Kendrick Lamar turns 27, while Tupac Shakur (left) would’ve turned 44

Starting Five

1. Chi-Normous

The Blackhawks ground the Lightning 2-0 in Game 6 to claim the Stanley Cup, their third of the past six years. An Original Six team hoists the trophy, the realm is saved.

2. Living In The Limelight

After 41 years as a highly popular prog rock band (with an intensely loyal following), the Canadian trio Rush at last make the cover of the Rolling Stone. There’s (the scantest) hope for you yet, Journey.

I wonder whether this speech at the long-overdue Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction two years ago, an entity whose strings are pulled by RS founder Jann Wenner, had anything to do with it. Or whether Jann realized it may finally be time to appeal to his mag’s aging demo.

3. Take, Take Me Home

(to Africa)

Park anywhere you like, sir

The stunt promos keep coming. Last week on the date of the release of Orange is the New Black on Netflix, the Rachel Dolezal kerfuffle broke out. This past weekend, as Jura$$ic World opened globally, a flood in the country of Georgia led to the mass escape of animals from the zoo in Tbiliisi.

Fleas fled. Lambs are on the lam. Governor Andrew Cuomo felt compelled to tell the public that “the animals could be next door or they could be in Mexico.”

Honestly, though, it’s an awful situation, as a prized white lion was shot in the head for no good reason and six wolves were also exterminated. One zoo worker, Guliko Chitadze, who only last month lost an arm in an attack by a tiger, perished in the flood. Side note: It’s difficult to swim with one arm.

4. Dipsea Doodle

Pilcher, a retired financier (good work if you can get it), crosses the finish line at Stinson Beach

The Dipsea a 7.2-mile running race that began in 1905 in the hills north of San Francisco  and is the oldest trail-running race in America, was won on Sunday by 58 year-old Brian Pilcher. A former winner of the race in 2009, Pilcher did not have the fastest time, but the race is staggered so that the very old and very young are given incremental head starts based on their ages. This is, after all, a liberal bastion of the USA.

Pitcher, from nearby Ross, Calif., started with nearly an 11-minute head start ahead of the fastert runners, which is about a 2-mile head start for men of that pace.

5. Wherefore Whitlock?

The smuggest of mugs

On Friday afternoon ESPN made it two-for-two this spring on deposing editors-in-chief of its spawned Los Angeles-based sites, announcing that Jason Whitlock would not be in any way involved with The Undefeated, a black-centric site (that is yet to launch) that was tailor-made for him.

Ooooookay. So now ESPN is simply spending a lot of money on a man who alienates people wherever he goes and suffers from a grave condition of megalomania. What next? Whitlock is intelligent; his problem is that he’s keenly unaware of the fact that others are, too. Doctors refer to is at Mariotti Syndrome.

This pummeling in Deadspin a month or so back didn’t help….

Music 101

Bad Reputation

Suddenly I’m on the street/Seven years disappeared below my feet

Not the Joan Jett version — this is early ’90s troubadour Freedy Johnston. It appears at the end at the end of long-forgotten gem of a film from that era called Kicking and Screaming, which is so much better than the Will Ferrell film of the same title.

Remote Patrol 

Game 6: Dubs at Cavs

ABC 9 p.m.

Do us this one solid, John Skipper: Whenever the series ends, either tonight or Friday, bring Bill Simmons onto the set and allow him to say, “Can I talk now? It’s been like, five and a half weeks!”

The Magna Carta turns 800 years old today. It’s not so important what card you get it for its birthday, it’s just real important that you sign it. If you are keeping score, Magna Carta Holy Grail turns 2 on July 4.

Starting Five

“I’m glad the end of the world’s working out well for somebody,” he told Samwell. Yes, but not for you, Jon Snow.

1. Snow Fall

The judges will also accept “Et Tu, Olly?”, “Arya Kidding Me?” “Keeping Up With the Sands”, “That Dragon is Draggin’.” 

Revenge, served colder than the average temperature of Hardhome, was the main dish on the Season 5 finale of Game of Thrones.

