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30-for-30

Daily Sports: Matt Harvey & A Couple Old Rivalries On Wednesday

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The New York Mets haven’t been in shouting distance of contention this year, but 24-year-old starting pitcher Matt Harvey has electrified baseball, with a 7-1 start and 2.00 ERA that has marked him as a frontrunner for the Cy Young Award.

Could Harvey follow up R.A. Dickey who won the award with the Mets last year? If you haven’t had a chance to see Harvey pitch, then tonight is your chance, as he goes up against the Arizona Diamondbacks from Citi Field. ESPN has the coverage starting at 7 PM ET.

Great rivalries of the 1980s are a theme in a couple of documentaries that will supplement the daily sports lineup. At a time when Wimbledon is being marked by the losses of star players and heading to a non-marquee final weekend, it’s a good time to look back on the days when Chris Evert Lloyd and Martina Navratilova owned the women’s game. That’s the focus of 30-for-30 on ESPN 2 at 9 PM ET.


And speaking of 1980s rivalries was there a bigger one than Magic Johnson and Larry Bird in the NBA? They got it started in college, at the 1979 Final Four, and then picked it up anew in their first postseason meeting as pros in the 1984 NBA Finals. At 6 PM ET, a two-hour show on the rivalry that saved the league will air on NBA-TV.

Here at TheSportsNotebook, we’ll talk AL West baseball later on today. Previous MLB coverage this week has looked at the Minnesota Twins and the Miami Marlins. Yesterday’s look at the Marlins examined both who they might trade later this month, as well as their odds of beating their Over/Under win number from the preseason, which is 63.5.

TV Daily Sports: Len Bias & Fab Five Documentaries Tonight

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There’s good baseball on TV, and the NBA draft yesterday needs to be rehashed, but the most compelling television on Friday night’s daily sports docket lies in a couple documentaries on college sports.

ESPNU will show 30-for-30 episode on the tragic death of Len Bias back in 1986. For those that might be too young and haven’t heard of the tragedy, Bias was the second player picked in ’86 draft. The star from Maryland was considered a can’t-miss player and had been landed by the just-crowned Boston Celtics.

Instead, Bias celebrated his selection by going to a cocaine party and ending up with a drug-induced heart attack. The one-hour long 30-for-30 looks back at everything that transpired.


Then at 9 PM ET, it’s a three-hour documentary on the “Fab Five”, the group of Michigan freshmen who showed up in campus and captured the imagination of college basketball. They never captured a Big Ten title, but knew how to turn it on in March, reaching the NCAA final two consecutive years before the best of the group—Chris Webber, who had his best NBA years with the Sacramento Kings—went pro. Jalen Rose went on to a good career with the Indiana Pacers a year later, and is now on the ABC/ESPN studio team for the NBA.

For those more interested in the contemporary NBA, there will be draft reviews on NBA-TV, starting at 7 PM ET. The league’s network will give one hour to reviewing the Eastern Conference and another hour to the Western Conference. I was glad to see Cleveland pick UNLV forward Anthony Bennett. It wasn’t Bennett per se—I’d have been just as happy to see the Cavs go for Victor Oladipo, Trey Burke, Otto Porter or any number of the solid prospects that were out there. But I thought it spoke well of Cleveland’s judgment that they didn’t force a pick on a risky Nerlens Noel or an overrated Alex Len.

And for baseball, MLB Network will show the opener of a good Cincinnati-Texas series tonight at 8 PM ET. MLB coverage has been going daily here at TheSportsNotebook this week, including yesterday’s feature on the Boston Red Sox. Today we’ll go in another direction and talk about the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, as racing resumes on Saturday night.

Daily Sports: Detroit-Chicago Keys Monday Night TV

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It’s a night off in the NBA playoffs tonight, as Memphis-San Antonio resume their Western Conference Finals matchup on Tuesday, and Miami-Indiana don’t start in the East until Wednesday. That allows the NHL to be the focal point of the daily sports menu on Monday.

The Chicago-Detroit series goes to Motown with the series tied 1-1 and the folks in the Windy City undoubtedly feeling a bit nervous—they are the heavy favorite, but Detroit’s a got a history and it’s not one that makes Chicago fans comfortable. Game time is 7:30 PM ET on the NBC Sports Network.

ESPN has Monday Night baseball and a key series starts in the AL East, with the New York Yankees in Baltimore to play the Orioles. The Birds are slumping, having lost three straight to Tampa at home over the weekend and need to plant their feet and win this series at home. Baltimore has even picked up veteran Freddy Garcia to help their rotation and he’ll pitch tonight against C.C. Sabathia. The game starts at 7 PM ET.

Two other series openers to keep an eye on would be Oakland-Texas and Washington-San Francisco. The A’s have to prevent the Rangers from running away and hiding from the rest of the AL West, and the Nats-Giants series is a possible NLCS preview between two teams with great pitching. On a completely off-the-wall note is it possible that these two cities could have their teams meet in both the NLCS and the NFC Championship Game?

Which provides a segueway into football and a fun historical feature tonight on the NFL Network. The epic 1981 NFC Championship Game between the San Francisco 49ers and Dallas Cowboys—where Joe Montana started to write the NFL version of his legend—will be shown at 8 PM ET. And on ESPN2, a 30-for-30 feature will look at the 2004 ALCS and the Boston Red Sox historic comeback against the New York Yankees.

TheSportsNotebook will have NHL analysis later this morning, as we overview all four second-round series. Also be sure and check the conference finals previews that were the NBA commentary here yesterday, and take a look at MLB coverage, something that we’ll give a double dose to this week, with All-Star ballots being added to the normal team features run here.