Now THIS IS the match-up we’ve all been waiting for.

The Celtics ended Dwyane Wade’s season last year. They did the same to LeBron James. Now they face the same team that sent them to an early summer this 2011 NBA playoffs.

Overmatched by a common enemy, Wade and James joined up to play for the new Miami Heat. They picked up a trusty sidekick in Chris Bosh. At first, news of the joint effort to reshape the NBA offended just about every basketball fan from Central Florida’s I-4 corridor clear north to Canada.

Then things got really interesting. Folks in Cleveland, James’ old town, were downright spitting mad. Elsewhere, hate for Miami became professional basketball’s unifying religion. Still, Miami couldn’t beat the Boston Celtics.

The Heat lost to the Celtics three consecutive times to begin the regular season. On the fourth go-around, Miami solved the riddle, defeating Boston by 23 points with three games left in the regular season.

And now, starting Sunday, we have a best-of-seven, second-round series between two teams that loathe each other. It’s a working script, a narrative that began writing itself even before last summer.

”I think we always felt that it would happen at some point,” LeBron James said…

Um… No.

And that’s that. But in case you’re still reading, yes, Georges St-Pierre will defend his UFC welterweight championship against Jake Shields in UFC 129 at the Rogers Centre in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

UFC 129 is expected to break attendance and gate records for the UFC and North American MMA as a whole. Officials haven’t decided on an official seating capacity, but 40,000 isn’t outside the realm of possibility. Having Having Georges St-Pierre, a French-Canadian, on the card certainly will help.

The champ recently posted his fifth consecutive title defense with a lopsided unanimous decision win over Josh Koscheck at UFC 124. The fighter, who many consider the world’s top-ranked pound for pound competitor, essentially would clean out the welterweight division with a win over challenger Jake Shields. It’d also mark his ninth straight win and 15th victory in his past 16 fights.

A victory over Shields, a former EliteXC welterweight champion and Strikeforce middleweight titleholder, could prompt St-Pierre to move to middleweight.

Shields recently made his UFC debut and edged Martin Kampmann via split decision at UFC 121. The Cesar Gracie product owns a staggering 15-fight win streak with wins over notables such as Dan Henderson, Jason “Mayhem” Miller, Robbie Lawler, Paul Daley, Nick Thompson, Mike Pyle, Carlos Condit and Yushin Okami. He looks to become just the seventh different welterweight champion in UFC history.

Jake Shields is confident he holds a grappling advantage over St-Pierre…

Yes, the time has come for Randy Couture to call it a career.

And at UFC 129, Randy Couture says it will be his last fight as he takes on former UFC light heavyweight champion Lyoto ”the Dragon” Machida.

The immortal Randy Couture needs no introduction. He’s one of the greatest Octagon athletes to have ever fought for the UFC. Couture is a multiple-time, multi-division champion and is most recently on a three-fight win-streak, his most recent win being over aging boxer James Toney in a ”Boxing vs. MMA” bout that took the internet and the popular press at large by storm.

Couture would go on to dominate Toney and submit the pudgy pugilist without breaking a sweat.

Coming to his fight against Lyoto Machida however, Couture feels this could very well be his very last fight inside the Octagon. ”There’s a big chance this is my last fight. I’m not going to be making any official announcements, I don’t think anybody would buy it. I already did that once!”

”There’s a lot of other things calling me now, and there’s a chance this is the last one. I’ve got several other movies lined up, The Expendables 2 is coming up in September, and I’ve got my other businesses like the clothing company and the extension of the gym.”

”Frankly, I’m tired of grinding it out, it’s time to enjoy life…”

And they can thank the Orlando Sentinel for it.

The Hawks have been the better team through four games in their first-round match-up with the Magic in the 2011 NBA playoffs. And then they lost Game 5 and folks started talking about how lousy they were. An Orlando Sentinel columnist called them the Birdbrains, which sounded a bit strange. If the Hawks were such plods, why were they still leading?

