Roberto Duran v. Pipino Cuevas
Roberto Duran v. Davey Moore
VS., 5 p.m.
Two crucial fights for the rehabilitation of Duran’s image after the No Mas embarrassment. In successive bouts in 1983, he brutalized the revered Mexican Cuevas and then won his third world title in his third weight class in a war with Davey Moore at the Garden.

Monday Night Raw
USA, 9 p.m.
What is the WWE going to do in the aftermath of McMahon’s demise? Well, there’s only one way to find out…

Today is the 21st anniversary of the 1986 NBA draft, one that is shrouded in retrospective tragedy because of the fate of the second overall pick, Len Bias. A genuine force of nature at Maryland, Bias was thought to be the future superstar who would ensure the continuation of the Celtic dynasty long past the retirement of Larry Legend. Of course, Bias never made it to the court in the green and white – 48 hours after he was drafted, he was dead from a cardiac arrhythmia brought on by a massive amount of cocaine.

Although Bias was the draftee who suffered most dramatically at the hands of the white stuff, two other lottery selections of the ’86 draft also went on to become infamous travelers on the white lines highway. 6’11″ Chris Washburn, drafted third by Golden State after only one full season at N.C. State, remains today one of the biggest busts in the history of the draft. Less than five months after signing a big multi-year contract with the Warriors, Washburn checked himself into drug rehab. His career spanned a total of 72 largely useless games over the course of two seasons.

Michigan’s Roy Tarpley, another 6’11″ can’t-miss low-post stud, was taken seventh in the draft by the Mavericks. He lasted a little longer than Washburn, and had a promising rookie season, but blow took him down hard. He was kicked out of the league in 1991 for violating the drug policy. In 1994 he got another chance, rejoined the Mavericks, and then got the final boot after testing positive for alcohol.

On the whole, the ’86 draft was a bizarre affair, for the drug casualties of course, but also for the fact that not a single bona fide superstar emerged from the first round. Probably, that would have been Bias. But in his absence, the best player taken in the first round turned out to be the first overall pick, Brad Daugherty, who was definitely an elite center in his eight seasons in Cleveland, but never exactly the franchise-defining star the Cavs thought he would be.

Arguably, the best player taken in the entire draft turned out to be a raw, unheralded 6’8″ forward out of basketball powerhouse Southeastern Oklahoma State University. A skinny, strange-looking weirdo truly worthy of being called “The Worm”, it was absolutely impossible to imagine at the time that Madonna, cross-dressing, countless dye jobs and five fingers worth of NBA rings awaited him.
——————————————————-
On Wednesday, June 27th, No Mas is presenting The Lottery here in Manhattan on the eve of the 2007 NBA Draft. Portraits of all the 105 original “lottery picks” (1985 – 1995) will be given away to members of the audience in a one-time-only lottery and art draft. Mark the date, people, because you have to be in it to win it. RSVP: lottery@nomas-nyc.com

On this day in 1975 the Milwaukee Bucks traded away, well, the only reason they ever won one championship, and their only chance of ever winning another one, sending Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Walt Wesley to the Lakers for Elmore Smith, Junior Bridgeman, Brian Winters and Dave Meyers.

Before the Gretzky trade, this was probably the biggest and most ballyhooed trade in sports history. The Tom Seaver and O.J. Simpson deals were equally enormous media-wise in the 70′s, but both came at the end of those stars’ careers and had little or no impact on their respective sports. The Kareem trade completely changed the balance of power in the NBA, and brought the Lakers their third all-universe center to lead them back to greatness.

The Bucks have been excoriated in the press over this trade almost since the moment it happened, and it’s a wound for Milwaukee sports fans that never will completely heal. But the franchise has taken a bad rap on this count, because the fact of the matter is that they really didn’t have much choice but to deal Kareem. The big bad Muslim from Brooklyn basically demanded it. He hated living in Milwaukee, and after six seasons in the Brew City (which included three MVP awards and an NBA title) he’d had enough.

“Live in Milwaukee? No, I guess you could say I exist in Milwaukee,” Abdul-Jabbar said in a magazine interview. “I am a soldier hired for service and I will perform that service well. Basketball has given me a good life, but this town has nothing to do with my roots. There’s no common ground.”

Kareem wanted either to go back home and play for the Knicks, or go back to the city where he’d attended college, L.A. That was his list of teams right there. The Bucks were held up at gunpoint on this one, and so, like many a team after them that has found themselves in this situation, they did the best they could.