Arya avenged the death of Silvio (from Season 1).

Brienne avenged the death of Renly Baratheon.

The Sands avenged the death of Oberyn Martell.

Alliser, Olly, and other members of the Night’s Watch avenged all the slights, real or imagined, that they feel took place because of Lord Jon Snow.

Cersei Lannister: Naked Launch

Meanwhile, a show that has long been known for being brutal to young women may have had its cruelest episode yet: Arya is inflicted with blindness; the Lannister daughter is fatally poisoned just as she is beginning to look as if she has a future in runway modeling; Sansa may have Butch & Sundance’d to her death off the walls of Winterfell — or maybe the snow, small “s”, broke her fall; Daenerys can’t get her dragon to start and is captured by the Dothraki; Stannis’ wife hangs herself; and Cersei — gasp! — has to endure a haircut without a glass of wine (honestly, that Walk of Shame would’ve been so much more glorious if she’d been toting a pair of stiletto’s and a Starbucks coffee.

Sepinwall’s review.…and Greenwald’s recap.

2. To Cav and To Cav Not

LeBron went for 40, 14 and 11, but even Drew Carey had a better supporting cast.

After three close games to begin the NBA Finals, the Cavs lose their second in a row by at least 13 points. The Warriors went small, which behooves them, and then so did the Cavs, who are not as well-hooved when they do so.

Timofey Mozgov has been Cleveland’s second-best player. He scored 28 in Game 4. He got 9 minutes of play and scored 0 points in Game 5. You take him out for J.R. Smith, but J.R. Smith plays every game as if it’s a Tuesday night in November in Milwaukee. He just never amps up his game.

I don’t know what Cleveland’s answer should be. I hear Michael Jordan is feeling frisky again. Sign MJ for Game 6?

3. Ches King

These Ducks don’t waddle. Cheserek broke the tape but Oregon finished 1-2-3 in the 5,000 and won the team outdoor championship.

Oregon sophomore Edward Cheserek wins the Men’s 5,000 at the NCAA Outdoor Track & Field Championships in Eugene. In just four semesters, King Ches, a native of Kenya who attended high school in Newark, has already won EIGHT individual NCAA titles.

2013 Cross Country National Champion

2014 Cross Country National Champion

2014 Indoor 3000 N.C.

2014 Indoor 5000 NC

2014 Outdoor 10,000 NC

2015 Indoor Mile NC

2015 Indoor Distance Medley Relay NC

2015 Outdoor 5,000 NC

At a school that gave the track world both Steve Prefontaine and the Nike brand, Cheserek is neck and neck in terms of legacy.

4. “Break a Leg,” They Said, And Dave Grohl Did

An epic set by Grohl and the FF

I’m a big Dave Grohl fan even if I think Foo Fighters are no more than a solid B+ band. Anyway, who cares what you think, JW? On Saturday night the Fighters of Foo were playing a gig in Goteborg, Sweden when the former Nirvana drummer tripped and fell offstage and broke his leg.

No one could have handled it any better, though. Grohl spoke to the crowd, promised him that he’d return and that the band would finish the set (this is the man who promised, “I’ll stick around…I’ll stick around” after all) after he visited the hospital, and then did exactly that, playing from a chair.

I wonder if the “Get Well Soon” card from Letterman has already arrived…

5. Dano, Meet Dino

“To the sounds of old T. Rex….” thank you, Roger Daltrey.

Last week’s love for an intelligent, lovingly made film (Love & Mercy) gets trounced in cold-blooded fashion by the oversized reptiles of Jurassic World. The sequel had a prehistoric opening weekend at the box office ($511.8 million globally, only $2.8 million shy of The Avengers).

Bryce Dallas Howard, whose dad used to go fishing with Sheriff Andy Taylor, is on to bigger creatures (and I don’t just mean Chris Pratt)

Opie Cunningham’s daughter did okay for herself on this gig.

