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Kiszla vs. Durando: Will the Nuggets win it all again in 2023-24?

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:15:40 GMT

Kiz: When you’re the NBA champ, it’s not the champagne hangover that gets you, but the daily grind that makes it so hard to repeat. Here. We. Go. Starting Tuesday night, when the Nuggets raise their championship banner at Ball Arena, if it’s not LeBron James hellbent on trying to take down Denver a notch, it will be Kevin Durant, Jayson Tatum or Giannis Antetokounmpo itching for a fight. Are the Nuggets built for this challenge? Or is their quest to repeat doomed to defeat?Durando: When your roster’s depth gets worse, at least on paper, and other teams make ambitious improvements (welcome to being a champion in a salary cap league, Nuggets), the onus is on returning players to find ways to turn it up a notch. Otherwise, the game catches up with you eventually. The good news? I think there’s still clearly space for Denver’s second-, third- and fourth-best players to reach new individual heights. And when you share the floor with a surgeon like Niko...

Michael Porter Jr. on Lakers-Nuggets offseason trash talk: “I haven’t heard anything”

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:15:40 GMT

Michael Porter Jr. didn’t even play in either game against Milwaukee in 2021-22, yet he still remembers the extra motivation he felt to beat the Bucks from the seat of his chair.“When we would play them, it’s a different feeling when you’re playing the NBA champs,” Porter recalled Monday, on the eve of Denver’s first official game as a defending champion. “You just know if you can beat them, you’re up there with the best teams. So guys are gonna come in here and want to beat us just to prove that they’re one of the best teams as well. … I think we’ve gotta embrace that and realize, ‘Man, even the teams that we don’t feel like are threats to us, they’re gonna come out and try to beat us.'”Then there’s the opening-night opponent — very much a threat to Denver — that has half organically, half artificially generated extra bulletin board material this offseason, as if spoiling a team’s ...

Monterey Park releases video of hit-and-run involving box truck driver

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:15:40 GMT

Authorities in Monterey Park have released surveillance video of a violent hit-and-run crash involving a box truck with the aim of catching the driver who caused it.The collision happened at the intersection of New Avenue and Garvey Avenue at about 4:30 p.m. on Oct. 18.Surveillance video from two angles shows the driver of a white box truck fail to stop at a red light, plow into a white sedan, and then drive away.Surveillance cameras captured the driver of a box truck run a red light and collided with a sedan in Monterey Park, Calif. on Oct. 18, 2023. (City of Monterey Park)Surveillance cameras captured the driver of a box truck run a red light and collided with a sedan in Monterey Park, Calif. on Oct. 18, 2023. (City of Monterey Park)Surveillance cameras captured the driver of a box truck run a red light and collided with a sedan in Monterey Park, Calif. on Oct. 18, 2023. (City of Monterey Park)The occupants of the sedan had to be rescued using the “jaws of life,” Monterey Park Pol...

Sears reopened a store in Burbank and shoppers have thoughts

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:15:40 GMT

Stepping into the Burbank Town Center feels a lot like visiting your typical shopping mall in 2023. There's a bustling food court, some department stores, large footprint spaces reconfigured as a gym and batting cages and several vacant storefronts.But as of this week, a familiar sight now welcomes shoppers: Sears.Once a titan of brick-and-mortar industry with hundreds of locations across the globe, Sears has fallen on hard times with the vast majority of its stores closing up shop and shuttering doors for good. The company filed for bankruptcy and liquidated most of its assets, coming out of bankruptcy with fewer than 25 stores remaining, and that number has continued to dwindle. As of May 2023, there were only 11 Sears locations left in the world. Just last year, Sears bid adieu to the Burbank Town Center, leaving the mall with an anchor store-sized hole to fill. Despite the closure, the presence of Sears still loomed, with intact signage and storefront still visible across its th...

What we know about the pilot accused of trying to bring down a Horizon Air jet

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:15:40 GMT

Joseph David Emerson is facing 167 charges after authorities say he tried to shut down the engines of a plane bound for San Francisco while he was off-duty and in the cockpit. Emerson, 44, is an FAA-licensed pilot who lives in Pleasant Hill, California. He is now accused of attempting to murder 83 people who were onboard the passenger flight Sunday evening, according to jail booking records. Neighbors described Emerson as a "positive, very friendly, upbeat," father of two.On a quiet street in Pleasant Hill, Emerson, his wife, and two young sons live in a one-story house decorated with Halloween ghosts, tombstones, and skeleton displays on the front lawn. Pilot on California-bound flight tried to shut down engines mid-air, authorities say One neighbor, Karen Yee, told KTLA sister station KRON4 that the pilot's children sometimes go over to her house to play. "We still can't believe it. We are still shocked. It doesn't sound like Joe at all. I don't know what happened to him mentall...

