Readable, teachable news.
Tuesday, March 19, 2024
March Madness can grip a sports fan from the second week of March through the first week of April.
March Madness is the nickname for the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Men’s Basketball Tournament. (When NCAA is said out loud, people usually say “N C double-A.”)
The tournament determines the national champion of college basketball.
On Feb. 4, The New York Knicks basketball team played the New Jersey Nets at Madison Square Gardens in New York City.
The Nets played hard, but they simply couldn’t beat this Knicks team. There was something special about them… and that was Jeremy Lin.
Jeremy Lin turned heads during that game by scoring 25 points and adding seven assists.
Good numbers for any player, but especially for an undrafted player with only a handful of games under his belt.
But this where the story really gets good.
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.
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.