Music 101 

Ask The Lonely

When you’re feeling love’s not fair/You just ask the lonely/When you’re lost in deep despair/You just ask the lonely

Hate on Journey all you want — I did when I was in high school and the band was at its zenith — but they were a hit machine that created a bunch of “Turn it up” while driving in your car hits. This is one of them. The video is worth watching just for all of Steve Perry’s catastrophic hair and costume choices. A world-class voice in some serious need of fashion and dance move advice.

Remote Patrol

Stanley Cup: Game 6

NBC 8 p.m.

I think we need a Game 7, don’t you?

by John Walters

Happy Birthday (34), Adriana Lima, a Brazilian beauty with the capital of Peru as a surname.

Starting Five

1. Head Games

I’m just wondering, Susie B., if LeBron had been wearing the headband, might all of this have turned out differently?

2. OITNBeyotches!

It’s nice to see a different Taylor S. (Schilling) on the cover of the Rolling Stone. With her Orange Is The New Black-ish co-star, Laura Prepon. Although aren’t most of the cast members of OITNB African-American? Where them women at? Did they escape with Richard Matt and David Sweat?

Meanwhile, perfect timing on that Rachel Dolezal story, eh?

3. The Molly Trolley

Seidel became the first Notre Dame woman to win an NCAA individual track championship

A bizarre race in the women’s 10,000 meter final at the NCAA Outdoor Track and Field Championships in Eugene last night. With four laps remaining defending champ Emma Bates of Boise State, who was at the head of the pack, put in her kick. Bates opened up a 40 meter, or nearly eight-second, lead.

Then she bonked. Within one lap Bates, whose coach had advised her to run a killer lap with four to go, lost the lead to Molly Seidel of Notre Dame, who never relinquished it. Seidel, a junior from Hartland, Wis., would break the tape in 33.18:37, winning by seven seconds herself.

One of my closest friends in the world ran XC for Notre Dame (he was a teammate  of Nicholas Sparks) and was infamous for punching anyone who cut him off in the back. He made XC and track a contact sport. Today, I offer this item up to him in tribute.

*Because I didn’t want to write the 5 millionth Little Richard-related hed for this first name.

4. Stepping Down…

When Murdoch does one day expire, I expect his last word to be “Rosebud.”

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo (TWTR stock rises 3% on the news this morning), effective July 1, and FOX CEO and founder Rupert Murdoch, whose age requires carbon dating (he’s 84). On the day Costolo announced he’d be returning to Casterly Rock, Twitter announced it would put no limit on Direct Messages, which will facilitate the exchanges between myself and Mr. Murdoch.

In an age when Mark Zuckerberg took Facebook to a 400% jump since its low of $18-ish and Reed Hastings was able to lead Netflix to a leap of 1,000% since its low of $60-ish, Twitter’s stock price has actually fallen.

5. Tennessee, Anyone? 

Opening Act, Don Draper, who will teach the world to sing in perfect harmony….

The 14th annual Bonnaroo Music & Arts fest began yesterday in Manchester, Tenn. I’d go but at this age the only time I want to wait in line for a Port-a-John is if I’m wearing a bib number and running shorts.

Headliners: Alabama Shakes, Kendrick Lamar, Tears for Fears (for m-m-my generation), Mumford and Sons, My Morning Jacket, Florence and the Machine, Robert Plant and the curtain closer will be Billy Joel. Is there anyone out there still excited to see Billy Joel? I like his songs, but I’ve got to say, “Man, what are you doing here?”

Music 101

When Will I See You Again

Hoooh/Hahhhh/Hahhhhh/Hoooooh/Precious Moments

You can’t do 70s Philly soul, as it was known, any better than The Three Degrees did this. I grew up on a diet of performances such as this on the Mike Douglas Show, so you have no right to judge me, okay? This song actually climbed to No. 2 on the Billboard chart and hit No. 1 on the adult contemporary chart. Somewhere between the Supremes and En Vogue….

Remote Patrol

USA vs. Sweden

ESPN 8 p.m.

