Now we have a series.

At home and at a place where they feel comfortable, away from the limelight of Hollywood, the Magic finally snapped their six-game winless streak in the NBA Finals dating back to 1995 when the team was swept by Hakeem Olajuwon and the Houston Rockets and a young Shaquille O’Neal was still the man in the middle for Orlando.

Thanks to a hot-shooting night to the tune of an NBA Finals record 63% field-goal percentage, the Orlando Magic got their first ever win in the Last Dance, 108-104. Headed by the scintillating performance of Rafer Alston who got 20 points, four other Magic players scored 18 points or more. Dwight Howard had 21 points, 11 coming from the free-throw line as the Lakers front line continue to pummel him down low.

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It was an exciting Game 2 and close all throughout.

With seconds remaining and the game tied at 88-all, Kobe Bryant has the ball for the Lakers’ final shot. Going straight to the basket for another heroic moment, Kobe’s shot was blocked from behind by Hedo Torkuglo. The ball went out of bounds as time expires. Or so we thought.

After a brief huddle, the game officials decided that there was still .6 second left on the shot clock. That’s enough time for the Orlando Magic to execute a last play. Given the amount of time, I was thinking, “This will be an alley-oop play for Dwight Howard”. After all, the Magic has already won a game 2 years ago with .8 second remaining with an alley-oop for Dwight. Watch the video here to refresh your memory.

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June is typically known as the wedding month and many women dream of becoming a June bride. I don’t know how people came up with this tradition but a quick search at Wikipedia pointed to me that the month is named after Juno, the Roman goddess of marriage. Well, blame it on the Romans then.

I was married to my lovely wife last December 22, 2007. For me and my wife to have something to reminisce and share to our future kids, we made a series of blog posts narrating the events before and after that memorable day. We titled the series, “Our Wedding Chronicles”. We made thirteen posts; each one  very detailed and with accompanying pictures, videos and music.

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The accolades being thrown Manny Pacquiao’s way just keep coming.

After beating Ricky Hatton via a 2nd round knockout last May 3, he was included in Time Magazine’s Top  100 Most Influential People List. His status as the most famous Filipino in the world today is further cemented when the boxing icon also made it to the Forbes’ Celebrity 100 list.

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Check this out sports card hobbyists.

A collector from Australia is selling his collection of assorted Michael Jordan trading  cards with a Buy It Now price of  US$450,000 at eBay. Wow! That’s around PhP21.6M in Philippine peso. If the price is too much for you, you can make a Best Offer. The seller added this note though: “I am willing to accept offers but please do not provide me with unreasonable or ridiculous offers as they will be auto-declined by EBAY. Please do not ask also for a pricing on an individual card as this is auction is for the entire lot.”

Checking out the cards from the collection, I must say that there are really amazing gems on that lot. These are the ones that captured my fancy.

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Before the Mickey Mouse series has started, the prevailing question was — who can defend Superman Dwight Howard?

After one game, the question should now be — who can defend Kobe Bryant?

Dwight Howard finished with 12 points but got 10 of them when he is not guarded, at the free-throw line. He was contained in a 1 of 6 shooting night by Pau Gasol and Andrew Bynum. As a believer, I can’t believe how Dwight was effectively taken out of his comfort zone by the Lakers duo. It also did not help that the Orlando Magic shooters clanged their jumpers all night long shooting at a woeful 29.9% (23 of 77) clip with their most potent weapon, the three-point bomb failing to hit its target 15 times out of 23 attempts.

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