At the time, it didn’t seem like they made out too badly. Elmore Smith was an a-lister at the time, a seven-foot center good for a nightly double-double, Brian Winters was a first-round draft pick from the previous season who had star potential, and Dave Meyers and Junior Bridgeman were the second and eighth picks respectively in the ’75 draft. Of course, it didn’t pan out as Milwaukee might have hoped. Smith’s production dramatically declined after a season in Milwaukee, Bridgeman and Winters became serviceable but not standout players, and Meyers never cut it in the pros. The Bucks remained a playoff team for years after the trade, but haven’t made it back to the NBA Finals since.

Meanwhile, Kareem won his fourth MVP award in the ’75-’76 season for the Lakers. He would add his fifth the season after that, and then his sixth in ’79-’80, when he teamed with a young superguard out of Michigan State to bring the NBA title back to L.A. and embark on a decade of dominance and dynasty.

6/15
Lucian Bute v. Sakio Bika
ESPN2, 10 p.m.
Another Friday Night Fights from Montreal – boxing must be big up there (Franchise… where are you?). The featured bout has undefeated 168 Lucian “Le Tombeur” Bute, a Romanian who fights out of Montreal, making a big step up in competition against the brawling Scorpion from Cameroon, Sakio Bika, who gave Joe Calzaghe some trouble in a very dirty bout last October.

60 Minutes on Classic
ESPN Classic, 10:30 p.m.
This half-hour includes profiles of Magic Johnson and Dikembe Mutombo.

6/16
America’s Cup, 1851-2007
ESPN Classic, 11 a.m.
You know, we don’t do enough yachting here at No Mas (our lack of a yacht has a role in this). With the America’s Cup currently raging in Spain (and we do mean raging), here’s a starter course for anyone who wants to get into the game, an hour-long doc on the history of the sport’s most famous event narrated by noted yachting enthusiast, Walter Cronkite.

U.S. Open – Third Round
NBC, 1 p.m.
Mickelson – cut. Goosen, Garcia, Love, Harrington… amscray. Beemer, Monty… get lost. Goddamn shit got ugly out there in the second round (although how about that Paul Casey routine? unreal…). Angel Cabrera – I’d like to see him hang in. Seems doubtful though. My picks – Goose and Perez – oh man I am not on a hot streak right now.

Evander Holyfield v. Michael Dokes
ESPN, 1 p.m.
Rarely referred to when we talk about the Real Deal’s great career, his tenth-round TKO of Dynamite Dokes capped off a hell of a fight, largely because Evander in 1989 wasn’t quite filled out as a heavyweight yet. As for Michael Dokes, well, he wouldn’t have another meaningful fight until he fought Riddick Bowe in ’93, when Big Daddy stopped him in the first.

UFC 72 Countdown
Spike, 2 p.m.
Get yourself primed with this preview show.

UFC 72 PPV, 3 p.m.
A full card from Belfast including Hector Ramirez v. Forrest Griffin and headliner Rich Franklin v. Yushin Okami.

The Best of the Lady Kickboxer
Telemundo, 4 p.m.
I have no idea what this show is about but it looks very promising. Is “The Lady Kickboxer” some recurrent character on Telemundo? Like a detective or something? See this is what’s wrong with America. We get “The Closer” and like a million chicks who talk to God and meanwhile Mexico has “The Lady Kickboxer.”

Ringside
ESPN Classic, 8 p.m.
Oh shit, Ringside gets all No Mas. This episode is called “Boxing and Hollywood” and promises to run through the greatest boxing movies ever made. I’m sure they will be reviewing many of the Academy Award-winners we mentioned in this post from our Tribeca Film Festival coverage.

Paulie Malignaggi v. Lovemore N’Dou
HBO, 9:30 p.m.
More Paulie on Boxing After Dark, going up against N’Dou, the IBF champ at 140 and a 35-year-old Aussie battleaxe who has been through the wars. This should be a competitive bout – in 2004, N’Dou gave Cotto a better fight than Paulie did last year. It’s a stretch, I know, but it’s something. On the undercard, Brownsville bruiser Curtis Stevens makes his HBO debut against Athens bronze-medalist Andre Dirrell. (Note – had a good laugh a few days ago when I heard Chris Russo interrupt Mike and the Dog’s wall-to-wall Sopranos coverage to read an HBO promo – he had to pronounce “Malignaggi,” a name he’d clearly never seen before – it didn’t go well.)

