COHEN'S CORNER SPORTS

NETS 103 GRIZZLIES 94 It has taken 59 games, five months, and 126 days for the Brooklyn Nets to reach this point in their season. For the first time this year, the Nets are over .500. Even for a team that has had as many expectations as the Brooklyn Nets, Wednesday night was a defining moment for both the players and coaches of this franchise. It was the culmination of a long struggle back from a hideous start. Go back to the December when this Nets team was 10-21. Everyone was calling for Jason Kidd to quit as head coach. He was in over his head, had just fired his old coach, and recent assistant Lawrence Frank, limiting him to "daily reports," and was struggling to get his compeers, Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Deron Williams to buy into his system. He had to deal with a roster of overpaid, and aging superstars; injuries, specifically to Williams, and Brook Lopez who was lost for the year, and a bench full of unknowns. Well that bench is partly responsible fo...

NETS 107 BUCKS 98 It wasn't pretty, and for the most part their big stars had almost little to contribute on Saturday night, but the Nets did just enough to hold off one of the NBA's worst franchises, the Milwaukee Bucks, 107-98 concluding a six game road trip at 4-2. More importantly, the Nets are now a game under .500, at 28-29, a record they will bring home Monday against the Chicago Bulls. Was it the kind of performance one would expect against the hapless Bucks? No. The Nets struggled to shake off the Bucks for much of the evening. Three times, Brooklyn built leads of 10 or more, and each time the Bucks came back to cut the Nets lead to as little as four or five points. Yet, the hero of the night had to be the newest Net, Marcus Thorton and this Nets bench. Thorton led the Nets with 25 points. He was 4-for-4 in the second quarter and 13 points to keep New Jersey in front by the slim margin of 55-53. In the fourth quarter he helped ice with four of eight shooting...

The Giants now know when their first game of 2014 will be, albeit a preseason game.  The Giants will participate in the annual Hall of Fame Game , a traditional highlight to NFL Hall of Fame week. The Giants will play the Buffalo Bills in the contest, marking the fifth time Big Blue will play in the game.  The last time the Giants played in the Hall of Fame Game was 2002 against the Houston Texans. This will be the first time that the Giants will play the Bills in the HOF contest.  In a way the match-up is very fitting, since former Bills wide receiver, Andre Reed, and Giants defensive end Michael Strahan are both getting enshrined into the Hall of Fame that weekend.  Some might not like the fact that this now means that both the Giants and Bills will play five preseason games this year, but, to be honest both coaching staffs probably will welcome the extra work after the mess that was 2013 for both franchises.  The game will be played Augus...

Perhaps out of shear hubris, or maybe he knows something about this years Mets that we don't know yet, General Manager Sandy Alderson made it be known that he believes and expects his ball club to win 90 games this season. Yes, in year four of the Alderson era, the Mets GM is doing his best Rex Ryan imitation -- hoping that all of the potential finally rises to the top this season and makes the 2014 Mets the surprise team of the year. But lets be honest, even if this team finds a way to get to .500 and win more than 80 games that would certainly count as a surprise enough. You have to respect Alderson's optimism; this is the team that he has built over the past four years and he wants to see a winner now, something that all Mets fans can certainly agree on. However, I don't think Alderson ever expected his comments from a staff meeting to leak out. Its almost like a NFL coach telling his team during a training camp meeting that he expects to win it all, and word gets ...

The Ike Davis saga has been a bizarre one over the last couple of years.  Two years ago, Davis and the Mets drummed up a odd disease called valley fever as an excuse for his poor performance at the plate during the first half of the 2012 season. After another horrific season in 2013 that saw Davis hit only .205 with nine homers and 33 RBI. The Mets did everything they could to trade him in the off-season, but nobody budged. The Mets made it very public that they were shopping the embattled first baseman leading to Davis' father, Ron to trash the Mets publicly, saying they "screwed up." Another black eye, and sign that the relationship between the Mets and Ike Davis was on stilts. Now, more excuses and distractions are flowing out of Davis' corner. The New York Post caught Davis in a lie to the team that employees him when he concealed an oblique injury from the team for most of the past year. According to the report, Davis injured the oblique in mid-May, but...

So much for all that talk earlier in the off-season about the Yankees trading Brett Gardner. New York finalized a long term 4-year, $52 million deal with the speedy outfielder to be the team's left fielder for the forceable future. The move is a complete 180 from where the Yankees were on Gardner's status within the organization. After the club signed former Red Sox Jacoby Ellsbury to a mega contract, Gardner was pushed out of center field, and became a bargaining chip if the Yankees decided to trade him. The Yankees already had aging outfielders Alfonso Soriano, likely a DH in 2014, and Ichiro Suzuki along with Ellsbury and Carlos Beltran. Short term, the Yankees could have survived if they traded away Gardner, but perhaps with a eye toward 2015 and 16, GM Brian Cashman felt obligated to keep Gardner, who is only 30 years old. With that move, however, the Yankee still have not spent a dime on fixing the problems at third base and second base. The Yankees have spent $247 ...

Those clamoring for 2014 to be the final year of Tom Coughlin in New York, may have to wait a little while longer.  The two-time Super Bowl winning coach got something of an endorsement by Giants ownership, who inked him to a one-year extension that keeps him in New York through the 2015 season. This gives Coughlin now two years to get the Giants back on track, but make no mistake 2014 is a win now situation.  Coughlin, 67, is not getting any younger, so any contract extension is a year to year affair based on both the teams performance, and how much Coughlin feels he can keep on coaching. He earned the right to make the decision about his future by winning two Super Bowls. The Giants are trusting that Coughlin can turn the team around this year. Eli Manning is coming off an uncharacteristically bad year, as is the entire Giants, which is being revamped by new offensive coordinator Ben McAdoo.  With a new offense, maybe it will not only breath life into the...