LITTLE ROCK — LeBron and jersey back on top
LeBron James is No. 1 again - this time, in jersey sales.
The Miami Heat star has the league’s hottest-selling jersey, marking the third time the NBA’s reigning MVP and Finals MVP has held that distinction. James was No. 4 in the most recent rankings, released in April.
Since then, all he’s done is win his third MVP award, a second Olympic gold medal and help the Heat win the NBA championship - the franchise’s second and his first.
“It’s an honor to be No. 1,” said James, who last had the league’s best-selling jersey in April 2011.
The league released its latest sales-rankings list Wednesday, with the New York Knicks leading the team-sales category for the first time since December 2004.
On the players’ list, Oklahoma City’s Kevin Durant checked in at No. 2, six spots higher thanwhere he was in April and likely buoyed by the Thunder reaching the NBA Finals. Kobe Bryant of the Los Angeles Lakers has the league’s No. 3-selling jersey, followed by New York’s Carmelo Anthony, Chicago’s Derrick Rose, Boston’s Rajon Rondo, Miami’s Dwyane Wade, the Los Angeles Clippers’ Blake Griffin, the Lakers’ Dwight Howard and the Clippers’ Chris Paul at No. 10.
The list is based on sales atthe NBA Store in New York and NBAStore.com from April through Monday.
Name change
Tulane is the latest school to join the Big East Conference for football.
“Perfect,” wrote Janice Hough of leftcoastsportsbabe.com, “now they can change the conference name to the ‘Big Easy’ and be done with it.”Easy money
Auburn football coach Gene Chizik was fired two years after winning the national championship. He will be paid $208,334 a month not to coach Auburn for the next three years.
Wrote Reggie Hayes of the News-Sentinel in Fort Wayne, Ind.: “As a result, the Gene Chizik Sympathy Fund has been discontinued.” Blame it on the turkey
Utah State linebacker Bojay Filimoeatu, to the Deseret News, on getting tackled at the Idaho 11 after a 48-yard interception return: “I think I could have scored on that had I not eaten that last plate on Thanksgiving.” Contract quirk
Mack Brown not only makes more than $5 million per year as a football coach and $60,000 as the chairman of the board for the University of Texas Golf Club, but his contract also includes a $750 gift card to McBride’s Guns in Austin.
That should come in handy when the Longhorns turn to the Shotgun formation.
Quote of the day “Just to have that memory together, that’s a great father-son thing.” Camden Fairview Coach Buck James, who will coach his son, Mckinze, in the Class 5A championship game Friday
Sports, Pages 20 on 11/29/2012