Newsday (N.Y.): Golden State MSG-bound as they chase Bulls’ 72-win season

By Art Spander
Special to Newsday

OAKLAND, Calif. — The funny thing with the Golden State Warriors is that they love the funny things, the joke video clips, the needling by their coaches. Basketball, even at the highest level, the NBA, is a game to them, a chance to live it up, laugh it up and maybe because of those two factors win, win, win.

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Copyright © 2016 Newsday. All rights reserved.

S.F. Examiner: Young living good life as Super Bowl host

By Art Spander
Special to The Examiner

He’s never been shy with an opinion, which is to be expected from a man who graduated from law school and, in a sense, graduated from quarterback school. Steve Young could play a good game, a great game at times — who can forget Super Bowl XXIX when he was MVP? — and still talks a wonderful game as an analyst.

Super Bowl 50 isn’t Young’s Super Bowl, to be exact, yet it is his Super Bowl. He’s involved with the Host Committee. He’s involved as an ESPN announcer. And perhaps emotionally he’s involved because the head coach of the Denver Broncos, Gary Kubiak, was Young’s quarterback coach with the 49ers that one magnificent season, 1994, when San Francisco rolled on to the NFL championship, and Steve exorcised any demons that we perceived even if he did not.

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©2016 The San Francisco Examiner

S.F. Examiner: Peytongate places Manning under siege

By Art Spander
Special to The Examiner

A year ago it was Deflategate. This time it’s what, Peytongate? The NFL’s biggest stage, the Super Bowl. The NFL’s biggest nightmare, an intruding, negative story, a distraction, a question about a man who has been the sport’s ambassador, and until now without a hint of scandal.

It seems so perfect, Peyton Manning, 39, about to head through that one-way door toward retirement, receiving the chance of which every athlete dreams, to go out at the top. And yet, as the Broncos quarterback prepares for Super Bowl 50 next week at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, where he’ll be under siege by the Carolina Panthers, Manning also is facing an investigation by the NFL and U.S. Anti-Doping Agency.

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©2016 The San Francisco Examiner

S.F. Examiner: Super Bowl in Silicon, leaving The City with silicone

By Art Spander
Special to The Examiner

So it’s another Not-in-San-Francisco Super Bowl to be played in a city named for another saint, Santa Clara, which used to be full of orchards and now has a stadium where too many 49ers games are filled with regret.

It’s a beautiful place, of course, which is expected when something costs more than a billion dollars. And when it’s named for the denim trousers created by Levi Strauss out of miners’ tent fabric back when sourdough was a description of certain people, not the best-tasting bread anywhere.

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©2016 The San Francisco Examiner

S.F. Examiner: Curry, Panthers converge in greatness

By Art Spander
Special to The Examiner

The jersey is in a safe. “And I won’t tell you where the safe is,” said Stephen Curry, playing a figurative game of keep-away with the skill he plays the actual game of basketball. The jersey is that of the Carolina Panthers, Curry’s other team. At the moment, maybe his primary team.

“I’ve had it for a while,” said Curry. It’s the Panthers’ white jersey, with blue and black numbers and edging, the same as they wore Sunday in mauling the Arizona Cardinals, 49-14.

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©2016 The San Francisco Examiner