’m proud of our guys. I feel bad for them because they played well enough to win and just couldn’t do it.”
There’s a painful reminder of the Warriors of years past. They would take the lead, hang in and then fade.
“I mean 18 turnovers didn’t help,” said Damion Lee, “and their shooters got going. Of course we could have played better, but you’ve got to give them credit.”
Lee, who had been on one of those stressful two-way contracts (up and back between San Francisco and Santa Cruz), was playing his first game after signing a three-year contract with the Warriors. He had 21 points (Alec Burks led the Dubs with 25) and six assists, one of which enabled Eric Paschall to score with two seconds left in regulation.
“The ball tends to find energy,” said Lee. “As long as everybody’s touching it, make the easy play and get back on defense.”
This season, no play is easy for the Warriors.
SANTA CLARA, Calif.—The Warriors, always the Warriors. Inevitably the Warriors. They have become the Golden State standard of sporting success in Northern Cal.
Even in a year they’re not successful. Even for the man whose current team held that exalted position as king of the Nob Hill --and may once again, Kyle Shanahan of the 49ers.
Wednesday, four days away from undeniably the biggest game of Shanahan’s brief career as an NFL head coach.
The NFC Championship figuratively on the table as the familiar helmets of the competing teams, the 49ers and Green Bay Packers literally were on a small table adjacent to where Shanahan and others spoke.
“A dog and pony show, Shanahan called the display.
There are numerous subplots to this game, albeit none involving dogs or ponies.
Quarterbacking the Packers is Aaron Rodgers, the Cal kid, who when San Francisco held the No, 1 pick in the 2005 draft the Niners could have taken—should have taken.
Shanahan has the opportunity to reach the Super Bowl his third year as a Niners coach, the way Bill Walsh the season of 1981 did his third year as Niners coach.
The Niners started 0-9 in Shanahan’s first year; they went 2-14 Walsh’s first year, 981
Joe Montana, a third-round pick became the star of those 1980s champion Niners; Jimmy Garoppolo was a second-round pick by New England, where he was supposed to be the next Tom Brady. Instead he has the chance to be the next Montana.
And as Shanahan mentioned do not forget the Warriors, who were in the NBA finals the previous five years and captured the hearts of Bay Area fans—including the heart of Kyle Shanahan.
‘I have always been a fan of theirs, even before I got here,” said Shanahan who arrived in February 2017, well into Dubs’ half-decade of dominance.
“Just watching how they play, I remember saying in Atlanta (he was the Falcons offensive coordinator) I wanted our receiver group to be similar to the Warriors to where who knows who the starter is; they can all play; Andre Iguodala, things like that. He wasn’t a starter, and he’s the NBA championship MVP.”
If the sports aren’t comparable, pro football being more specialized, Shanahan’s thinking is understood. He wants athletes who are more concerned with the team’s success than their own.
“”You’ve got a defensive player,” Shanahan said of Iguodala. “Guys who seem really not to care how it gets done.”
Niners players tell you Garoppolo fits the template. His last game, he barely threw the ball, San Francisco running 47 times in the divisional win over Minnesota.
“As long as we win,” Garoppolo affirmed. “I’m pretty happy when we win.”
He’s been quite happy of late, and in command, part of a group Shanahan insists is as mature as any he’s been around, respectful of teammates, attentive to coaches.
Veteran tackle Joe Staley said the team has a different vibe. There are no factions, no finger-pointing. Instead of looking for blame, said Shanahan, the players have looked for ways to improve. “You got the right guys,” said Shanahan, “they won’t stop working.”
The Niners had the right guys in the 1980s and early ‘90s, Montana, Dwight Clark, Ronnie Lott, Roger Craig, Steve Young, Jerry Rice, and even though he was young—born in 1979—Shanahan knows the history. His dad was a Niners assistant coach in ’94.
“I think being around, even at a young age, I knew how special the Super Bowl was,” said Shanahan “I think people of my generation, when they think of teams, big-time teams, it was the Niners, the Cowboys. You’ve got baseball; you got the Yankees and the Red Sox. Growing up for me in basketball (he was from Chicago) it was always the Bulls.
“We knew we had to build this team up and get back. But we knew how good the organization is.”
Is it good enough to get the Niners where they used to be--or where the Warriors were? We’ll learn quickly enough.