Sweden’s Jessica Landstrom, performing an illegal move

The U.S. Women, for all the adulation they receive (you’re welcome, says Brandi Chastain) last won the quadrennial World Cup in 1999. Tonight they face Sweden, who have just as many Maxim cover-ready performers on their roster and are ranked fifth in the world (USA is No. 2 behind Germany).

by John Walters

D! Happy 33rd birthday to the best women’s basketball player I ever saw…

Starting Five

Wood’s goal in the 88th minute gave the U.S. Men their first ever win in Germany. Die Mannschaft, Die!

1. Wood, You Believe?

Quite a fortnight for United States soccer: take down Sepp Blatter and his evil minions; the men win a pair of friendlies on the home pitches of Netherlands and reigning World Cup champion Germany; and the women win the first match of their World Cup. Take a bow, soccer moms. Take. A. Bow.

If she hadn’t taken control of the car pool back in 2005, where would US soccer be?

Yesterday in Cologne there would be no after-saves (!) for the Deutsch, as Team USA, led by their German coach, Jurgen Klinsmann, recovered from an early 1-0 deficit to vanquish the hosts. Mario Goetze, who is somebody that I used to know, scored the opener in the 12th minute for Die Mannschaft, but then Jeff Bradley’s Nephew lofted a beautiful lead pass to the sublimely named Mix Diskerud (yes, he’s on our side), who scooted in the equalizer in the 41st minute.

Then in the 87th minute Wood, a 22 year-old Hawaiian who last Friday night scored the game-winner in the 90th minute of USA’s 4-3 win over Oranje (say it ain’t so, Dodgy Flapper!), fielded a pass outside the penalty box, swiveled, and booted a seeing-eye strike past the German goalkeeper, who is now working in a shipyard in Hamburg.

Wood bypassed college and has actually lived and played in Germany since 2007

Pretty good week for Bobby Wood. Two game-winninng goals on the home pitches of two of the world’s more venerable soccer powers. And he was a sub in both matches. Watch the video here while listening to it in Deutsch.

2. New York Post-Mortem

The best NY Post hed ever. My runner-up would be: “Wacko Jacko Backo,” about the return of Michael Jackson

The man who gave the world this headline in 1983, Vinnie Musetto, died at the age of 74 on Tuesday. Here’s a very entertaining (especially if you are in the biz) tale surrounding the creation of that hed (an editor questions whether or not it is in fact a topless bar and Musetto, echoing the thoughts and aspirations of quipsters the world over, retorts, “It’s gotta be a topless bar! This is the greatest [bleeping’] headline of my career”).

Almost as a tribute to Musetto’s legacy, Tuesday was also the day that most of us began to see the above hed from the East Oregonian, “northeastern Oregon’s largest regional newspaper since 1875.” I only wish that Venditte’s first name were Gil, because then you could make a claim that this was true.

3. It’s About….Time

Ironically, it’s the Warriors who have the cavalier attitude and the Cavaliers who are playing like Warriors.

LeBron James is 30 years old and playing in his fifth straight NBA Finals. Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green are all at least three years his junior and making their NBA Finals debut. While I can’t fault for one moment Curry’s effort in this series, it’s clear that what I tweeted on Friday has thus far come to pass: the intangibles have taken over.

LeBron, who is averaging 40 points per game this series, just wants it that much more and he has infused at least three of his teammates, none of whom are American — Timofey Mozgov (Russia), Tristan Thompson (Canada) and Matthew Dellavedova (Australia) — with that same sense of urgency.

Then again, we are only three games in and all three games have been within a point or tied in the final minute. No one is choking here. Two fantastic teams playing a fantastic series thus far.

As I said Friday, the loss of Irving actually provides LeBron with a once-in-a-career opportunity. Win these Finals and you have a permanent SHUT UP! card to hand every remaining (foolish) critic. It’s too bad LBJ won Sportsman of the Year in 2012, because this is the year in which he may truly deserve it.

4. Safe  –and Yet Also In Danger — at Home

“Hi-YAA!” Miss Piggy couldn’t have done it any better than Crosby

Elbow Room: In the Texas 4A state final last week, Huffman defeated Needville (neighboring town of Wantville) 6-4. But the real story was the not one but two subtle elbow shivers that Needville catcher Megan Crosby delivered to Huffman players as they were coming in to score at home. The umpires missed both of them. Video here.

