Kritik und Lob » el Temer -- to preside Friday night.(The

Hall of Famer Larry Bird sat down with ESPN.com recently and opened up about how he thinks the current era of NBA players compare to his eras stars. And yes, even Larry Legend is surprised at just how much money is pouring into the game now.Q: Whats changed in this league, obviously, is the financial and economic impact of it all. When you guys talk to each other, guys who played 20, 30 years ago, are you as stunned as fans at all the money that has come into the game? A: Id be lying if I told you I thought it would get to this point. I never thought that. Im happy it has. That means the leagues doing well, the owners are doing well, the players are doing well. Thats what it was all about. But you got to remember, when I came into the league, the guys before me were bitchin about how much money I made. So it just goes down the line, so thats how it works.Q: As a former player, do you look at these guys and go, Do you know how lucky you are? Given all the money pouring into the league.A: No, I always tell the kids that you get what you deserve. Just leave the game better than you found it. And its good for everyone when it happens.Q: I saw you said recently in a New Yorker article, My era, you always think thats the greatest era, but Im not so sure anymore. Why do you believe that now? A: Because everybody that plays, no matter if it was 60s, 70s, 80s, they think their eras the best. Well, prove it to me. Like I said earlier, I think we have more stars than they do now. On every team, they had at least one, maybe two. Im talking about Dominique Wilkins -- you just go down the line. But in saying that, I dont think our eras any better than anyone elses, when it comes right down to it.Q: Do you think there are better all-around players before the current era? A: I dont know. Theres some guys I really like to watch play. Draymond Green is fun to watch. All of those [Michigan] State guys are because they defend, and they play, they play together -- thats how I like the game to be played. Move the ball, cut, pass; if you do the right things, youll get it right back. I dont know, I hate to compare eras. Its been so long since I played, but I liked to play the total game. Magic liked to play the total game. Some guys are just scorers. Some guys just defend and rebound. But the guys that are playing now are just as good as what we were when we played.Q: Youve been around the game your whole life. What would you do to put the game in a better place than where its at now? A: I dont know. Its hard, and we work on it continuously, is how the games called. The one thing Ive always been disappointed in is guys driving, jumping into the defensive player and getting calls. Its a league of points. They love to have points on the board. But I think good defenders get beat down sometimes because they dont get to play. Some guys in this league are in here because they play defense. I just wish they would clean up some of the areas in the officiating. Its really not the officials. Its really how the rules are written. But its getting to where guys are just driving, getting bail-out calls by jumping into defensive players, and thats not how the game, in my mind, is supposed to be played. Cheap Adidas Coyotes Jerseys . It is a cliché dragged out by fans and pundits regularly when discussions take place around which teams are better than others. Cheap Coyotes Jerseys . The injury bothered Bledsoe in the Suns victory over the Clippers on Monday and he sat out the teams home loss to Memphis on Thursday night. http://www.cheapcoyotesjerseys.com/?tag=adidas-kevin-connauton-jersey . For the Wild it was their first win of the season and they now have a record of 1-1-2 while the Jets fall to 2-2. Jets start a six game home stand Friday with another divisional game, home to the Dallas Stars. Adidas Dylan Strome Jersey . Jay Feely kicked a 41-yard field goal in overtime, and the Cardinals edged the Tennessee Titans 37-34 in overtime after blowing a 17-point lead late in the fourth quarter. Adidas Darcy Kuemper Jersey .Y. - Detroit goaltender Jonas Gustavsson has earned NHL first star of the week honours after winning in his first three appearances of the season. RIO DE JANIERO -- Its the phrase thats uttered at the start of every Olympics and consists of just four little words -- Let the Games begin. But Friday night, even more than usual, they felt like four of the most potent words in the vocabulary of sports because of what they signaled.Finally, blessedly, and not a moment too soon for Rio de Janeiro, its 2016 Summer Olympic Games have been officially handed off to the athletes now -- not the stumbling organizers and their bumbling contractors, not the IOC fat cats who are too busy picking shrimp cocktail from their teeth to ban all the drug cheats. Or the rock-throwing protesters who bedeviled the running of Brazils Olympic torch relay and showed up by the hundreds again Friday night, prompting security forces to disperse them with tear gas less than a mile from where teams from a record 207 nations marched onto the floor of Maracana Stadium to take part in a rousing opening ceremony.Despite down-to-the-bone