Author: Gabriel Lee

Kids Sports

Nick Gilbert: What’s Not To Like?

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An unlikely hero helped lift the spirits of Cleveland Cavalier fans last week at the NBA draft lottery.

The draft is when basketball teams choose, or draft, players for the upcoming year. In the draft lottery, which happens every year, the 14 teams that didn’t make the playoffs compete to decide who will get their first overall choice of players. Everyone wants to get first pick so they can choose the best player for their team.

This year Dan Gilbert, owner of the Cavaliers, sent his 14-year-old son Nick, to the lottery to represent the team. He hoped Nick would bring them good luck.

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News Sports

Young Detroit Tiger Pitches His Second
No-Hitter

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Justin Verlander of the Detroit Tigers baseball team made one of the most impressive feats in sports recently. He pitched a “no-hitter” against the Toronto Blue Jays leading his team to a 9-0 victory.

Very few pitchers have ever thrown a no-hitter. It’s very difficult and very rare. But Verlander has now done it twice in his seven seasons playing baseball professionally.

The Milwaukee Brewers were the first victim of Verlander’s no-hitter back on June 12, 2007.

A no-hitter is when a pitcher doesn’t allow any hits from the opposing team’s 27 batters.

A “perfect game” is a pitcher’s ultimate goal, and it’s even better than a no-hitter. In a perfect game, none of the hitters the pitcher threw to reached first base. Verlander nearly pitched a perfect game against the Blue Jays, but he walked Blue Jays’ catcher, J.P. Arencibia right near the end of the game – in the eighth inning.

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Sports

NBA’s Grizzlies Making History For Memphis

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When the Vancouver Grizzlies basketball team moved to Memphis, Tennessee in 2001, not many people expected them to be very successful. However, they’re now making history.

They spent six years in Vancouver, and they didn’t do very well. Every season they lost more games than they won. After doing so poorly, the fan support in the city gradually decreased so the owner, Michael Heisley, decided the team would do better with a change of scenery. He moved them to Memphis, where they are known as the Memphis Grizzlies.

This year there were rumours that the owner of the Vancouver Canucks (the city’s hockey team) wanted to buy the New Orleans Hornets basketball team to bring a basketball team back to Vancouver. However, that seems unlikely now.

The Toronto Raptors are now Canada’s only professional basketball team. The only member of the Vancouver Grizzlies still playing in the NBA is guard Mike Bibby, who plays for the Miami Heat.

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Health Sports

NHL Changes Rules To Make Hockey Safer

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In the National Hockey League (NHL), many players have gotten concussions this year.

A concussion happens when you accidentally hit your head really hard, like when you’re playing sports or running around.

The rate of head injuries has gone up this season. The NHL’s general managers met with Gary Bettman, the commissioner, recently to talk about how they could make hockey safer for the players. Bettman says he believes that as many as a quarter of all hits in hockey are “illegal hits” – in other words, not allowed in hockey.

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Sports

Can The Maple Leafs Make The Playoffs?

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The Toronto Maple Leafs hockey team haven’t been doing very well this year. They started off looking pretty good, but before long they began playing poorly. Soon, they were near the bottom of the NHL’s Eastern Conference standings. At one point, the Leafs were 14 points away from earning a spot in the playoffs, which meant they probably wouldn’t get to play in the playoffs.

But the Leafs have come back. They won seven of their last nine games and they now have a good shot at making the playoffs.

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