標籤: Pitino

On Sunday night, the NBA All-Star Weekend festivities concluded with the game itself, which actually consisted of four 12-minute games as part of a round robin tournament. The young American team won the tournament, defeating a team filled with US veterans as well as international players, with Minnesota Timberwolves guard Anthony Edwards winning the All-Star Game MVP award.

The NBA has changed the All-Star Game format several times over the past few years in an effort to drum up any kind of competitive spirit among the players, and the product appeared to be an improvement on Sunday compared to what we’ve seen before.

However, that didn’t stop St. John’s head coach and basketball icon Rick Pitino from proposing another idea to move the event forward.

“It’s great to see the new format with the All-Star Game. I suggested the NBA do the Ryder Cup with basketball. Starting in Greece and then going back to the states. It would be incredible and even more popular than the Ryder Cup,” he wrote on Twitter.

The NBA implementing its own version of golf’s Ryder Cup would certainly be worth seeing, and would continue the theme of US vs. international players that started this year.

For now, it seems like the league is happy with what we saw from the players on Sunday night, as the game lived up to the billing and produced some entertainment for the fans in attendance at the Intuit Dome in Los Angeles.

Now, the league will move forward into an expanded season, although Adam Silver and company still have a ton of questions to answer, including the rise of artificial intelligence, gambling, and a number of other factors that could have a major impact on the game as we know it.

The basketball world was shocked by the news that Billy Donovan Sr., father of Chicago Bulls head coach Billy Donovan, has died. St. John’s head coach Rick Pitino was one of the first to get the message across, as he is a close friend of the family.

Pitino, formerly of X, wrote on Twitter, “He was no better than Billy Donovan Sr. A special man in every sense of the word. RIP my friend! You’re in heaven already.”

Pitino coached Donovan Jr. when he was a player at Providence and he later joined Pitino’s coaching staff at Kentucky.

Donovan’s father was an important part of his life and supported his basketball dreams at all times. He also used to take her to New York Knicks games when she was a kid.

“These last 15, 16 years for me have been — oh my God! — phenomenal,” Donovan Sr. said in a 2011 story written by GatorZone. “I used to play basketball growing up. When Billy was little, we’d watch games on television and I’d take him to see the Knicks. And now, to be able to be with the team and go to all the games and knowing that Billy wants me to be a part of it, I’m so lucky I can’t even tell you.”

Donovan Sr. played college basketball at Boston College and scored over 1,000 career points.

There’s no doubt that Donovan Sr. played a big role in his son’s life, and he’s still living it up as the Bulls’ coach.

More people will probably send prayers and condolences to the family in the coming days.