Florida Sentinel Bulletin

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers will be hitting the road and will be facing the New Orleans Saints in the Super Dome this Sunday.

The Bucs are coming off of a bye week, and will enter Sunday’s contest healthier than they’ve been in weeks. Returning to the lineup will be LeGarrett Blount, Mason Foster, Tanard Jackson and Gerald McCoy.

The Bucs will have their hands full with the Saints who are coming off an unexpected loss last week at the hands of the St. Louis Rams. Speculation is Buccaneer quarterback, Josh Freeman, will have a more complete game with the return of Blount to the lineup, and the defense is also expected to step up from past performances.

The Bucs (4-3) still hold a special place in the NFC South since the Saints and Carolina Panthers both lost Sunday, and the Atlanta Falcons took a week off.

The Bucs rank 15th in the NFL in total offense and in their last game against the Saints, Josh Freeman went 23 of 41 for 303 yards and 2 touchdowns.

Buccaneers Sign Safety David Sims

DAVID SIMS

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers have signed safety David Sims, bolstering the team’s depth in the secondary.

Sims was in training camp with the New York Giants, but was released during the final cuts. He entered the NFL as an undrafted free agent out of Iowa State.

The Bucs announced the move before practice Tuesday.

The reports of any truce between Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal has been greatly exaggerated.

Now that he is out of the game, Shaq has a new tell all book coming out: Shaq Uncut: My Story.

Some excerpts, including the parts where Shaq says Kobe’s Colorado sexual assault charges blew up the three-peat Lakers. And where Shaq threatened to kill Kobe.

Los Angeles County Coroner’s officials announced Wednesday that former all-pro football player turned actor and commercial pitchman Bubba Smith died of acute drug intoxication and other conditions.

The autopsy found that Smith, 66, whose body was discovered Aug. 3 by a caretaker at his Baldwin Hills home, was found to have phentermine, a weight-loss drug, in his system. Coroner’s officials said he also had heart disease and high-blood pressure.

The 66-year-old actor’s heart was abnormally large -nearly twice the weight of a normal heart – and some vessels were blocked as much as 75%, according to the report.

Charles Aaron Smith was born Feb. 28, 1945, in Orange, Texas, and grew up in Beaumont, where his mother was a teacher and his father his high school football coach.

What the Chinese government – which is what really runs the Chinese Basketball Association – did not want was teams to rent an NBA player during the lockout. So they only allowed their teams to sign NBA free agents and no opt-out clause for when the lockout ended.

But even as seemingly half the Denver Nuggets signed in China – Wilson Chandler, Kenyon Martin and J.R. Smith – there was speculation they would be back when the NBA season eventually started.

China has the highest turnover of foreign players of any league in the world, and already this year Earl Clark has been released by his Chinese team.

Not only is the basketball different, it’s a huge culture change with the language, food and customs. Last season only a couple of teams in the Chinese league didn’t have player turnover.

HOUSTON – The Galveston County medical examiner’s office has ruled the death of a man at the home of Texans defensive end Antonio Smith an accidental drowning.

The body of Engram Lamar Crenshaw, 37, was discovered in the pool behind Smith’s home following a party on Sept. 3. Crenshaw was a friend of Smith’s, and not affiliated with the team.

The NBA will play a shortened season — if it plays at all — after labor negotiations broke down for the second time in a week.

NBA Commissioner David Stern canceled all November games on Friday, the 120th day of the lockout.

“It’s not practical, possible or prudent to have a full season now,” said Stern, who previously canceled the first two weeks of the season.

Just a day earlier, Stern had said he would consider it a failure if the two sides didn’t reach a deal in the next few days and vowed they would take “one heck of a shot” to get it done.

Owners are insistent on a 50-50 split of revenues, while players last formally proposed they get 52.5 percent, leaving them about $100 million apart annually. Players were guaranteed 57 percent in the previous collective bargaining agreement.

This week’s issue of Sports Illustrated contains a profile of former Raiders QB JaMarcus Russell, the top pick of the 2007 draft and arguably the biggest Round 1 bust in NFL history.

Yet according to Russell, he was dealing with matters the public was unaware of while masking his issues with former Oakland coach Tom Cable.

“I stuck my neck out for him,” Russell says of Cable, who parted with the then Russell-less Raiders following the 2010 season.

The Raiders let Russell go after acquiring QB Jason Campbell in 2010. In three seasons, Russell won just seven of 25 starts, completed 52.1% of his passes and managed just 18 TD passes (or roughly $2 million per).

LAS VEGAS — A judge has found boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr. not guilty on misdemeanor charges accusing him of threatening two homeowner association security guards outside his Las Vegas home.

Las Vegas Justice of the Peace Diana Sullivan said Wednesday that she was not convinced the guards feared for their safety in the October 2010 confrontation over parking tickets.

The 34-year-old boxer faced up to a year in jail and a $2,000 fine if the judge found him guilty of both harassment charges.

He was accused of threatening to summon “homies” with guns to handle a dispute after the guards ticketed several of his vehicles that were parked near his house in violation of association rules.

PHILADELPHIA — Julius Erving has denied an upcoming auction of his personal basketball memorabilia collection is tied to a lawsuit filed against him by a Georgia bank.

Known on the hardwood as Dr. J, Erving said on Wednesday he’s never been a “hoarder or collector,” and plans to donate a portion of the auction proceeds to the Salvation Army.

It has been reported that Erving owes more than $200,000 on a loan with Georgia Primary Bank, according to a lawsuit filed in Fulton Superior Court.

The lawsuit was reported only hours after SCP Auctions announced that bidding would be open to registered bidders on Friday. Not true, he said.

“That irony actually gave me a sleepless night last night,” he said. “I had to laugh at it and cringe at it that these stories would run concurrent with one another.”

The 61-year-old Erving said the auction was part of a long-planned celebration of his career. He said most of his cherished possessions were in storage and that he rarely looked at his collection. He said he occasionally wore his 1983 ring and never his ABA rings. Erving said he will keep his Hall of Fame ring. His induction into the Hall of Fame came in 1993.

“My family is 100 percent behind it,” he said. “We decided to do it a long time ago. To claim it’s a firesale or to clear up some debt, I don’t think so. You don’t do an auction overnight. This has been long planned. We had 4,000 catalogs that have been mailed already to people who buy this kind of stuff.”