Update: Crosby will skate on the Blackhawks third line for the remainder of the Stanley Cup finals.

5. Raising — and Re-Raising — The Bar

Morris

The NCAA Track & Field Outdoor Championships commence today yesterday from Track Town, U.S.A. (Eugene), and the big story should be pole vaulters Sandi Morris (left) and Demi Payne (below). Morris and Payne between them, this year alone, have accounted for the NINE HIGHEST INDOOR VAULTS in NCAA history and have also EACH reset the OUTDOOR NCAA record — TWICE.

They’re pretty amazing young women and both will be high on NBC’s radar next summer. Morris is the reigning NCAA Indoor champ while Payne’s vault of 15-7 indoors last winter is the highest vault, indoors or outdoors, that any collegian has ever done. I cannot wait until the real sport blogs discover this pair. In the meantime, here’s Sandi’s blog (click for the title alone) and my story in Newsweek should be up very soon. Prelims are tonight, finals on Saturday. Tune in to ESPN or ESPNU.

Music 101

Pumped Up Kicks

All the other kids with the pumped-up kicks/Better run, better run/Outrun my bullets

It’s rare to hear a perfectly crafted pop song this millennium. Even rarer to hear one that references a 1990s footwear product. But Mark Foster and his band, Foster the People, created just that in 2011 as this catchy tune made it all the way to No. 3 on the Billboard chart. Foster, for years a struggling commercial jingles writer, crafted the catchiest melody of his career and then kept it for himself.

Remote Patrol

Game 4: Warriors at Cavs

ABC 9 p.m.

David Lee played as many minutes in Games 1 and 2 as David Lee Roth, but his 13 breakout minutes in Game 3 showed Steve Kerr that he has a Warrior who is a warrior.

If the Cavs win, it’s over. If the Warriors win, we’ve got a series. Go Warriors! This series is too delicious to want it to go anything less than 7. Besides, I’m wide open the rest of this month.

by John Walters

Starting Five

1. Merrell Noden

Memories of Merrell Noden, a former writer at Sports Illustrated who passed on May 31  from cancer at the age of 58, I believe…. the first thing to know about Merrell is that he was a kind soul. I’ll get to the fact that in high school at the Lawrenceville (N.J.) School he ran a 4:11 mile, that he graduated magna cum laude from Princeton, that he played guitar in a rock band, that he was a conscientious and erudite writer.

But mostly Merrell was part of a generation of SI writers/employees that included Jack McCallum, Alexander Wolff, Austin Murphy, Richard O’Brien, Damian Slattery, Bill Nack, Steve Wulf, Bambi Wulf, Greg Kelly, Richard Demak, Kelli Anderson and Steve Rushin who were not just incredibly gifted people, but real MEN (and WOMEN). They were characters who had character.

As I said, Merrell was kind. You’d walk into SI and he’d be sitting in Richard O’Brien’s office, or Jack McCallum’s or Greg Kelly’s or Richard Demak’s (Rushin’s was too minuscule, though Merrell occasionally squeezed his six-foot-three frame in there; Steve is almost 6’5″ so it was like peering into a clown car). One or more of the above would also be within and they’d be having some spirited conversation about sports, but just as likely about literature or movies or politics. The melody never wavered: escalating voices, interruptions, and then a quip (from McCallum or Rushin, ordinarily) that led to laughter. Verse, chorus, verse, ad infinitum.

You’d pass by, completely in over your head, but Merrell would ask how you were doing. He’d be genuinely inquisitive.

I was a dedicated runner at the time, training for my first marathon, and Merrell, who was possessed of god-like running talent that was incongruent with his 6-foot-3 (thereabouts) frame, would ask me how my training was going. But he’d take it further than that. He’d give me training tips. Then, he’d take me out on long runs, 10- to 15-milers on the weekends. We weren’t close friends — I was the most in-over-his-head figure at the Time-Life Building since Peggy Olson, and he was a respected name on the masthead. None of that ever mattered to Merrell.

