Biete - Kristall » has blown his chances, shot them to smitheree

SALT LAKE CITY -- The Golden State Warriors needed less than nine minutes to open a 24-point lead over the short-handed Utah Jazz on Thursday night.Stephen Curry scored 26 points and the Warriors controlled the Jazz from start to finish in a 106-99 victory.Curry had 14 points during a 29-1 run that made it 29-5. The Jazzs only lead of the game was 4-2.Loss of focus, Warriors coach Steve Kerr said about the second half. Our first quarter was great, we pushed the ball and our defensive intensity was fantastic. I think we let down. We started turning it over some careless, purposeless plays.We didnt really have an idea of what we were trying to accomplish. Some defensive mistakes not getting out on shooters and they took advantage.Kevin Durant added 21 points and 11 rebounds for Golden State.Jazz center Rudy Gobert had 20 points and 17 rebounds, Joe Ingles scored a career-high 21 points, and Shelvin Mack added a season-high 19.The Jazz have four starters sidelined by injuries, including their top three scorers.I didnt do a good job of attacking throughout the game and I thought that was a good opportunity for me to attack, Durant said about the fourth quarter.Golden State led 65-46 at halftime as the second unit allowed the Jazz to hang around and, technically, remain within striking distance. The urgency from the first quarter disappeared in the second half and the Jazz crept within five in the fourth quarter thanks to buckets from Mack and Ingles, but Durant closed the game with 11 in the final period.What weve discussed is just roles, Jazz coach Quin Snyder said about surviving the injuries. They can morph. They widen, they can narrow, they can do anything. Hopefully, on a team, guys are willing to evolve and adjust to what the team needs. Thats really all we emphasized.TIP-INSWarriors: Rookie Patrick McCaw scored a career-high 10 points, all in the first half. ... Shaun Livingston took the night off to rest. ... Draymond Green was two assists shy of his 15th career triple-double. ... Green tweaked his ankle, but he and Kerr didnt seem overly concerned.Jazz: Utah started the combination of Joe Johnson, Mack, Dante Exum, Gobert and Boris Diaw for the first time this season. ... Ingles hit a career-high five 3-pointers.INJURED JAZZThe Jazz were without four starters -- Gordon Hayward (finger), Rodney Hood (hamstring), George Hill (toe) and Derrick Favors (knee). Utah has been dealing with injuries all season, but Thursday was their most depleted lineup to date.Its easy to be frustrated, Snyder said. Thats something you have to just fight against and make a decision to do the best with where we are.Its a credit to our guys really. Weve got a group that has character. Over a longer period of time it becomes more challenging. ... Hopefully, theres a silver lining. Weve got some guys that are getting minutes that may not be getting otherwise.QUOTABLEThis team, my first year was kind of a surprise and everybody seemed to love us. Now maybe its changed a little bit. It honestly makes no difference to us. -- Kerr.ROLESSnyder said roles morph, but Joe Johnson added that shouldnt be a difficult thing night-to-night.This is our profession, man, Johnson said. This is what we signed up for. This is what we do. When youre numbers called, youve got to be ready regardless of the circumstances.UP NEXTWarriors: Golden State travels to face the Memphis Grizzlies on Saturday in the third game of a five-game trip.Jazz: Utah hosts a Sacramento Kings team on Saturday that has lost eight of 12 on the road.Vans Old Skool Wholesale . The Vancouver coach and an announced sellout crowd of 18,910 watched in dismay as the Canucks lost 7-4 to the New York Islanders on Monday night by squandering a 3-0 lead in the third period. Cheap Vans Sk8 Hi Shoes . The Celtics closed out their first preseason under Stevens on Wednesday night with a 101-97 victory over the Brooklyn Nets, who rested a lot of their lineup including former Celtics Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce. http://www.vansshoesclearancesale.com/ .Y. - Nelson Mandela will be honoured by the New York Yankees with a plaque in Monument Park. Vans Old Skool White . Datsyuk will miss Tuesdays game against New Jersey and could be sidelined longer, while Cleary will likely miss at least the next three games. Its been an injury-plagued season for Datsyuk, who has suited up for just 39 games. Vans Sk8-Hi Shoes For Sale . The Canadian squad, skipped by Jennifer Jones of Winnipeg, got on the board first with two in the second end, and followed that with two more apiece in the fourth and sixth ends.The halls of the Beijing Shooting Range, 26km out west in the suburbs of the Shijingshan District, were meant in architectural terms, to pay tribute to a hunting bow. Maybe people could see the bow from a hot-air balloon. From the inside, the finals hall was a large, sealed