The Cleveland Cavaliers tied up the playoff series with the Boston Celtics tonight in true Cleveland fashion = all or nothing. During the game, Cleveland star and local hero Lebron James collided with Celtics forward Paul Pierce and the two ended up spilling into the crowd. According to BallDon’tLie blog, Lebron’s mother, Gloria, a local loose cannon went all ghetto on Pierce and started to ball him out, to which Lebron responded with a “Sit Yo Ass Down!”

Once a mom, always a mom.

[Editor’s note: since YouTube is “performing maintenance” (or in other words, auditing their inner thetans) I can’t verify if the woman is in fact his mother, so let’s throw caution to the wind and assume it is]

Over the weekend, Giants Super Bowl-winning quarterback Eli Manning done went and got himself married up to his long-time girlfriend Abby McGrew:

Giants quarterback Eli Manning wed his college sweetheart Abby McGrew during a beachfront ceremony at sunset Saturday.

About 60 loved ones flew to Mexico to join Manning and his bride for the intimate ceremony at the One & Only Palmilla, a swank resort along the Sea of Cortez on the Baja Peninsula.

Manning, 27, and McGrew, 24, exchanged vows while standing on a platform in the sand as waves crashed over rocks behind them.

The family was on hand to wish the happy couple well, including Super Bowl-winning brother Peyton, who offered some words of encouragement before the ceremony.

It seems that the whole event was laid-back, enjoyable, and fun for everyone:

Hours before the ceremony, Manning worked out pre-wedding jitters, hitting the gym by 10 a.m., running furiously on the treadmill, lifting weights and doing push-ups for an hour and and a half.

During the rest of the day, the Super Bowl MVP and his bride stood by the old adage that the groom not see the bride the day of the wedding. […]

Manning’s parents, Archie and Olivia Manning, were overjoyed to see their youngest son get hitched.

Archie gave a heartfelt toast Friday night before a rehearsal dinner in front of the resort’s old Spanish Mission Chapel, getting tears in his eyes as he raised his glass.

Manning and McGrew met when they were students at Ole Miss. He proposed last March during a quiet date in Hoboken.

The couple is famously low-key and kept their wedding plans under wraps until just last week.

Wedding guests remarked all weekend about how relaxed Manning had made the celebration for all of them.

Good for them.  I’m happy for Eli, whom most people wrote off as a QB while he was still trying to find his footing with the Giants.  Say what you will about the Mannings (yeah, people have, and I’m sure more will in response to this post), at least we don’t see photos of them splashed across every newspaper and sports section in the land for all the wrong reasons.  When was the last time you saw either Peyton or Eli in the news for drunk driving, or being busted for drugs, or for beating up their wife/girlfriend?  They seem to have settled down since college (like most people do) and all you hear about now are either their prowess on the football field or their philanthropy works.

And face it…it’s refreshing to see a famous couple who don’t need to get over themselves.  Rumor is the wedding set Eli back about $500,000, which by celeb wedding standards is pretty modest.  And spending the day floating around in the pool with your buddies while your big brother tells embarrassing stories about your youth sounds to me like any good ol’ boy’s wedding, not some stuck-on-himself overinflated-ego jock who believes the world revolves around them just because they can throw a football.  It’s a nice palate cleanser.

Best wishes to the happy couple!

Soccer (oh wait, football…no, check that, it’s soccer) star David Beckham has opened his third academy for aspiring young people:

The state-of-the-art World of Sport complex has been set up to benefit the children of Brazil and provide them with on-site coaching and access to top-class facilities, much in the same way as his academies in London and Los Angeles.

Beckham said: “This is by far the best training camp I have ever seen.

“It will be the best football facility in the world and I am very proud to have an academy in Brazil where kids can come and enjoy themselves and play football in a safe environment.”

Davey Boy also hopes that his new facility will draw soccer clubs from all over the world to train, and hopefully to help future athletes in the form of Brazil’s young people.

But here’s what I really want to say about the whole thing:

PULL YOUR PANTS UP!!!

Great balls of fire…he’s a zillionaire, but he can’t afford pants that fit right?  Yank that belt tighter!  Srsly!

This Sunday is D-Day for Superbowl XLII, where the country gathers around the television to watch two teams of tough, rugged, trained and taut manly men compete in the testosterone-laden game of football. There’s no room for “gay stuff” in this game, ok? Oh, maybe not ok.