Merrell was kind, but he was animated and opinionated. And uncompromising in his values. I loved that about him. You’d hear him arguing with the fellows above all the time, but there was never any hostility in his or their voices. Rancor? Yes. Fulmination? Of course. But there was always genuine comity, and Merrell’s innate decency had a lot to do with that.

Shortly before I arrived at SI, two writers who were about Merrell’s age got into an actual fist fight during a “friendly” basketball game during a staff outing in Paradise Valley, Arizona. It became legendary within the halls of the 18th floor, dubbed by one pithy colleague as both “The Fracas in the Cactus” and “The Maricopa Ropa Dopa.” Merrell was a regular in SI hoops games, and he might have argued a call — he definitely would’ve — but there was something in his spirit that was too warm to ever get into a fight. At least as far as I ever witnessed.

Merrell wrote primarily about track and field at a time when the sport was beginning its long spiral downward from having garnered front-of-the-book coverage (thank you, Ben Johnson). He’d cover the Millrose Games at Madison Square Garden and I’d be the reporter who would tag along, gathering quotes where I could, but mostly just observing Merrell and learning. I was a track geek and thus constantly in awe of how some of the sport’s great figures at the time (Ray Flynn, PattiSue Plummer, etc.) would converse with Merrell with such mutual respect. Marty Liquori, another Garden State native who’d actually been the third U.S. high school boy to break the 4-minute mile and was seven years his senior, spoke to Merrell as if they had a weekly poker game together.

Merrell would often sprinkle his prose with a quote from Shakespeare (“Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown” appeared in the first story I’d fact-checked) and having been a pre-med in college, I as often as not failed to recognize them. These were pre-Google days, kids. You couldn’t just type the words into the search bar. You could spend hours going through Bartlett’s quotations or you could search out the most empathetic and intelligent co-worker available for help, which was always Richard O’Brien. That Rich, a Yale grad who like Merrell came with absolutely no Ivy League airs, was probably Merrell’s best friend (he delivered the eulogy) is no surprise.

One of my favorite things about having known Merrell was witnessing the way he’d gape at the myriad raw talents of our friend and colleague, Steve Rushin. It wasn’t just that Steve was the most precociously talented writer not just on the staff but probably in the history of the magazine. It was that Steve did everything well. Steve, who is at least 6 foot 4, went running with Merrell once and the former 4:11 miler was astounded that with no running background Steve could be that fast.

Suddenly, Merrell took to becoming Steve’s Salazar. Coaching him on his first New York City Marathon. You could see, and be amused by the fact, that this was so much more important to Merrell than it actually was to Steve. With a minimal amount of training, Steve turned in a 3:01 in his marathon debut. Merrell was gob-smacked.

Theirs was a special friendship. Steve was on his way to being a rock star at SI, and Merrell was not on that track, but there was never an ounce of professional jealousy from the former to the latter. Rather, Merrell was almost like a big brother to Steve and Steve was a gracious enough soul to appreciate what a friend he had in Merrell.

Steve, like Merrell, was always down-to-earth. Like Merrell, he was also always open to a spirited debate, preferably after midnight at The Emerald Inn on Columbus Avenue. It was always fun to share a booth with those two men — every argument only incited more laughter and more pints — except for the fact that those booths were not built to accommodate humans north of six-feet in height.

I’m sure I’m forgetting many wonderful anecdotes about Merrell, who is survived by his wife, Eva, and their children, Miranda and Sam. There are so many people at SI who were closer to him than I was and any number of them could do a superior job to the one I am doing here.

But I just smile every time I think of him. There was wit and there was intelligence and there was a ferocity of spirit to Merrell, but there was nothing snarky or mean-spirited or cheap (and he was smart enough to use more descriptive adjectives than those). I wonder when the wunder kids at Deadspin or Buzzfeed pass if anyone will ever say such a thing about how they approached their jobs and treated their colleagues.

Merrill Noden was a true prince among men at a time when Sports Illustrated had a bountiful supply of them. He is gone too soon, but everyone who knew him is enriched for having had that privilege.