TNA Wrestling Impact
Spike, 11 p.m
Christian Cage battles a mystery opponent in his King of the Mountain qualifier for Slammiversary.

6/17
Classic Battle Lines
ESPN Classic, 7 a.m.
The battle lines are drawn for Game 1 of the 1988 World Series, which ended with this dude hitting a walkoff home run. I can’t remember who it was – it was cool though.

Ryder Cup Highlights
Golf Channel, 8 a.m.
If you feel like getting all amped at eight o’clock on a Sunday morning, well, here you go, and hour-long recap of the 1999 Ryder Cup at Brookline, which featured The Putt, the Most Awful Golfwear Ever Worn at a Major Event, the Boopsie Wives, and the Worst Fist Pump in History (David Duval).

Drumline
TBS, 10:30 a.m.
Finally, a movie that had the courage to tackle the high-octane, high-stakes, high-risk world of big-time college marching bands. This thing blew the lid of the whole marching band hustle, and nothing has been the same since.

U.S. Open – Final Round
NBC, 1 p.m.
The smacketh will be layeth downeth. I have no idea who will hang in and win this thing, but I am willing to be that the winning score is at least 4-over par.

Legendary Nights
HBO, 2 p.m.
The Hagler/Leonard edition, a classic. Every time I watch a Legendary Nights I find myself thinking “I wish they made one of these for every fight.” You telling me you wouldn’t watch a Legendary Nights about, say, Calzaghe/Lacy?

The Great White Hope
FMC, 4 p.m.
A film from 1970 of the famous play by Howard Sackler starring James Earl Jones as controversial heavyweight champion Jack Jefferson, a thinly-veiled version of Jack Johnson. A great movie, highly recommended No Mas viewing material. (Ali saw this play and then went backstage to tell Jones, “That’s my story… you take out the issue of white women and replace it with religion and that’s my story right there” – to which we reply, “oh come on Muhammad, you know you loved yourself some white women.”)

America’s Cup: A Sailor’s Story
CBS, 5 p.m.
Yachting, everywhere yachting.

Slammiversary 2007 PPV, 8 p.m.
King of the Mountain match? TNA X Title Match? Christian Cage, Kurt Angle, Sting and… Frank Wycheck? Is this the same dude from the Music City Miracle? The tight end? He’s a wrestler now? When did that happen? Hmm. Franchise could explain this all to us but I don’t know where he is.

Ringside
ESPN Classic, 12 a.m.
The Lennox Lewis edition.

As we sit and ponder today the Spurs’ fourth NBA Championship (and by ponder, I mean, blankly wonder if the whole series actually happened or if it was just something we saw on YouTube), let me take you back six years to another NBA Finals that didn’t last too long. On June 15, 2001, the Lakers closed out my upstart Sixers in five with a 108-96 fifth-game victory in Philly. Shaq went for 29 and 13, and Kobe added 26, 12 and 6. Even Rick Jheri Curl dumped in 20. The I scored 37 in the losing effort, shooting his typically marksman-like 14 of 32 from the field, and Eric Snow had 12 assists, but otherwise my boys just didn’t have the firepower to deal with that Laker dynasty. It was the second of three straight championships for L.A., and in those three trips to the Finals, they lost three total games. In the 2001 playoffs, they went 15-1, losing only that first shocking overtime game to Philly at the Staples Center. Shaq won his second consecutive Finals MVP award, joining Hakeem Olajuwon and M.J. as the only players to win that honor two years in a row.

U.S. Open – First Round
ESPN, 10 a.m.
Olazabal is leading through six, and Tiger is even through five after opening bogey/birdie. Golf swami says… oh this is a tough one on Golf Swami. I’ll play it safe and say Goosen. Oakmont’s going to be ugly this year – everybody says so – and the Goose just stays cool as a cucumber in those types of scenes. For a wild card I’ll go with Pat Perez.

British Open Highlights
Golf Channel, 1 p.m.
You get tired of watching live golf today, you can go back to the ’97 -’99 British Opens on the Golf Channel. In the ’97 British, Justin Leonard came from five strokes back on Sunday to win with a final-round 65. In the ’98 tournament, Mark O’Meara added the Claret Jug to the green jacket he’d won himself earlier in the year. And in ’99? A certain Frenchman completely lost his mind.

