The Los Angeles Lakers became all too familiar with Leandro Barbosa after the "Brazilian Blur" came of age in Game 6 of their tense first-round NBA playoff series against the Phoenix Suns a year ago.
Since then, Barbosa's game and confidence have been on the rise. As the fastest of the high-speed Suns -- and a leading candidate for the NBA's sixth man award -- Barbosa should play a major role when the Lakers and Suns open their rematch series today.
"I can bring speed for the team," Barbosa said after the Suns worked out on Friday. "This is what we want to do. Coach wants us to speed the game. They're going to try to slow down to the way they like to play, but we cannot let that happen. We've got to be fast on the court."
Barbosa was fast when he came to the Suns in 2003, but it took a while for his game to catch up.
He improved steadily and was thrust into the US spotlight a year ago when the Suns played at Los Angeles in Game 6, trailing the best-of-seven series 3-2. Raja Bell was suspended for the contest for throwing Kobe Bryant to the court the previous game, leading to Barbosa's first playoff start.
He went on to score 22 points on 7-for-9 shooting as the Suns won in overtime. In the process, he took an elbow to the mouth from Bryant, went to the locker room for four stitches on his lip, then came back and finished the game.
"The coach put me in a situation where I'm supposed to play and I think I did a great job, especially because we didn't have Raja," Barbosa said. "I think what I had in my mind was to be aggressive and everything will be good."
He kept it up in Game 7, scoring 26 points on 10-for-12 shooting as the Suns won in a rout to take the series 4-3.
Barbosa came to the Suns thanks to a trade with San Antonio that brought Phoenix the 28th, and final, pick in the 2003 draft. The Suns chose Barbosa, then a skinny 20-year-old who barely spoke a word of English.
The transition to living in Arizona was difficult.
"It was tough, especially for me to get comfortable on the court because I couldn't speak with anybody," he said.
"Now it's totally different. I can understand and speak it. I'm very happy," he said.
Over time, Barbosa said he learned English by "just listening and asking people what does that mean."
After scoring 20 or more points four times in last year's playoffs, Barbosa's game and role expanded this season.
"That's what he brings on both sides of the floor -- speed that's hard for people to handle," coach Mike D'Antoni said.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier