Letters: Welcome to the WWE, er, the NBA

The NBA Finals, although obviously not scripted, are close to the next best thing. The NBA wanted very badly to have a seven-game series and that’s exactly what they get. After Draymond Green was suspended for Game 5, they made sure Stephen Curry would be limited by foul trouble. Anybody watching this game could see that these early fouls on Curry were extremely questionable. So here we are, a Sunday Game 7.

The NBA will have very good TV ratings, but of course so does professional wrestling.

Edward A Sussman

Fountain Valley

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Just as Kiki Vandeweghe gets the biggest assist of the NBA Finals for helping the Cavaliers get back into the series, so too does Draymond Green need assistance in the off-season, from groin management classes.

Ron Ovadia

Irvine

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In case you were wondering, LeBron James is 14th in NBA history in free throw attempts, ahead of David Robinson, Hakeem Olajuwon and Elgin Baylor, but he still complains he never gets the calls. Quit your whining.

Ralph S. Brax

Lancaster

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Adam Silver needs to rescind his “total transparency” philosophy. If he isn’t happy that the referees are making the correct calls, he should either replace them or have every play reviewed during the games. Apparently the Monday morning quarterback is alive and well in the NBA.

Richard Aylward

Hermosa Beach

No rhyme or reason for the Dodgers

Andy Analytics sat on his statistics when front-line pitchers he could sign,

“What, me worry? I’ve got Clayton and ????, the Dodgers will just be fine.”

Fast forward six months,

They’re not in the hunt,

And statistics to me seem a crime.

Herb Schoenberg

Tarzana

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A Dodger Blue Haiku:

Bats all gone quiet,

While the Giants run riot.

Long summer ahead.

Gregg Schoenberg

San Francisco

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The 70% of Los Angeles that can’t get Dodgers games should feel extremely lucky that they don’t have to suffer watching this Andrew Friedman-constructed team. The latest move by Freidman was picking up Will Venable to replace Carl Crawford? No offense to Venable, but you may as well kept Crawford. And the writing is on the wall for signing Kenley Jansen next year when he becomes a free agent.

Can we please send Andrew back to Tampa. I heard they need some help cutting payroll.

Bob Malconian

Northridge

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With Friedman and Zaidi at the helm, the Dodgers are the team of the future ... and they always will be.

Harley F. Pinson

Bakersfield

Heaven scent

After the Angels beat Minnesota on Tuesday, Mike Scioscia said he was “pleased with his team’s efforts.” Obviously he had not read Pedro Moura’s account about the game, wherein he wrote about Chacin’s five substandard innings, Marte misjudging a well-struck fly ball, Giavotella botching an early double-play chance, and Cron getting doubled up when he got caught too far from first base on a liner. Then again, perhaps Scioscia just has low standards.

Mark Kaiserman

Santa Monica

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Hey, Arte, there’s a couple of free agents that were released by the White Sox! Mat Latos and Jim Rollins are waiting for your phone call. They’ll fit right in with what you have now! Might as well continue to stack up with players that can’t hit or pitch. Just trying to help you out, amigo!

Ernie Beltran

Tulare, Calif.

Rams nostalgia

Now that the Rams are back in Los Angeles and pro football holds an exalted place in the national consciousness, it might be worth remembering that it wasn’t always like that.

When I was a junior high school kid in the latter part of the 1950s, my friends and I would hitchhike out Venice and then down Vermont on Sunday afternoons to catch a Rams game. The Rams had a program called Free Football for Kids, which was set up to pad the attendance, not because the Rams were so cool. A paying adult could take up to five kids into the game and the kids didn’t have to pay the admission. I don’t remember anybody ever refusing us. Really, who would turn a kid down? We stuck with our paying adult until we were actually in and, then, we were on our own.

The Coliseum was and is such a great venue. The Rams, USC UCLA, the Dodgers, the Olympics, soccer, track and field. I have always loved that place and consider myself lucky to have been around for all that in those years. Very lucky.

Marty Schoen

Sierra Madre

The Rio deal

It’s certainly true that other countries have struggled and then succeeded to put on a successful Olympics. China even controlled its terrible air quality, at least temporarily, to protect athletes and visitors. It appears that Brazil will not be able to tame its sewage problem, so athletes exposed to water may become ill--again.

But I’m not aware of a previous Games that threatened to spread a known disease with extremely dire and known consequences worldwide. We are inviting millions of people to a hotbed of Zika virus infection. Those visitors will then return to their homes around the world. Some of them are likely to have been infected with the virus, which we now know can be spread through sexual contact. Sounds like a good way to start a worldwide epidemic.

You could not pay me to attend the Brazil Olympic games. At least I have the choice not to go. But the International Olympic Committee is forcing me to accept the possibility of Zika virus being spread around the world. This is wrong. The World Health Organization should shut down or postpone the Rio Games until a proper solution is found.

Crista Worthy

Boise, Ida.

A great one

My favorite Gordie Howe story is an account of his appearance at a hockey skills clinic some years ago. He skated onto the ice and proceeded to guide a puck through a series of twists, turns and swoops that seemed miraculous.

They were. When he finally stopped and raised his stick to acknowledge the cheers of the crowd, the puck came with it. What a guy!

Skip Nevell

Los Angeles

Feathers fly

So the Ducks feel that hiring back Randy Carlyle will solve their problems. I guess their obvious solutions (Darryl Sutter or a heart transplant) were unavailable.

Mike Reuben

Anaheim Hills

Last word

Pete Rose doesn’t feel Ichiro’s number of hits will count in MLB’s records. Wanna bet?

Dave Eng

Thousand Oaks

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