Roy Hibbert calls out Shane Battier

When the Miami Heat faced the Indiana Pacers in the playoffs last season, the series featured two suspensions, a host of flagrant fouls and plenty of blood. It appears the Eastern Conference finals between the teams already is heating up.

Pacers center Roy Hibbert took to his Twitter account Thursday to accuse Heat forward Shane Battier of dirty play in the Heat’s 103-102 Game 1 overtime victory on Wednesday night.

In the first quarter, Battier drove to the rim, extended his knee and made contact with Hibbert’s groin area when the Pacers’ center attempted to challenge the shot. Officials called Battier for an offensive foul on the play as Hibbert ended up on the floor.

”U can knee or kick me every time u drive 2the rim. I’ll be there 2protect the rim. That wasn’t inadvertent. Battier knew what he was doing,” Hibbert wrote on Twitter.

Several Pacers were upset with Battier by the end of the game. He got into several minor scuffles, especially with Tyler Hansbrough. Battier and Hansbrough wrestled for the ball in the first half, and it ultimately led to a technical foul on the Heat’s Chris Andersen when he came over and appeared to push Hansbrough away from Battier.

In the second half, Battier appeared to throw an elbow at Hansbrough as the two went for a rebound. Hansbrough was called for a foul on the play. The Pacers also were upset by an offensive foul called on Heat guard Norris Cole in the fourth quarter when Cole swung his arm between Pacers forward David West’s legs.

Last season, Pacers coach Frank Vogel was fined $15,000 by the NBA after saying officials let the Heat get away with flopping. Battier, one of the league leaders in drawing offensive fouls, has been accused of flopping routinely in the past.

By Brian Windhorst

LeBron: Jordan’s scouting wrong

LeBron James thinks Michael Jordan’s scouting report on him is wrong. And James keeps proving it.

As part of an extended interview with ESPN the Magazine in February, Jordan said he’d studied James’ game and offered his strategy on how he would guard him.

”So if I have to guard him,” Jordan told ESPN’s Wright Thompson, ”I’m gonna push him left so nine times out of 10, he’s gonna shoot a jump shot. If he goes right, he’s going to the hole and I can’t stop him. So I ain’t letting him go right.”

That reached James’ ears and, simply, he doesn’t agree. Within days of the story coming out, James won a game by driving to his left and getting to the rim with 3.2 seconds left to beat the Orlando Magic for what then was then the Miami Heat’s 16th consecutive victory.

James did it again Wednesday night, when he drove left as Indiana Pacers guard Paul George seemed to follow the Jordan scouting report to defend James from going right. This time, James got to the rim just ahead of the buzzer to deliver the game-winner with his left hand and put the Heat up 1-0 in the Eastern Conference finals.

”That theory is wrong, I guess,” James said of the Jordan report.

James plays basketball right-handed but writes left-handed. Over the years he’s gotten better going left, though at one time it was indeed considered one of the weaker parts of his game.

According to Synergy Sports, when James went left on isolations this season he shot 56.3 percent (63-for-112) from the floor. When he went right, he shot 48.5 percent (47-for-97). Among the 52 players with at least 50 isolation drives going left, James had the best efficiency in the league. The data shows James drives left 51 percent and goes right 49 percent.

”Frank Walker, my first basketball coach, taught me how to make a left-handed layup,” James said. ”He wouldn’t let me dribble the ball until I got the steps down to make a left-handed layup consistently. We used to do it before practice every day. He always told me I’d be a much better player if I could make shots with both hands.”

By Brian Windhorst

Pieces of 747 fall on woman’s house and Walmart lot

Pieces of a 747 cargo plane fell onto a woman’s house and a Walmart parking lot in Georgia on Sunday afternoon. Federal authorities are investigating why.

Homeowner Pamela Ware spoke with WSBTV.com about the experience.

”And boom! I was like, ’Huh?’ Actually, I hit the floor,” Ware told WSBTV.com. ”If it had landed in here, because that is just Sheetrock, it would have … oh boy, I wouldn’t be no good.”

The piece of debris fell through Ware’s roof, leaving two holes. It later bounced onto the yard, according to WSBTV.com. A few miles away, a 20-foot-long portion of the plane’s wing fell onto the Walmart store’s parking lot. Fortunately, nobody was hurt in either case.

According to WSBTV.com, investigators said the cargo plane had been flying from Anchorage. It was roughly five miles east of Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport when pieces of the right wing broke off. The pilot declared an emergency and was able to land safely.

WSBTV.com reports that it is unclear who will pay for the repairs to Ware’s damaged roof.

By Mike Krumboltz

New York man held captive for month rescued by police

Police rescued a businessman from a New York City warehouse where he had been held captive for a month by kidnappers who demanded a $3 million ransom from his family in Ecuador, authorities said.

Police posing as building inspectors found Pedro Portugal, 52, in the warehouse with his hands bound in cloth and duct tape and with a woolen cap pulled down over his eyes as one of his captors tried to escape through a window.

”He basically came up to us and said: ’I’ve been kidnapped! I’ve been kidnapped!’” Deputy Inspector Gregory Antonsen told Reuters.

Portugal was abducted in the New York City borough of Queens on April 18 by a man who flashed what looked like a police badge, prosecutors said.

The man and an accomplice forced Portugal into a vehicle, said prosecutors, who charged three men with the kidnapping late on Wednesday. The men pulled a mask over Portugal’s face, punched him, held a knife to his belly and warned him to stay quiet, prosecutors said.

Portugal was taken to a warehouse where, over the course of a month, he was hooded, tied up and beaten, authorities said. The men burned his hands with acid, punched out some of his teeth, threatened to chop off his fingers and kill him, a pattern of abuse that was interrupted on Portugal’s birthday, when his captors presented him with a cake, police said.

”This is a terrifying story,” Richard Brown, the Queens district attorney, said in a statement.

Police said they were still investigating why Portugal, who runs a modest insurance and accounting business out of a Queens storefront, was targeted. Portugal’s family owned businesses and property in Ecuador, Antonsen said.

”I would say by Ecuadorean standards they’re fairly well off,” Antonsen said in an interview. ”But I wouldn’t call them wealthy.”

Portugal lives with his partner and four children in Queens, and has two children from a previous marriage, Antonsen said.

Christian Acuna, 35, Dennis Alves, 32, and Eduardo Moncayo, 38, were arraigned on charges of kidnapping and unlawful imprisonment on Wednesday and were being held without bail.

A lawyer who represented Alves at his arraignment said he planned to plead not guilty. Lawyers for the other two defendants could not be reached on Thursday.

Police said they were seeking at least two other men, including a man they believe is the ringleader, who left for Ecuador a day after the kidnapping.

Alves told police he had been promised $5,000 to kidnap and guard Portugal during the day, along with Acuna, who told police he was getting $800 per week for the job, according to the criminal complaint.

All three defendants were in the room, along with the suspected ringleader, when Portugal first rang his family in Ecuador to ask for the $3 million ransom, the complaint said. Portugal’s mother then contacted her son’s family in Queens before his kidnap was reported to police in both countries.

Police tracked Portugal’s location to a warehouse in Long Island City in Queens by looking into addresses associated with people with criminal records who had recently traveled to Ecuador. Overnight surveillance teams saw food deliveries to the warehouse and a single light burning in a window through the night, Antonsen said.

On Monday, a team of officers posing as building inspectors went inside and found Portugal on the third floor in a room furnished with little more than a mattress.

By Jonathan Allen

Awe.