10 Awesome Things That Happened This Past Weekend (5/25-5/27)

10. Dwight Howard Claims He Had No Say On Stan Van Gundy Getting Fired
            In related news, Bill Clinton is claiming he had nothing to do with the stain on Monica Lewinsky’s dress.

9. Jon Beason Defends Cam Newton, Blasts Alex Smith

            It’s a great sign to see someone from the opposite side of the ball defend their quarterback. Buy stock in the 2012 Carolina Panthers.

8. Landon Donovan Nets a Hat Trick

            Apparently, this still means something even though it happened against Scotland.

7. Junior Dos Santos Destroys Frank Mir

            Mir had no chance against Dos Santos Saturday night. Equally impressive was Cain Velasquez, who demolished Antonio Silva in a first round bloodbath.

6. Spurs Take Control Late, Snag Game 1 Win Over Thunder

            A 39-point fourth quarter for the Spurs spelled doom for Oklahoma City.

5. Kasey Kahne Wins Third Career Coca-Cola 600

            The start of Kahne’s 2012 season (his first driving for Rick Hendrick) was a complete disaster, but that is all forgotten now. Kahne put on a show with 70 laps to go, rocketing from seventh to first in less than ten laps.

4. Josh Hamilton, in Need of IV and Oxygen, Hits Walk-Off Homer

            With as dominant as Hamilton has been this season, I could read “Hamilton hits three home runs despite left arm falling off” and not be surprised.

3. New Jersey Devils Advance to Stanley Cup Finals With Game 6 Overtime Win

            I had to do a little digging, but I was able to find a paragraph some idiot blogger posted in response to an e-mail back in January.

Please make the case for Martin Brodeur to hang up his goalie pads. – Claude R., Berlin, NH

Sadly, it’s not a hard one to make. If Brodeur were to finish the season with his current .893 save percentage, that would be a career low (other than when Brodeur had a four game cup of tea back in 1991-92). Getting pelted with shots behind a shoddy Devils defense hasn’t helped (he doesn’t have the luxury of having guys like Scott Stevens taking care of business for him), but the fact remains that the team looks better when Johan Hedberg is in net. Remember this paragraph in June when a red-hot Brodeur is carrying the eighth seeded Devils to the Stanley Cup Finals.

            Man that guy was a dumbass…oh wait that was me! Further proof that this blog is called No Credentials for a reason.

2. Stubborn Celtics Outlast 76ers, Earn a Date With Miami

            Will Boston get slaughtered by Miami in the Easern Conference Finals? Probably, but the 2011-12 Celtics will be remembered as one of the more resiliant Celtics clubs of the post-Bird era.

1. Dario Franchitti Wins Third Indianapolis 500

            Dario recovered from getting spun out on pit road, and then survived a last-lap dive bomb attempt by Takuma Sato to claim his third 500 trophy. A great finish to a great day filled with multiple tributes to the late Dan Wheldon (who remember, was the defending champion of the 500).

            This post will be the final review of the weekend until the week after Labor Day (aka Week 1 of the NFL season). I typically will run these through the end of the NBA Finals, but I have a wedding to go to this weekend followed by two weeks of new job training out of town (believe it or not, I'm still not paying the bills writing these uninformed columns). We’ll still be posting throughout the summer (although it could be a little quiet the next few weeks) about a variety of different topics, so continue to stay tuned to “No Credentials At All” all summer long. Drive on.

10 Awesome Things That Happened This Past Weekend (6/10-6/12)

10. Flavor Flav Claims He Lost Virginity at Age 6

            This is just one of many claims Flav is making in his new memoir. I’ll question this boast, but I have no doubt that he at least blew $5.7 million on drugs in a six-year span.

9. Bike Week Begins in New Hampshire

            For those of you that don’t live in the Granite State, Bike Week is an event where thousands of men who are smack dab in the middle of a mid-life crisis act like 22-year olds for a week. Women whose faces look like worn out catcher’s mitts join them. Depending on your ideals, this may or may not sound like a good time to you.

8. Allan McNish Survives

            I’ll let the raw video do the talking here.

7. Bartolo Colon Pulls Up Lame, Hits DL

            This is a bittersweet story for me. On one hand, it’s a good thing that the Yankees are losing him for a couple of weeks. On the other, one of my fantasy teams is losing Colon. Both New York and myself were surely expecting the 270-pound Colon to suffer some sort of ailment at some point during the season.

6. U.S. Soccer Loses to Panama

            Because soccer is weird, the United States is not eliminated from the Gold Cup, but they should be after losing to a country that is most famous for having a big canal.

5. MLB Seriously Considering Realignment

            I don’t own stock in the Orioles, Rays, or Blue Jays, but I’m all in favor of coming up with a system that makes things a little fairer for those teams. I’ll cast my vote for two 15-team leagues with no divisions.

4. Junior dos Santos Destroys Shane Carwin

            Carwin was given a broken nose and a fractured cheekbone after getting pounded for three rounds. Dos Santos will move on to face heavyweight champion Cain Velasquez.

3. Jeff Gordon Wins at Pocono

            Gordon’s 5^th career win at Pocono will at worst give him a wild-card entry into The Chase.

2. Canucks Score Late, Take 3-2 Series Lead Over Boston

            Game 5 had the look of a game that would be decided by an odd bounce. Unfortunately, it didn’t go the Bruins way. I’m fully expecting a Bruins win in Game 6 (you know what that means regular No Credentials readers, get your money on Vancouver right now).

1. Dallas Mavericks Defeat Miami Heat, Win NBA Championship

            I’m going to write more about this series and where these two teams go from here, but let me write some random thoughts down here.

a. I’ve never been happier for a citizen of Germany than I am for Dirk Nowitzki. Oddly enough, my feelings for Dirk are similar to Larry David’s feelings for Oscar the dog.

b. Can we please stop asking Lebron James to be Michael Jordan? It’s just not going to happen. If you want to watch MJ play, go look at old highlights on You Tube (I was going to save this for my next column but my head is exploding as I’m watching Jon Barry, Michael Wilbon, and Magic Johnson talk about him on “Sportscenter”).

c. Rick Carlisle is the unofficial “Best Basketball Coach Alive” as of right now. Switching to a zone when Dirk went out with two fouls in the 1^st quarter kept Dallas in the game.

d. Cleveland doesn’t have a lot going on these days, so I’ll award them the right to share in the Dallas championship celebration.

NO CREDENTIALS SUMMER SCHEDULE – This will be the last “10 Awesome Things” column that will be posted until September 12^th, 2011. I still plan on making a minimum of two posts per week. Here are topics that will be covered this summer.

1. Fantasy Baseball (and maybe once in a blue moon, real baseball, but don’t count on it)
2. NFL and NBA labor issues (sadly, my two favorite leagues are in jeopardy of missing future games)
3. NASCAR (that’s right, I want to try to get negative page views this summer)
4. If the NFL ever resumes normal operations, NFL preseason team previews
5. Fantasy Football Draft Tips
6. Reviews and commentary on summer events, such as the US Open golf tournament

Thanks to all eight of you that regularly have read the weekend review every Monday. Keep your fingers crossed that there will be NFL games to talk about when the weekend review returns in September.