Lisa Olson

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. -- Desperation oozed from every pore. If New York-area basketball hasn't reached its nadir, it's only because the NBA has a silly rule that some team must win. Otherwise, who knows how low this charade might go? The players might be the ones slipping paper bags over their heads, to match the fans' embarrassment as they sit in the stands and try not to rubberneck.

Though plenty of empty seats were available, more than the usual few gluttons for punishment showed up at the Izod Center Saturday afternoon, hoping to see ... what? New Jersey Nets coach Lawrence Frank fired after the first quarter? New York Knicks owner James Dolan do an about-face and sign Allen Iverson to a multi-year deal? The teams set a combined record for most horrendous shooting in four quarters? Dora the Explorer, the day's big draw, dunk over Nate Robinson? The possibilities really were endless.

As it was, the Nets dropped to 0-13 and continued to careen dangerously toward matching the league record of 17 straight losses to open a season. The Knicks, by virtue of their 98-91 victory, actually won consecutive games to improve to 3-9, and can now turn their focus back on the real goal: convincing LeBron James, or any big free agent to-be, that the cesspool really isn't as nasty as it currently looks.

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When Chris Spielman suffered a brutal neck injury, he said overcoming it was a breeze compared to most everything his wife Stefanie had faced. When her hair started falling out, when clumps of it began landing on the floor and in their toddler's hands, Chris decided to shave his own head, a soldier in solidarity. When it became apparent that more chemotherapy and a mastectomy -- breast cancer's evil twins -- were high on Stefanie's schedule, Chris bid a temporary farewell to the NFL, skipping an entire year so he could be with the woman he proposed to on the 18th hole of a Putt-Putt course.

None of the above should be considered exceptional behavior by husbands or partners forced to watch their loved one undergo treatment for cancer. But everything Chris did back in those gloomy days following his wife's diagnosis was regarded as unusual and, in some parts, emasculating.

Stefanie Spielman, 42, died Thursday after a lengthy battle with breast cancer. Chris Spielman, the NFL and Ohio State star, was by her side, along with their four children, and while she deserves a thousand hosannas and a billion thanks for her work in raising millions over the years to combat the disease, it should be noted that he was quite the trailblazer.

Doctors told him he was likely never going to walk again. And they were going to take his arm, sever it just below the elbow. "No, you're wrong," U.S. Army staff sergeant Nieves Rodriguez would say, "I'm going to walk again. You're not going to take my arm."

They were fuzzy conversations between the white-coated medical community and a stubborn machine gunner who had been pinned under a rolled over vehicle during an army mission in northern Iraq. "Last thing I remember, we were hit by an Iraqi car that jumped out on us," Rodriguez says now. "I was unconscious for three days." This was April 2005, and he was on his second deployment, after fracturing two bones in his back during a previous tour.

NEW YORK – Finally, there was life in Ryan Howard's bat, energy in his words. "Come on man, let's go," he shouted upon crossing the plate, as if adding a hardy exclamation point to his two-run homer in the sixth inning would spark whatever the defending champions had been missing since they took a brief World Series lead way back in October.

The Philadelphia Phillies brought the bravado, for sure. On the eve of the Fall Classic, Jimmy Rollins made one of his many extemporaneous observations, saying on the Jay Leno Show, of all places, "If we're nice, we'll let it go six. But I'm thinking five. Close it out at home." So here's the first lesson, to any budding big leaguers: try not to mouth off when playing the wealthiest, hungriest, most talent-stacked team on the planet.

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EAST HARTFORD, Conn. -- No, way. The universe isn't meant to be this cruel. Time was supposed to stop with 38 seconds remaining on the clock, just this once. Just for Jazz. It wouldn't have healed the broken hearts stretching from Connecticut to South Florida, but it sure would have inspired an outbreak of happy hugs and welcome smiles.

But the ripples generated by the murder of UConn cornerback Jasper "Jazz" Howard travel far beyond a mere game of football, so perhaps this is how it was destined to end, with the scoreboard flashing Rutgers 28, Connecticut 24, with Tim Brown, Howard's best friend from childhood, choking back tears after scoring an improbable, last-second touchdown for the winning side. As much as it hurt the crowd on hand for the Huskies' first home game since Howard was killed -- and "hurt" is a gentle description, because the emotions that overtook Rentschler Field were funereal and raw following Brown's stunning 81-yard TD with 22 seconds left -- there is beauty in how it ended.