Authorities identify Santa Barbara Main Jail inmate who died after apparent suicide

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:15:40 GMT

Authorities with the Santa Barbara Sheriff’s Office have identified the male inmate who died in custody from an apparent suicide on Saturday.The deceased inmate has been identified as 64-year-old Paul Howard Gillett of Santa Barbara.Gillett was booked at the Main Jail on Sept. 29 for assault with a deadly weapon and battery. He was also held on court remand for violating probation by driving under the influence. Gillett’s bail was set at $45,000, officials said.At approximately 6:20 a.m., jail staff found Gillett unresponsive in his cell, and when they entered the cell, they found a piece of linen tied around his neck, a news release said.Medical staff and paramedics responded to the scene and performed life-saving measures, but the inmate did not recover and was pronounced dead at 6:30 a.m.While Gillett died from an apparent suicide, the final cause and manner of death will be released pending toxicology results.

Why Bob Melvin does — or doesn’t — make sense as SF Giants’ next manager

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:15:40 GMT

When the San Francisco Giants made the decision to fire manager Gabe Kapler with three games left in the season, Farhan Zaidi said they planned to “cast a wide net” and look beyond candidates with ties to him, the organization or the Bay Area.They have looked as far as Boston and a candidate who has spent his baseball life there, on the opposite coast, in a different league. They have widened their search to groundbreaking parameters, the first club in MLB history to formally interview a woman for their managerial post. One candidate finished his 36th season in the organization; another celebrates his 39th birthday next week.All roads, it turns out, lead back to the most obvious candidate all along, the one who was in the opposite dugout for Kapler’s 543rd and, it would be announced almost 48 hours later, final game as Giants manager.With the Padres granting the Giants’ request to interview Bob Melvin, as The Athletic first reported, the three-time manager of...

Trump slams Biden, compares himself to Nelson Mandela

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:15:40 GMT

By Holly Ramer and Jill Colvin | Associated PressCONCORD, N.H. — Former President Donald Trump compared himself to anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela on Monday as he cast himself as the victim of federal and state prosecutors he alleges are targeting him and his businesses for political reasons.Returning to New Hampshire to register for its presidential primary, Trump held a rally where he railed against President Joe Biden’s response to the Hamas attack on Israel and vowed to build an Iron Dome-style missile defense shield over the U.S.But he focused much of his dark and at times profane speech on the criminal and civil cases against him, at one point suggesting he would go to prison like the former South African president who spent 27 years in prison for opposing South Africa’s apartheid system and was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize.“I don’t mind being Nelson Mandela because I’m doing it for a reason,” Trump told am amped-up crowd of supporters...

Letters: Real emergencies | Recall Price | Capitalism’s role | Children’s lives | West’s candidacy

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:15:40 GMT

Submit your letter to the editor via this form. Read more Letters to the Editor.Real emergencies don’thappen on a scheduleRe: “Quake alert test rattles thousands” (Page B1, Oct. 20).The quake alert last Thursday that was erroneously sent out at 3:19 a.m. instead of the scheduled time of 10:19 a.m., may turn out to be a blessing in disguise. An earthquake does not strike at convenient times. A 3:19 a.m. alert is realistic. If you slept through it then you just learned a valuable lesson and should be thankful it was only a drill. Learn from it. That’s what tests are all about.If only school districts can learn this lesson too as they schedule fire drills only during convenient times. Ask any child, “When was the last time your school conducted a fire drill during recess or lunch?” The answer will be “never.” Sadly if a drill occurred during recess, we probably would see young children, already safely outside, and not knowing any better, ...

‘He shed very sincere and real tears’: Oakland man acquitted in hectic gas station shootout that killed bystander

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:15:40 GMT

OAKLAND — An Alameda County jury has acquitted an Oakland man of murder and attempted murder in a hectic 2022 shootout at a local gas station that left a bystander dead and a woman paralyzed with gunshot wounds.Stavon Moore, 29, did not contest that he killed 64-year-old Rodney Davis, nor that he paralyzed 22-year-old Tyja Braswell in the shootout. But he argued that his actions were the direct result of Braswell reaching into her fanny pack to pull her pistol out and attempt to kill Moore, and that he only fired his gun as a last result.Moore was convicted of a felony gun possession count, which carries a maximum of six years behind bars. When he’s sentenced for that he’ll almost certainly receive credit for the 18 months he has spend behind bars awaiting trial.The verdict, announced Monday, ended a two-week trial where nearly all of the relevant conduct was captured by surveillance footage. Moore took the stand in his own defense, expressing remorse for DavisR...