All the Right Moves
HBO2, 2:30 p.m.
Salvucci, he didn’t quit. None of us quit. I don’t know. We beat those guys asses up and down that field tonight! We got nothing to be ashamed of, right? Isn’t that right? Maybe the scoreboard doesn’t say it, but we won that game. We held them. It was just a fluke. That’s all. It’s just a fluke.

U.S. Open – First Round
NBC, 3 p.m.
NBC takes over the first-round coverage at three.

NBA Finals – Game Four
ABC, 9 p.m.
Game set and match presumably. Worst finals ever?

Hasim Rahman v. Taurus Sykes
VS., 9 p.m.
If you’ve been wondering what became of the Rock after he couldn’t make it out of the 12th with Maskaev, well here’s your chance to catch up with the ex-champ. A live bout on Versus. How the mighty have fallen.

Last Call with Carson Daly
NBC, 1:35 a.m.
Keyshawn joins Carson.

With his no-no against the Brewers yesterday, Justin Verlander etched himself into the majestic annals of Detroit baseball history, adding his name to the list of four Tigers who have thrown five no-hitters for the team before him. That list is below, but before I move on, let me point out that Verlander’s no-no is the first ever at Comerica Park, and only the fourth interleague no-hitter in history, after Larsen’s 1956 World Series perfect game against the Dodgers, Coney’s perfect game against the Expos in ’99, and the Astros six-pitcher collective no-no against the Yanks in 2003.

July 4, 1912
George Mullin
Tigers 7, Browns 0

Mullin, a.k.a. Wabash George, was a stalwart of the Tigers during their near-miss decade of the nineteen-oughts in which they made it to three straight Fall Classics (1907-09) only to lose them all, the first two to the Cubs and the third to the Pirates. His no hitter on the fourth of July in 1912 also fell on his 32nd birthday, and Mullin, a career .263 hitter who was often used as a pinch-hitter with the Tigers, contributed three hits and two RBI’s to his victory.

May 15, 1952
Virgil Trucks
Tigers 1, Senators 0

August 25, 1952
Virgil Trucks
Tigers 1, Yankees 0

Along with Allie Reynolds, Nolan Ryan and Johnny Vander Meer, Virgil “Fire” Trucks is one of four pitchers to throw two no-no’s in a single season. In the first on May 15, 1952, the Tigers’ Vic Wertz broke a ninth-inning 0-0 tie with a walkoff home run off the Senators’ Bob Porterfield to snare the victory and the no-hitter for Trucks. His second no-no of 1952 was a close-call due to a play the Tiges’ shortstop Johnny Pesky made on Phil Rizzuto in the third that initially ruled an error, changed to a hit, and then changed back to an error. Amazingly, Trucks’ second no-nit victory of 1952 raised his record to 5-15, and he would not win another game all season, finishing off the year 5-19.

July 20, 1958
Jim Bunning
Tigers 3, Red Sox 0

Though he’ll always be a Phil to us Illadelphians (and just as he is on his Hall of Fame plaque), Jim Bunning was actually in Detroit longer than he was in Philly, coming up with the Tigers and spending nine years with the team. His first of two career no-no’s (he threw a perfect game with the Phils in 1964) came in the first game of a double-header on July 20, 1958, and included 12 strikeouts against only two walks and a hit batsman.

April 7, 1984
Jack Morris
Tigers 4, White Sox 0

It’s fitting that the great Jack Morris kicked off the Tigers’ miraculous season of 1984 with a no-no, at that point matching the earliest date ever for a blank-job (Hideo Nomo’s April 4th no-hitter in 2001 broke that mark). Morris didn’t make things easy for himself, notching six walks on the afternoon against eight strikeouts. It was the first of 19 wins for Morris on the season as the Tigers marched to their first World Series title in 26 years.

A solid lot of June 13 birthdays to celebrate, including those of some bona fide legends – The Flying Finn, The Galloping Ghost, and one of two men’s tennis players to ever win the Grand Slam. Add to that a three-time Pro Bowler, a famous footballer and a famous footballer turned pundit, a European basketball pioneer, a hockey player better known for his hockey-playing brother, the current world-record-holder in both the men’s 5,000 and 10,000 meters, the member of the Breakfast Club who ends up with the wrestler, the most distinguished occupant of the center square (not to mention the voice of Templeton the Rat), and the Nobel Prize-winning poet who wrote the lines that I often think of when I’m transfixed by great athletes in action – “Oh body swayed to music, oh brightening glance / How can we know the dancer from the dance?”