According to this article, one of the teams competing in this year’s championship at UP’s Football Stadium has some not-so-out gay guys on their team. That’s not all, there’s said to be at least a 15% rate of gay men playing in the professional league today. Gives a new meaning to towel-snapping in the locker room.

But wait, there’s more…

Holy Hammerin’ Hank’s Balls! They done did it. Former San Francisco Giants slugger Barry Bonds has been indicted on charges of perjury and obstruction for allegedly lying in court during an ongoing investigation into the illegal use of anabolic steroids by major league baseball players.

While Bonds was hitting his way past the major league record for home runs, a title set by the aforementioned Hank Aaron with 755, his trainer and long-time friend, Greg Anderson, sat in jail for refusing to testify against his childhood friend about his personal use of steroids. Bonds has maintained his innocence about “knowingly” using the banned substance, to which all parties involved collectively rolled their eyes and sighed heavily.

As the saying goes, they don’t get you for the crime, they get you for the cover-up. Just ask Al Capone and Richard Nixon. Well, “asking” them may be a bit difficult, then again, dead men tell no lies.

Ok, enough with the cliches, the crux of this is that after an intensive investigation by the Senate and federal prosecutors (assisted by the Major League Baseball Commission) it became obvious to some, that perhaps Bonds was not being truthful. From the San Jose Mercury article:

In a five-count indictment, Bonds is accused of repeatedly lying under oath to a federal grand jury in December 2003 when questioned by federal prosecutors about his use of steroids and whether he’d received performance-enhancing drugs. The indictment charges Bonds with four counts of perjury and one count of obstructing justice for the allegedly false testimony, all felonies that could send him to federal prison if convicted.

The probe into steriod use was part of broader federal case known as the “Balco steroids scandal,” named for the company at the center of the steroid abuse claims. Victor Conte, the founder of Balco has continued to deny any knowledge of Bond’s use of the illegal substance and defended the swatter again after hearing word of the indictment today.

“I certainly haven’t seen all of the evidence in Barry’s case, however, I’ve seen a lot of it and I just don’t think there’s enough to meet the standard of beyond a reasonable doubt,” he said in an e-mail to the Mercury News. “They say it’s possible to ‘indict a ham sandwich’ and, unfortunately, I think it’s going to take a very long time for us to find out if that’s what they’ve done.”

Whereas Conte has acknowledged giving multiple performance-enhancing drugs to disgraced Olympic star Marion Jones and other track and field athletes, he has denied knowledge of Bonds’ steroid use.

Barry Bonds lawyer, Michael Rains had strong words for both the media and the federal prosecutors in a statement he released after hearing of the indictment:

“All you need to know about the government’s case is that they leaked an official indictment to every media outlet in America and withheld it from Barry, his lawyer, and everyone else who could read it and defend him,” said Rains.

“Now that their biased allegations must finally be presented openly in a court of law, they won’t be able to hide their unethical misconduct from the public any longer. You won’t read about those facts in this indictment, but now the public will get the whole truth, not just selectively leaked fabrications from anonymous sources.

“What we want to know is whether the media will spend as much time repairing Barry’s reputation as they have destroying it after he is proven innocent by a fair and impartial jury.”

Yes, well maybe a courtesy of a reach around isn’t too much to ask when you are being bent over and screwed, which is seems Bonds is. Don’t get me wrong, perjuring yourself in a court of law is unacceptable and I do NOT condone the use of performance enhancing drugs when they have been banned from a sport, but this is baseball, not pedophilia, or global terrorism, and Bonds’ use of steroids appears to have happened PRIOR to the sport instituting a ban on the substance (2004). Surely our federal court system and Senate have better things to do than go full throttle trying to nail a baseball player for using drugs that may have made him hit balls really far.

I love baseball, and I understand the purists viewpoint about players being true to the sport and leveling the playing field, but let’s have some perspective. This type of thing needs to be handled and regulated by the baseball commission, make them accountable, but not a singled out baseball player. That’s called scapegoating, and I don’t think that’s cool.

These are past times and leisure activities. While some may feel betrayed by Bonds tampering with the game (assuming that is the case) his initial crime was not that of a federal nature. Had he not been forced to appear before a grand jury to begin with, this would not be an issue.

This is an extreme example of the federal government interfering where they don’t belong. This doesn’t compare to say, Michael Vick violating state and federal laws by dogfighting. I just sort of don’t really get it. Sanction him, throw him out of baseball, keep him out of the Hall of Fame if you must, but 30 years in prison? Come on.