Sports Columns
At the time, the crying and hugging seemed absurd. LeBron James and Dwyane Wade locked up in a tearful embrace as if they had been separated at birth and surprisingly reunited decades later by Oprah.
What else was Kobe Bryant going to say? When he predicted the Los Angeles Lakers would come back to win the series, some listeners took him seriously. Others could smell the skunk coming around the corner.
It was a little past 3 p.m. Saturday, and two women hoping to get bets down on the Kentucky Derby had talked their way into the VIP section at the Sunset Station race and sports book, the place where old guys with fat cigars pore over the Daily Racing Form and circle their choices at Golden Gate Fields and Prairie Meadows and Turf Paradise and Woodbine but not Ak-Sar-Ben, which is Nebraska spelled backward with hyphens.