U.S. Open Highlights
Golf Channel, 2 p.m.
This one goes back ten years to Ernie Els second Open victory at Congressional in ’97, besting Monty by a stroke.

NBA’s Greatest Games
ESPN Classic, 4 p.m.
Classic runs half-hour recaps, back to back, of what may be the two greatest games in NBA history – Game 6 of the ’74 finals, which the Bucks pulled out over the Celtics in double OT behind a heroic effort from Kareem, and Game 5 of the ’76 Finals, the generally acknowledged greatest of the great, as the Celtics outlasted the Suns in triple OT.

The Endless Summer II
IFC, 3:15 p.m.
Twenty-eight years after the original, Bruce Brown made a sequel to his seminal 1966 surfing documentary. This one stars Pat O’Connell and Wingnut Weaver.

U.S. Open Highlights
Golf Channel, 4 p.m.
A recap of the ’99 Open, one of the most memorable of all time, as Payne Stewart knocked down a 15-footer on the 72nd hole to edge Phil Mickelson by a stroke – Phil who was then still carrying the Best Player Never to Win a Major cross. Mickelson also had been walking the course all weekend with a beeper, because his wife was about to have their first child, and he’d vowed that no matter what happened he would leave the course as soon as she went into labor. As for Stewart, this was his last victory before dying in a bizarre plane crash in the fall of ’99.

Verno Phillips v. Julian Jackson
ESPN Classic, 8 p.m.
The tragedy of boxing writ large. The once mighty Hawk, Julian Jackson, unfortunately still fighting at the age of 38, gets pummeled in this 1998 bout with Verno Phillips.

Gold Cup: Mexico v. Panama
Univision, 10 p.m.
Here you go, Zark. La Copa Ora in all its glory.

A lot of important importance went down on this day in baseball history. Let’s go to the videotape:

June 12, 1880
Facing the Cleveland Blues at the Worcester Agricultural Fairgrounds, John Lee Richmond of the Worcester Ruby Legs pitched the first perfect game ever recorded in professional baseball. That’s ole John Lee over there on the right. Kind of looks to me like he should have been the baseball player in the Village People.

June 12, 1922
Babe Ruth’s unlikely nemesis, Hub Pruett of the St. Louis Browns, strikes out the Babe three times in a row. Pruett, whose lifetime career record was 29-48, had Ruth’s number, striking out the Bambino ten of the first 13 times that he faced him, and 15 of a career 30 at-bats.

June 12, 1939
The National Baseball Hall of Fame was dedicated by Stephen C. Clark, grandson of the founder of the Singer Sewing Machine Company. Originally the Hall was primarily a gambit to bring tourists to Cooperstown by capitalizing on the claim (probably apocryphal) that Abner Doubleday had invented the game of baseball in the town. The idea of the Hall had been around for some time, and the Baseball Writers of America actually had voted on and inducted the legendary first class in 1936, a class composed of five immortals – Babe Ruth, Walter Johnson, Ty Cobb, Christy Mathewson and Honus Wagner. Added to that list for the formal opening of the Hall in 1939 were eight more players – Grover Cleveland Alexander, Lou Gehrig, Eddie Collins, Willie Keeler, Nap Lajoie, George Sisler, Tris Speaker and Cy Young.

June 12, 1981
Major League Baseball players go on strike, one that eventually will last 49 days and force the cancellation of 713 games. This resulted in the bizarre split season playoff format that kept the two best overall teams in the N.L., the Reds and the Cardinals, from making the postseason. Little Large was living in England that year, and so this whole business has never entirely made sense to me.

June 12, 1997
One of baseball’s grand traditions is thrown out the window, as interleague play begins. Typically with an idea so short-sighted and devoid of the overall majesty of the game, the first interleague matchup was as inauspicious as could be imagined – the Rangers hosting the Giants at the Ballpark in Arlington. I have always been against interleague play, but now the cat’s out of the bag and you’ll never get it back in again. It was a big promotional thing for about three years – no one gives a shit about it anymore because all the teams play each other all the time. Meanwhile, you can never recapture that feeling that you used to have in the All-Star Game and the World Series, when the very idea that Ron Guidry was going to pitch to Steve Garvey, or Steve Carlton to George Brett, was so unimaginable as to throw you into an ecstasy of anticipation.