budget cuts that left producers of Friday nights show joking We cried -- in fear as they studied more extravagantly funded opening ceremonies, the first Olympic Games held in South America kicked off with a joyous show. It delivered on its planners promise to make up for their relatively modest budget with ingenuity, energy, stirring samples of some of the countrys best indigenous music, and some lighthearted touches that were meant to acknowledge life might not be perfect in Brazil, but theres a lot to love and marvel about here if you suspend judgement and lean in closely enough.From Brazilian recording star Luiz Melodias rendition of Aquele Abraco, the farewell song penned by his legendary countryman Gilberto Gil, to the shows evocation of Brazils ethnic diversity and status as the biggest garden on the planet (this is the home of the Amazon rain forest, after all), the ceremony gave these Games an unmistakable sense of time and place.There were symbolic pleas for peace and tolerance -- a nod to world events beyond Brazil. There were beat-driven Samba, funk carioca, and bossa nova songs that pulled people to their feet and had them dancing in place. In the wide-open spirit of Carnival, Brazils most famous supermodel (Gisele Bundchen) and its most famous transgender model (Lea T) took star turns. There was a street-dancing performance meant to evoke the art that springs from the miserably poor tin-roofed favelas that go staggering up the hills and valleys around Rio like makeshift Lego cities, one red-blocked unit stacked atop another; the segment was intended to be a reminder that beauty and wonder live even in the most unlikeliest and challenging places.Pele, now 75 years old and still the most famous sports star this soccer-crazed country has produced, grew up in one such slum. His absence here Friday because of ill health was felt.But hundreds of other notable athletes did show. Swimmer Michael Phelps, the 22-time Olympic medalist, carried the flag for the American team, which arrived earlier in the lineup than usual because Estados Unidos is the Portuguese spelling of United States. The first-ever Refugee Olympic Team, which this year is commposed of 10 athletes from strife-torn South Sudan, Syria, Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, marched in under the five-ring Olympic flag.dddddddddddd Sprinter Etimoni Timuani, the only athlete from the South Pacific nation of Tuvalu, strode in rocking a ribboned sarong, the Austrians wore lederhosen, the Micronesian team wore head wreaths that appeared woven from palm fronds and Chinas team acknowledged their hosts by waving little Brazilian flags as well as their own.Brazilians have understandably been of two minds about hosting these Olympics because of the economic crises and political upheaval that have developed since the IOC awarded Rio these Games in 2008. Times were far better then. Theyre more fractious now. Crime has spiked. The Zika virus remains a concern. Promises that the Games would leave an improved infrastructure and cleaned-up waterways around Rio have not been kept, making the estimated $4.6 billion price of these Olympics (it spikes to $20 billion counting infrastructure costs) feel unconscionable to many.Brazil also has two sitting presidents at the moment because one, Dilma Rousseff, is scheduled to go to trial at the end of this month in impeachment proceedings, which opened the way for the other -- interim pick Michel Temer -- to preside Friday night.(The opening ceremony producers denied at their pre-show news conference Thursday that they had been told to create some sound effects to play if Temer was booed, which he was, when he took the podium to declare the Games open.)IOC president Thomas Bach acknowledged earlier this week that the road to the Rio Games had been long and testing, and the preparations were challenging.In one last flourish, the Olympic flame was brought into Maracana Stadium by Brazilian tennis champion Gustavo Kuerten, handed off to retired basketball star Hortencia Marcari to Vanderlei Cordeiro de Lima, the marathoner who lost gold when he was attacked during the 2004 Summer Games. He lit the cauldron.We never give up, we never give up, Rio Organizing Committee president Carlos Nuzman said in a stem winder of a speech to the crowd. Lets stay together when differences challenge us.Much of Brazils troubled backstory will temporarily fade a bit into the background at daybreak Saturday, when the competitions begin in earnest with 16 sports contested and seven gold medals to be won. Over the next 16 days, the conversation will turn more to whether sprinter Usain Bolt can possibly win again, or whether Marta can lead Brazils womens soccer team to a gold medal. Would huge gold medal hauls by American gymnast Simone Biles and multievent U.S. swimmer Katie Ledecky justify the talk that they already deserve to be placed among their sports greats?The best antidote for nearly everything that ails the Olympic Games has always been the transcendental contributions of the athletes themselves. There are roughly 10,500 of them here. Like Rio itself, they reliably provoke wonder. And they sure as hell know how to put on a show. ' ' '