CLEVELAND, OH. – LeBron James was presented his second consecutive NBA MVP, joining nine other NBA players who have won the award in back-to-back seasons.Those familiar names are Wilt Chamberlain, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Moses Malone, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, Tim Duncan, Steve Nash and Bill Russell.

Three of those stars, Russell, Chamberlain and Bird actually took the trophy home three times in a row.

James’ win comes at the heels of a season where he compiled the most impressive stats of his 7-year career that included 29.7 PPG, 7.3 rebounds and 8.6assists.NBA Commissioner David Stern presented the hardware to James Sunday at the University of Akron.

The Cavs star received 116 of a possible 123 first-place votes blowing away all the other candidates. Oklahoma City forward Kevin Durant came in second but was picked first on only four ballots.

One piece of the puzzle for James’ career that remains missing is an NBA Championship. The Cavs have surrounded James with several different player combinations and have yet to find the right mix to bring Cleveland its first NBA Championship.

The most recent group includes Shaquille O’Neal who has won titles for the Los Angeles Lakers and Miami Heat. The Cavs are considered by many as this year’s favorite after winning 61 games this season snagging the top seed in the playoffs.

Copyright ©2010 Sports Climax™

The NHL needs all the P.R. it can get and it took a blunder by a U.S. Senate candidate to get it for them this week.

After the 2010 Winter Olympics hockey ratings were sky-high thanks to an adrenaline filled 3-2 victory by Canada over the U.S. the league missed out on retaining a lot of that interest. With a potential rematch between U.S. Olympic goaltender and MVP of the tournament, Ryan Miller and Canada’s Sidney Crosby just days after the gold medal game, Miller was benched for rest and sat out the game.

The following week, Crosby, for reasons no one in marketing can figure, turned down an offer to do the Top Ten on the David Letterman Show.

Jump to this week when Marc Delphine who is running for a U.S. Senate seat in Oregon accepted a ‘free’ logo from a volunteer and placed it on his website.

Turns out the logo is a trademarked piece belonging to the NHL Columbus Blue Jackets. The silver star wrapped in a star-spangled banner, his designer said, evoked the letter ‘D’ for branding purposes.

Delphine thought the design was original but several people contacted him and advised him of the rip-off.

“They were all like, ‘What are you doing with their logo?’ and I was like, ‘I didn’t make the logo!’ and we pulled it immediately,” said Delphine, a Libertarian candidate. “I’m not interested in any kind of infringement. We don’t even need a logo.”

The current Blue Jackets logo is in the photo above and looks almost identical to the hockey one. It is just been flipped from left to right and the red circle synonymous with the Ohio state flag was removed.

“I don’t know if you know anything about Libertarian candidates, but they typically don’t have a lot of money coming in. I was thinking this was so nice, but it was too good to be true,” said Delphine.

Since discovering the rip-off, Delphine removed it from his site and said, “If anything, I hope this raises awareness for the Columbus Blue Jackets.”

Hopefully it does, Mr. Delphine because when it comes to P.R. and marketing, Gary Bettman and the NHL need all the help they can get.

©2010 Sports Climax™

PHOENIX – The NBA All-Star game on Sunday reminded us why it is sometimes beneficial to suit up a handful of players by popularity as opposed to talent and productivity. That contest is clearly not about pure talent and competition, it is about entertainment and entertain is exactly what Shaquille O’Neal did in front of his hometown fans in Phoenix.With his better years way behind him, who would have thought Shaq would end up putting down 17 points in less than 11 minutes going 8 of 9 from the field. Even more of a stretch was thinking ex-Laker teammate Kobe Bryant and Shaq would be sharing any hardware again, especially an All-Star MVP trophy.

Kobe led the West with 27 points in the 146-119 victory over the East.

When asked about sharing the award with Shaq, Kobe appeared to enjoy the moment but made it clear the players weren’t planning to spend any upcoming holidays together. “We’re not going to go back to the room and watch Steel Magnolias or something like that, you know what I’m saying, crying, all that stuff,” said Kobe. “We had a good time. That’s all.”

“It felt like old times”, said Shaq, “I miss those times”.

One of the game’s lighter moments which made highlight reels around the country was Shaq’s Globetrotter-type bounce-pass through Dwight Howard’s legs followed by a return pass from Chris Paul and a finishing slam dunk by Big Daddy. The play brought a rousing response from the crowd and a row of laughs from both benches.

West starters Phoenix Suns’ forward Amar’e Stoudemire finished with 19 while New Orleans Hornet Chris Paul finished with 14 helpers for the West. LeBron James led the East with 20 points.

For the complete box score visit NBA.com.

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