Page 25 - Florida Sentinel 2-10-17

Sports
California High School Sophomore Scores 92 Points In Game
LaMelo Ball, the youngest of 3 basketball Ball brothers scored 92 points Tuesday night.
Tony Dungy On
Patriots Devin McCourty And
Accusations Of
Martellus Bennett Won't
Stealing Signals:
Visit Trump White House
'That's All Part Of
The Game'
New England Pa-
triots players and
Super Bowl champi-
ons Devin Mc- Courty and Martellus Bennett
have both indepen-
dently said that they
won’t attend the
team’s ceremonial
visit to the White
House to celebrate their title with President Donald Trump.
Bennett spoke of his plans Sunday night after the Patri- ots’ victory:
The thoughts of Patriots owner Bob Kraft, a longtime friend of Trump, wouldn’t really matter for a few rea- sons, but one of them includes the fact that Bennett will be an unrestricted free agent this offseason.
McCourty, a team cap- tain, told Time magazine Monday that he wouldn’t go:
“I’m not going to the White House,” McCourty wrote in a text message to TIME from the team bus. “Basic reason for me is I don’t feel accepted in the White House. With the president having so many strong opinions and preju-
High school basketball player LaMelo Ball, last seen calling his shot from half court, scored 92 points Tuesday night.
Ball is the youngest brother of UCLA star Lonzo Ball, and he’s currently a high school sophomore at Chino Hills HS (Ca).
Chino Hills had a 60- game winning streak going
until they lost on Sunday to Oak Hill, and Ball took it out on poor Los Osos High Tuesday.
Middle Ball brother, LiAngelo, a UCLA-bound senior, sat out with an ankle injury and it was open sea- son for LaMelo.
He took 61 shots Tuesday night, and scored 92 despite only hitting seven threes.
TONY DUNGY
Tony Dungy said the
Colts never cheated during his years as coach of the team after Hall of Fame corner- back Deion Sanders ac- cused Indianapolis of doing so.
Sanders, an analyst for NFL Network, made the comments after Sunday's Super Bowl about the Colts cheating when colleague LaDainian Tomlinson said some might question New England's success be- cause of Spygate, the 2007 incident in which the Patriots broke the rules by videotap- ing the opposition's signals from an unauthorized loca- tion.
"Those same critics, did they say anything about the wins that the Indianapolis Colts had? You want to talk about that, too? Because they were getting everybody's sig- nals," Sanders said on NFL Network. "Come on, you don't walk up to the line and look over here and the man on the sideline giving you the defense that they've stolen the plays of. We all knew. LT knew. Everybody in the NFL knew. We just didn't let the fans know. That was real and that was happening in Indy."
Dungy was on "Pro Foot- ball Talk Live" on Wednes- day to explain that the Colts, like all other teams, did steal signals, but never cheated.
"I think we have to go back to what is cheating," Dungy said. "People accusing us of cheating? I don't think that's the case. Stealing signals? You can go back to the 1800s in baseball, you can go any- where there were signals done, and people were look- ing and watching and trying to get signals."
DEVIN MCCOURTY AND MARTELLUS BENNETT
dices I believe certain people might feel accepted there while others won’t.”
McCourty said he be- lieved attending the event is a personal choice and “I can’t imagine a way I go there.”
It’s not exactly shocking that Bennett and McCourty were the guys in New England to reach this decision. In the Patriots’ first game of the reg- ular season, both players raised their fists after the na- tional anthem.
The two players appear willing to own their decision, unlike Tom Brady, who two years ago claimed a “prior family commitment” when he skipped the Patriots’ White House visit with Barack Obama, and instead spent his day working out and shop- ping at the Apple Store.
‘His & Hers’ Anchors Take Over Of SportsCenter’s 6 P.M. Slot Is Historic
Jemele Hill and Michael Smith, anchors of sports show His & Hers are now SportsCenter anchors.
Twitter Reminds Critics That New
England Patriots' Tom Brady
Skipped Obama White House Visit
Even if you aren’t the biggest sports fan, you may have heard of Michael Smith and Jemele Hill. His & Hers, which began as a podcast conceived and hosted by Smith and Hill, proved so popular that in 2014 it replaced the ESPN2 show Numbers Never Lie, which Smith began co-host- ing with Charissa Thomp- son in 2011.
And while Hill and Smith have individual sports acu- men that is undeniable, it’s hard to ignore that their sta- tus as a male-female duo makes them all the more for- midable.
Even as sports broadcast- ing has actively beefed up its female ranks, the relation- ship that Hill and Smith enjoy is extremely rare. And now ESPN is rewarding that uniqueness with its ultimate prize: the 6 p.m. SportsCen- ter slot.
Hill and Smith’s Sports- Center takeover is the first for a Black sports duo. Of course, individual Black SportsCen- ter anchors in the 6 p.m. slot have not been an anomaly.
In the early 1990s, Robin Roberts, who joined ESPN in 1990 and enjoyed a 15-year career there, became the first black woman to co-anchor the coveted SportsCenter slot.
But the transition for Hill and Smith is noteworthy in that they both initially chose print as their primary medium and enjoyed suc- cessful stints at prominent papers like the Detroit Free Press and Orlando Sentinel for Hill and the Boston Globe for Smith, at a time when black sports profes- sionals were much rarer. That shared background, however, is largely responsi- ble for their personal and professional chemistry.
Before New England Patri- ots players Devin McCourty and Martellus Bennett an- nounced they would skip a team visit to the White House, it was star quarterback Tom Brady who actually set the precedent.
In what many are calling the greatest come back in sports history, the dominant New England squad won their fifth franchise Super Bowl on Sunday after defeating the At- lanta Falcons 34-28.
Ties between President Trump and New England franchise owner Robert Kraft, head coach Bill Be- lichick and quarterback Tom Brady -- the prominent Patriots figure heads -- were a prominent storyline in the 2016 NFL season. Alt-right editor Richard Spencer took the connection a step fur- ther on Sunday night in deem- ing the team's victory a win for the "white race."
While many athletes have skipped their respective cele- bratory White House visits with the president, all star quarterback Tom Brady was the first Patriots player to do so when he backed out of White House plans citing a "family commitment."
Brady was seen the day of
TOM BRADY
the White House visit, and ESPN reported that Brady was seen at Gillette Stadium "for a stretch of time" while many in the organization were at the White House.
Less than 24 hours after the 2015 Patriots visit with Pres- ident Obama, Brady was also seen in New York looking at watches.
After speculation rose over Brady's reasoning for ditch- ing face time with President Obama, a Boston Herald col- umn floated the theory that his absence might have been a response to former press sec- retary Josh Earnest's com- ments on the three-time Super Bowl MVP's entangle- ment in Deflategate.
For those now hearing Mc- Courty and Bennett's White House announcements who forgot Brady's move, Twitter was there with the re- minder.
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