The same scribe predicted the Orlando Magic, having won one game in a row, would outsmart the Hawks and win the series. And maybe if this were Jeopardy they would have. But this is basketball, and at last check MIT hasn’t been to the Final Four lately. And Orlando won’t be going to Round 2 of these NBA playoffs.

The Atlanta Hawks, whom they called Birdbrains, will. No, they don’t always appear to know what they’re doing, and there are times when they don’t appear to care. But in this series we saw the tenacity that was missing during the regular season. Yes, they were lucky in that they drew the one decent team they’d proved they could beat, but they took their break and ran with it.

They beat the Magic three times in one-possession games, which says much about their resourcefulness, and Thursday’s clincher came down to one tiny-but-gigantic play, a play we can only call, smart.

Inside the final 10 seconds, Hawks by a point, shot clock near its end. Jamal Crawford fed Marvin Williams on the left wing, and Williams launched a trey that looked good but clanged long. All the Magic, the team with the world’s best rebounder, had to do to steal this game was to grab the ball and hit a shot.

Then Joe Johnson stuck out his hand…

Yes, you are reading it right.

The no.8 seed Memphis Grizzlies will have the opportunity to knock off the no.1 seed San Antonio Spurs from their best-of-seven first round series in the 2011 NBA playoffs.

And mind you, the Memphis Grizzlies may just do it, right in front of the Spurs’ adoring fans in San Antonio. Most people expected the Grizzlies to give the Spurs problems, heck, you probably read it first right here on OddJack. But nobody expected the Grizzlies to be THIS good.

The Memphis Grizzlies, even though they are one win away from sending the top-seeded San Antonio Spurs to an early summer, believe they don’t have swagger and as far as their coach Lionel Hollins is concerned, they don’t need it.

Hollins expects his troops to stay humble as they try to become just the second eighth seed to upset a No.1 in a best-of-seven series.

”You don’t have to have a swagger to prove your worth,” Hollins said.

”You just go do your job. The result speaks for itself. You can be confident but you don’t have to be flashy and try to let everybody know what you’ve done. Just go do it and they’ll know. That’s where our team is.”

As far as the Spurs are concerned, they know they are in…

To say that Ferrari is limping out of the gates could be an understatement.

In case you didn’t know, Ferrari has made a sluggish start to the 2011 F1 season, picking up just 50 points in the first three races. Their best finish to date is Fernando Alonso’s fourth place in Australia. The less said about their qualifying problems, the better.

Team President Luca di Montezemolo has already warned that the current performance levels are not good enough and Ferrari will have to settle for fighting for third in the championship standings this season and will find it ‘impossible’ to catch defending F1 champions Red Bull in the 2011 title race.

“I expect our engineers to act with determination and know-how, unleashing the maximum of their capacity to improve the performance of the car in a short time,” di Montezemolo said.

However, Domenicali warns there will be no quick fix for the coming 2011 F1 Turkish Grand Prix, which marks the start of the European leg of the season. “If you look back, this is where we need to work hard. The performance of the car is still not there, even if the race is different from qualifying,” Domenicali is quoted on Autosport.

“I am a pragmatic guy, and I am expecting a big push from the guys…

Maybe the best question to ask here is, can the Lakers stop CP3?

For the New Orleans Hornets, their fate in the 2011 NBA playoffs against the Lakers begins and ends with their tenacious All-Star point guard Chris Paul.

For the Los Angeles Lakers, Paul remains their biggest problem, someone who has continued to gut their defense in the best-of-seven first-round series.

Paul has orchestrated the New Hornets Hornets and their attack, probing the Lakers defense, doing his part to even the series at 2-2. Game 5 is Tuesday night at Staples Center, but Paul’s brilliant play in New Orleans’ victory in Game 4 is the primary reason there is going to be a Game 6 back here Thursday night.

“We’ve still got work to do,” Chris Paul said after Game 4 on Sunday night. “We’re not satisfied. We get to come back here. We’re going to go out there and try and get this Game 5.”

