Hole Punch Sports

Denver Nuggets star Carmelo Anthony went for 50 points for the first time in his career Friday night against the New York Knicks. It was a very efficient night for Carmelo, who shot 17-for-28 from the floor and missed just one of his sixteen free throw attempts. He also passed for five assists, which beats his season average of three and a half. I spent the evening with my younger siblings and missed the game completely, but if you want to be like me and catch up with some rather-tame highlights, click below.

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, and really family, I decided to recap some of the best/most-telling scores of the college football regular season for anyone who hasn’t seen them: CU 24, Wyoming 0 BYU 35, Utah State 17 BYU 52, Wyoming 0 CU 35, Texas A&M 34 BYU 26, Utah 23 (OT) Enjoy the highlights! Also, though it has nothing to do with how awesome my colleges are: Stanford 55, USC 21

The Denver Nuggets beat the L.A. Lakers 105-79 last night at the Pepsi Center in our best win of the young season. I’d been looking forward to this game for weeks, but on the way home from work yesterday I bought Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and, well, I barely caught any of the Nuggets game. Go ahead and judge me, but then try racing down a mountain with a handgun on a snowmobile and change your mind. It’s a great game, even better than the first Modern Warfare . Anyway, have some highlights, and be sure to stick around for Ty Lawson’s dunk at the end:

The greatest championship ever was won on January 25, 1998, when the Denver Broncos upset the Green Bay Packers in Super Bowl XXXII. Why do I call it the greatest? The Broncos are my favorite team in any sport: I’d root for them even if I was playing against them. But the stars aligned so well for that team that I will never root for a group of athletes in quite the same way again. First off, the agony: the 1996 Broncos had burst out of the gates to a scorching 12-1 start and clinched homefield advantage way too early. They began resting players, they said, but perhaps really just screwing around, and I remember a picture in the paper of someone like Alfred Williams trying to kick a field goal in sweats. Not that you can’t relax a little bit, but the Broncos seemed satisfied with their ability to take care of business and were just waiting for the playoffs to begin. John Elway, the 36-year-old quarterback in his fourteenth year, would finally get the chance to return to the Super B...

Carmelo Anthony and the Denver Nuggets continued their torrid start to the season tonight with a 133-123 win at home over the Memphis Grizzlies. Anthony scored 42 points in an effort that gave flashbacks to last year’s playoffs. He hit 15 of 26 field goals, including a three, and converted eleven of his twelve attempts from the stripe. Totally effective and, as far as I could tell after missing most of the first half, totally in the flow of the game. 26 shots isn’t bad at all, especially when Anthony’s that on. Carmelo’s point totals just keep going up, too: 30 in the opener against Utah and 41 the next night in Portland before his answer to life tonight. The Nuggets, of course, are 3-0 and looking great. Tonight was a relatively safe win; even though Memphis was competitive in the first half, I saw the scores were in the 60s and knew the pace favored Denver. The opening night win over the Jazz was also lovely, especially when Carmelo missed a three, then tipped away a weak outlet...

Brett Favre and the Minnesota Vikings captured the season series sweep over their former employer/divisional rival Green Bay Packers today with a 38-26 win in Green Bay . Favre was outstanding, throwing for four touchdown passes and none of his sometimes-characteristic picks (though he has only three this season). He continued what has been, by any measure, a fantastic season, which is all the more impressive because Favre turned 40 last month. Of course, it helps to have Adrian Peterson on your team—Green Bay’s leading rusher was Favre’s replacement, Aaron Rodgers, who had an awesome game statistically and is having an impressive overall year himself. Rodgers has already turned out much better than I ever thought he’d be. Nothing about this game was a surprise to me, though, especially after the Vikings’ win over the Packers last month. And the Vikings are widely regarded as a superior team. But honestly, the Vikings were gonna win today because they have Brett (freakin’) Favre....

The Baltimore Ravens just ended the Denver Broncos’ six-game, season-long winning streak with a dominating 30-7 victory at M&T Bank Stadium. All season long Broncos fans have asked themselves: how good is this team, really? The Broncos have won close games against tough opponents and dominated bad ones, suggesting they’re among the NFL’s elite. Today they were annihilated by a Ravens team outplaying them in seemingly all phases of the game. But the Broncos aren’t as bad as they looked. A few things I noticed during the game: 1. The Ravens have to be one of the worst teams to play coming off a bye week. It’s not like there’s some big secret to Baltimore’s defensive prowess over the past decade: just that the Ravens are, even by NFL standards, a very physical team. Even in the first quarter the sound and violence of their hits stood out. While we had an extra week to prepare for the Ravens (as they did for us), it’s hard to scheme around getting smacked in the face time after ...