box. High ceilings, curved walls on two sides, but the much advertised eco-respiratory qualities of its curtain walls were definitely not working. Air - it felt like the room needed air. And god, was it cold. The hands had gone clammy.Every 10m air rifle shooting final is contested over decimal points past 10 and this was the most exacting of finals - at an Olympic Games. Our guy had opened up the final with a 10.7, and a set of 10.5s sent him into serious medal contention. So serious that the eco-respiratory walls were sucking oxygen out from the room. A big scoreboard at a height visible to the 2500 in attendance showed the standings. Our guy was somewhere near the top. You had to add up the qualifying scores as well, all the time, with every shot by every shooter from each of the eight shooting stations.Numbers are not my thing and it was too much to handle. Suddenly he was on top of the standings but a joint No. 1, tied with a Finn. He cant see the standings, he can only see his scores.Its our mans turn to shoot again. You hear the 8kg air rifle on his shoulder spit out its pellet, making a flat, sharp, clicking sound. It carries emphatic finality. The trigger has been released, the pellet has left the barrel, there is nothing more you can do. The pellet must travel its 32 feet and find the heart of the targets bullseye, which from that distance has a diameter of 0.5mm, the size of the full stop that ends this sentence.His score: 10.8. Holy guaca-genius-mole. The best anyone can get from a 10m air rifle final is 10.9; 10.8 is a heartbeat away from shooting perfection.The mind has turned into scrambled eggs. Was that his ninth shot or tenth? Why does my notebook have no bloody notes? Ninth, had to be the ninth. So, calm down, dont be giddy, there is one more shot to go. Easy does it. But why is the Finn walking away? My hands are shaking. My breakfast is threatening to leave its building. I can hear Mini Kapoor, a fellow journalist who has taken proper notes and can do numbers correctly, next to me blabbering: Gold, its gold! Hes won gold. Cant you see?Doesnt he have a tenth shot? Is this not going to be one of those almost-there, so-near-yet-so-far, weepy desi sports sagas? In which our hero misses out by a hundredth of a second or a tenth of a point, or tumbles out of contention with only ten seconds to go and we spend the next 150 years crying over it?Our hero has seen his 10.8, turned around and pumped his fist towards someone behind him. Gold, Minis going on, gold. A woman gives him a thumbs up. We find out later that she is Gabriele Bühlmann, his shooting coach for the last eight years. He goes up to her, smiling as widely as he ever does. They exchange some words, hug each other, and soon people around them are leaning in shaking hands, thumping him on his back. Shooting halls are never noisy places but this has caused a stir, a rumble. Indians are jumping, making inchoate noises. TV reporters are bolting out of the hall, whispering loudly on their phones. As they move away, their voices rise to a pitch they do not bother to control. The giant screen provides the gunshot of confirmation: 1. Abhinav Bindra (IND) 700.5 2. Zhu Qinan (CHN) 699.7 3. Henri Hakkinen (FIN) 699.4Zhu Qinan was the defending champion, Hakkinen had entered the final as No. 1 from qualification, two points ahead of our guy. He was tied at No. 1, with only one shot left. Then Abhinav Bindra pulled the trigger and set us free.The lungs were suddenly overloaded. It was like being punched in the stomach and swooped high into the air at the same time. A rush, not adrenaline but rapture. An unshackling of everything in our sport that had been held back, pushed aside and weighed down, a liberation of everything that was yet to be.From that day the phrase gold rush acquired a fresh meaning for me, forever attached to an afternoon in a place called Shijingshan. All around, there were only grins. Cynicism had been clobbered to the ground. It was like every Indian heart was suddenly filled with silent singing. It would be early Monday in India - the news would ripple across the country, a distant Chinese whisper turning into a whoop of vicarious triumph.In the history of national where were you when... questions, Bindras gold will always be a top ten favourite. Eight years later, a younger colleague told me that he was one of hundreds of students in his Aurangabad school called in for a special general assembly and informed that India had won its first individual gold medal at the Olympic Games. When the news first hit the staff room, did the principal and teachers break out into dancing?Psychologists tell us about left-brain, right-brain responses. Journalists, I think, have a third component in their nervous system. It is called the story-brain, which kicks in even after the system to process information has frozen or meltted down.dddddddddddd In Beijing I was working for India Today, (forever