And love.

And a friendship that will live forever.

NEW YORK -- The good A.J. Burnett showed up at Yankee Stadium Thursday night. Scratch that, this wasn't just the good Burnett on the mound, his pitches dancing across every tiny speck of the plate's corner, his psyche remaining as calm as a summer day. This was a great Burnett, an imposing Burnett, a Burnett who managed to keep his evil side stowed away in the broom closet for one entire game.

And what a game it was, with Burnett and Philadelphia starter Pedro Martinez daring each other to blink first, to crack slightly, to make consecutive bad pitches. When it was over, when Burnett and the Yankees had held tight to a 3-1 win over the Philadelphia Phillies in Game 2 of the World Series, New York manager Joe Girardi still looked as if you could bounce subway tokens off the bulging veins in his neck.

"Extremely impressive. [Burnett] was great tonight," said Girardi, breathing slightly easier now that the Yankees can head down the turnpike with the World Series tied 1-1, and his team's bats itching to break out in Philadelphia's warm weather.

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NEW YORK -- Set the clock, nudge awake the kids. There might not be a more fascinating evening in sports this year than Thursday night, when Pedro Martinez takes the mound at Yankee Stadium and flips the World Series on its rump.

Most anything Pedro does is must-watch theater. He turned a routine press conference before Wednesday's Game 1 into an astonishing revival session that included Martinez proclaiming he "at times [is] the most influential player that ever stepped in Yankee Stadium" and featured his first in-depth, blow-by-blow look back at his 2003 tussle with Don Zimmer. It was almost as if Martinez was craftily writing his own prelude to whatever might happen in Game 2, when he attempts to lift Philadelphia to a 2-0 Series lead.

Will Pedro's first World Series pitch since 2004 (a year that still makes Yankee fans' skin crawl) serve as a reminder to Derek Jeter that some things never change? More delicious, how will Pedro treat Alex Rodriguez? With deference owed a man who has finally (we think) proven October no longer makes him flinch? Or will Pedro buzz them both, buzz them all, and quickly silence the crowd's mocking chants?

NEW YORK -- The Angels will be haunted all season by their failure to do the little things correctly, such as not treating the baseball as if it were a ripe pumpkin. The Yankees, especially the unrivaled core four, played and then celebrated as if they had been there before, even if it has taken six long years for them to figure the way back.

Therein lies the difference between going home and booking a trip to the World Series, in two quick sentences. On a night when Andy Pettitte's cutter was nearly as biting as it was in 1996 when he pitched one of the greatest playoff games in Yankee history, the Angels tussled through more misplays in a series plagued with them. On a night when Mariano Rivera reached deep for a six-out save, the Angels strangled all opportunities to extend the American League Championship Series into a Game 7. They clumsily ran the bases, made some atrocious errors, stranded more runners. And the manager probably has a move or two he'd like to have back in the Yankees' 5-2 win that crushed the Angels' postseason and jump-started a New York-Philadelphia World Series.

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NEW YORK -- Rick Pitino would like you to know one thing: His tawdry sex affair with a woman who faces federal charges of extortion and lying to the FBI is not going to have the slightest impact on his Louisville basketball team.

There are still plenty of legal hurdles to overcome and motions to be made before the case goes to trial and Pitino is summoned to the witness stand, where presumably his testimony against Karen Sypher will reveal even more salacious details about their romp in a Louisville restaurant, and the subsequent fallout that has engulfed the university's athletic department.

Beyond Pitino, the scandal has scarred Tim Sypher, who is now the operations director of the Cardinals' new gym and who was the team's equipment manager. Tim married Karen (they are now divorced) after she either had consensual sex with Pitino or was assaulted by him against her will -- it's a complicated connection that perhaps the trial will help unravel. The scandal has also greatly impacted Pitino's wife of 33 years, his five children, his extended New York family, Louisville's Catholic community where Pitino worships and pretty much anyone who has a rooting interest in the Cardinals.

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NEW YORK -- Of course it would end this way, in such classic, expected fashion. What, you didn't have Jerry Hairston Jr. scoring the winning run for the Yankees in the bottom of the 13th inning, after the Angel infield completely lost its heads? Join the club with millions of other baseball fans who watched Saturday's American League Championship Series melt into Sunday morning, and still aren't sure how and why this astonishing Game 2 concluded as it did.

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