Paul’s triple-double of 27 points, 15 assists and a career-high 13 rebounds in Game 4 was another sign of how effective he has been. He is leading both teams in scoring (25.5) and assists (11.5) in the series. He is the third-leading rebounder (7.0) in the series, and Paul is…

You read that right.

As the new 2011 F1 season unravels, former Formula One champion Kimi Raikkonen is setting his sights on NASCAR, becoming the latest in a string of former F1 drivers to compete there as he plans to drive three-to-five Camping World Truck Series events this year for Kyle Busch Motorsports.

The 31-year-old Kimi Raikkonen, who won the F1 title in 2007 and currently drives in the World Rally Championship, will make his debut on May 20 at the Charlotte Motor Speedway.

In the nine years Raikkonen spent on the F1 circuit, he recorded 18 wins, 62 podium finishes and was the 2007 champion. Raikkonen left F1 after the 2009 season and has been competing in the World Rally Car Championship since.

”I am really excited to have the opportunity to start my venture into NASCAR with Kyle Busch Motorsports,” Raikkonen said in a team release. ”Kyle is one of the best in NASCAR, and being able to draw on his knowledge will be a valuable asset as I make my transition to a new form of racing. He has put together an experienced team that builds fast race tracks. I look forward to being a part of a team that has proven to be a winner on and off the race track.”

”He’s got the talent to race,” team owner Kyle Busch said at…

Brandon Roy is still the man.

Yep, after watching his heroics in Game 4 to carry his Blazers from what was deemed an insurmountable lead to beat the Mavericks and tie their series in the 2011 NBA playoffs 2-2, there is no doubt that this guy is still the man in Portland whenever he pushes himself to be.

As a result, the Portland Trail Blazers might have won more than just a game Saturday, they might have stolen momentum in this back-and-forth first round series. The first signs of the psychological impact of the Blazers’ stunning 84-82 victory in Game 4 will be revealed Monday in Game 5, when the Dallas Mavericks try to hold serve by winning at home.

”In 12 minutes, the pressure has changed sides,” Portland Trail Blazers forward Nicolas Batum said, referring to the Blazers’ fourth quarter comeback from 18 points behind. ”It can be a big, big change for the series. But we can’t relax.”

In order for the Blazers to win their first playoff series since 2000, they will have to, other than Brandon Roy bringing his old dominant self again of course, beat the Mavericks in Dallas. In the past 10 years, including the playoffs, the Blazers are 4-22 in Dallas.

But then again, these Mavericks are known to choke…

For now, Red Bull claims it ain’t true.

Red Bull Formula One boss Christian Horner has played down talk that Lewis Hamilton could join the team in the future, possibly in place of Mark Webber. Heh heh, can you just imagine what’s going on in Webber’s mind now, that the 2011 F1 season has only begun?

Red Bull adviser Helmut Marko said last week that with his aggression and speed, “Hamilton must always be a topic”. Mark Webber, who finished third in the 2010 drivers’ championship, is on a year-by-year contract with Red Bull, while current champion Sebastian Vettel has recently signed a contract extension until the end of 2014.

That explains all these rumors about Lewis Hamilton replacing Mark Webber in Red Bull.

Horner has told the BBC: ”If (Hamilton) wanted to drive for Red Bull, you couldn’t ignore a driver of his calibre.” “But I understand he has a multi-year contract with McLaren and I envisage he’ll be there for a while yet.”

Horner went on: ”Lewis is a wonderfully gifted driver. He’s obviously happy at McLaren. We’re very happy with the driver line-up we have. With any driver-team relationship there has to be a desire on both sides. That’s what makes the relationship with our current drivers work so well.”

”Sebastian has been with Red Bull since he was 12. But who knows? In the future you can never rule anything out, but there would have to be a strong desire on both sides to do something like that.”

”It’s difficult to see how you could have two drivers of Lewis’ and Sebastian’s calibre under one roof. There tends to be fireworks as we saw with Fernando Alonso and Lewis ( McLaren teammates in 2007).”

”We’re very happy with our current drivers. We’ll see how…”