grateful, gentlemen) and knew I would have to look for details that wire services and newspaper reporters would not focus on. Stuff that would work for readers when read five days later.First spotted: Bindra standing forlornly on the medals podium, wearing his India jacket and something between Bermuda shorts and capri-length pants. (Turned out his kit contained XXL track pants, which he could not wear.) Correction: he may have looked forlorn, but he was only being himself. Accepting of his environment, at home with stillness, familiar to silence. I suddenly remembered how earlier in the year Bindra had spent nine hours in a police station at Nanjing Airport patiently waiting for his gun to be cleared. On the podium, as the fuss whirled around, he is straight-faced, composed, way older than his 25 years.Exactly the same as he had been when I met him first at 18 just before the Sydney Olympics, where he was the youngest shooter in the field and missed the final by a single point. Calm, without artifice or hyperbole, self-deprecating, immersed in his sport, a shooting nerd in every sense. When the Indian anthem played, a hard-bitten colleague standing next to me had tears running down his face as he laughed. Maybe Bindra was the best guy to win India its first individual Olympic gold medal. The country, I thought, must be overdosing on happiness, but the man at the centre was holding it all together. On that Beijing day, Indias first individual gold medal at the Olympics was one of the two biggest pieces of news across the competition - on par with Michael Phelps second gold. At the press conference, Bindra sat back statesmanlike, as the Chinese media lost no time getting stuck into Qinan. Gold medallist in Athens, how could you miss a gold at home, they seemed to ask. Qinan sniffed loudly, his Mandarin translating itself through emotion alone. He was distraught and the absurdity struck every Indian in the room. Heres our first individual gold in a hundred years and the poor Chinese guy is getting beaten up over silver? Army man Hakkinen, the first Finnish man to win any medal in Beijing, is bemused. Bindras nasal sotto voce makes him the master of understatement and hysteria control. A few hours later when he is asked, What do you want to do? he says, I want to go to the bathroom.Later that afternoon, I track down Bühlmann, sitting in a high-security, competitors-only area smoking a cigarette. There is no security and I am not competing in anything other than information-gathering. Nobody cares.Bühlmann tells me she is German-Swiss, coach-psychologist for Bindra for eight years and is waiting for another shooter she worked with to go through routines. She calls Bindra an old soul and talks about the final shot. Her thumbs up was meant to tell him hed finished No. 1. Thumbs up to Indians only means Well done. Bindra said he knew he had probably won a medal and went up to her asking if a shootout would be needed. First, she said to him. You are first. Gold. Bindra, she said, was to start laughing. In his book, he remembers asking her, Did I win? Many years later, I told Bindra about my system failure while watching him that morning. The tremors in the hands, cold sweat, the scrambled mind. He was amused, his response droll: Welcome to every day of my shooting finals.The stories that followed the gold medal seemed to make Bindras victory weightier. He had been unable to sleep the night before. I wanted to shoot, I was ready. The most spooky was this: During the five minutes of sighting time before the final, he found that his rifles sights were wildly skewed. The sight that should have been fixed at producing shots honing in the region of 10 had him firing a pellet out to what are the white areas of the target - the 4s. Did someone fiddle with the rifle and get the sights askew, or, as Bühlmann believed, did the gun get accidentally knocked out of its proper sighting settings? If finely tuned, a rifle requires one or two clicks to get it correctly set - left or right, lower or higher - just before a big round. With minutes to go before his second Olympic final, Bindra had to madly go through 40 clicks. Standing next to him was his Romanian rival Alin Moldoveanu, who sees the controlled frenzy and thinks the Indian has blown his chances, shot them to smithereens. Instead, Abhinav Bindra was to shoot himself into the history books, into eternity, into Indian folklore. Those last ten shots in Beijing produced 104.5, still the highest score ever in an Olympic final.What Indias first gold medal did was, irreversibly, irrevocably, adjust the sights for our sport and our athletes. It was to spread through Indian sport like a rash of astonishment and delight, and lead to an epidemic of belief and confidence. This, Abhinav Bindra was to show a slow, diffident, creaky sporting nation, is how far we can go. This is how high we can reach.Sharda Ugra is a senior editor at ESPN.in ' ' '