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CHICAGO -- Between World Series Games 4 and 5, twin brothers hung out on a popular corner in the Old Town neighborhood. Edwin and Edward Bryant liked sports, McDonalds and flirting with girls. They were 17 years old. They were hanging in a group of kids crowded around the brick wall of an apartment building, across Evergreen Street from a parking lot. It was around 3:15 in the morning.A car drove west down Evergreen, at least one of the passengers holding a gun.They shot Edward first, in the chest and head, and he fell right where he was shot, by the wrought iron fence, seriously wounded but alive. Edwin started running, taking a right on Hudson. The car followed him, shooting him maybe 20 or 30 steps later, in the chest and back. (Police dont yet have suspects or a motive.) The car sped away. The phone calls began. Michael Horton, one of the coaches for Edwards Chicago Demons basketball team, woke up around 4 a.m., and as he decided whether to go back to sleep or get up and start his day, he saw the light flashing on his silenced phone.He rushed to the hospital.Edwin was dead on arrival, but Edward -- known to his friends as Ed -- hung on, fighting. His father waited inside the hospital. His mother refused to go in, so she sat on the ground surrounded by family. She didnt speak to anyone, alone in her grief. She waited for someone to come out and tell her if shed lost one son or two. Around 4:45 a.m., someone wheeled the boys grandmother out of the hospital with the news. Coach Horton stood about 10 feet away and couldnt hear the words.He didnt need to. He saw the twins mother collapse.SEVENTEEN PEOPLE DIED?this weekend in Chicago while the Cubs hosted three World Series games. It was the citys deadliest weekend of the year. Hernando Caster was shot on West Huron Street during the sixth inning of Game 3. He died 16 minutes after the game ended. Tyrice Anderson was 30. Martell Turner, who died five minutes after Anderson, was 25. Luis Corona was 19. Walter McCurry was 36. A 31-year-old man died in Humboldt Park, shot in the face. Fifteen minutes later, a man was killed on the South Side, but police couldnt immediately identify him. Another unidentified man died on the kitchen floor of a second-floor apartment. The youngest victim was 14. Hed been planning on running for student council. He died after Game 3, around the time the Wrigleyville bars were closing. He was helping his father move. His family, like the Bryant twins, lived in Garfield Park. Its almost everywhere around you, coach Horton says, sounding defeated and lost. Then it hits you, then its right back around you.Seventeen shot dead, 42 more wounded. Over and over, people close to the shootings have wondered if the enormous police presence outside Wrigley Field took away resources from the rest of the city, combining with the unseasonably warm weather to create a fertile scenario for violence. In a news conference, police officials denied that claim, but these are facts: Around the stadium, neon-vested officers stood shoulder to shoulder, creating a human barricade; and most nights on the block where the Bryant brothers were shot, there is a parked squad car, officers monitoring the corner where neighborhood kids hang out.The police car was not there Saturday night or early Sunday morning.The only neighborhoods in Chicago without a shooting were the Northwest and the far North Side, between Wrigley Field and the expensive north suburbs. The juxtaposed headlines lead to a delicate conversation, one difficult to describe in a way that feels accurate to everyone in Chicago. Most of the 621 people murdered in Chicago this year are black. Most Cubs fans are white, and with World Series tickets going for thousands of dollars, and with cover charges for bars around the stadium hitting a hundred dollars a head, the madness in Wrigleyville is a celebration for the wealthy. The Cubs fantasy bubble and the weekends violence are happening in separate worlds, which rarely overlap. There is a disconnect.Parts of the city suffered through the worst weekend of the year, while others celebrated the greatest weekend in a century.BOTH OF THE Bryant brothers played sixth-grade basketball at a youth center a quarter mile from where they were shot. On Tuesday morning, the day of Game 6, that teams coach, a man named Vince Carter, drove toward the corner where the boys were murdered. He and his fellow coaches have been meeting with their players, telling them lies about how things will be better -- but unsure of what else to say.Somewhere in between the grieving and counseling, Horton thought about the last time hed seen Edward, the brother he knew best. Theyd just returned from a tournament in Las Vegas, and a coach from North Dakota State called Horton, asking about the teams three big men. As they talked, Horton drove around the neighborhood and picked up Edward, so he could listen to the conversation on speakerphone. Horton could tell that Ed started to imagine a life beyond Chicago. His world was about to change, Horton said. He wont even get to live that out. Thats my last memory of him. This kid, he wont get a chance. He wont even get a chance.While Carter drove through the neighborhood on Tuesday, his phone rang. It was Shawn Harrington, whod coached basketball before he was shot two years ago while driving his daughter to school, a case of mistaken identity. He played on the Marshall High team featured in the famous documentary Hoop Dreams, and now hes trying to walk again. He wanted to check in with Carter, who has had a rough few days.The elephant in the room is they were out at 3 in the morning, Carter says. We need to stop finding ways to justify why people get shot.He pointed at the fence, where three or so bunches of deflated balloons sagged toward the ground, and dozens of burned-out votive candles and an empty pint of Patron formed the sad remnants of last nights vigil. So many shootings, he said, leave everyone desensitized, almost needing to forget that those numbers in the paper -- 17 dead in a weekend, or seven dead in a single night -- are all attached to families, to bedrooms with posters on the wall and computers logged into social media accounts, all of that a widening hole, taking not just the lives of the dead but the spirit of the living, in neighborhood after neighborhood, month after month. Carter doesnt blame the police for having a huge presence at Wrigley or for not having a squad car in its usual place, just as he doesnt want people to blame the Bryant boys for being out at 3 in the morning, acting like normal teenagers. Its still not their fault, Carter says, of both the cops and the victims. Were so quick to affix blame.Before returning to his youth center, Carter drove over to the other problem spot in the neighborhood, where the police also posts cars nightly. He turned down Cambridge Street, passing the row of houses on the right. Last night, a gunman shot down one of the side streets, accidentally hitting a little girl. Carter points at another child to his right, her mother calling after her, as if to say she could be next.Police cruisers park nightly on either end of the street. But the neighborhood is changing, with construction crews in hard hats walking past the sidewalk where Edward Bryant fell. At the intersection of Cambridge and Chicago, where one of the cops sits watch, there is a Lamborghini dealerships repair shop. A green sports car is visible through an open garage door. Michael Jordans son and ex-wife live a block or so away, Carter says. This is a gentrifying neighborhood, prime Cubs country. An exotic Italian car dealership a block or so from where an innocent child was caught in the crossfire. These worlds are both Chicago, next door and an unbridgeable ocean apart.Exactly, Carter says.There was the World Series and a murder record on the same weekend. There is an Intelligentsia coffee shop less than a half mile from where Edwin and Edward Bryant were shot.?There is a Chicago cheering for the Cubs tonight and another one burying its dead. There is a city struggling to reconcile those things.Jim McMahon Womens Jersey . Down by seven with 90 seconds left in regulation, thats where they looked comfortable. Anthony Miller Womens Jersey . Fellow centre Pavel Datsyuk remains out because of a concussion. Zetterberg has 11 goals and 19 assists for a team-high 30 points, and Datsyuk has a team-high 12 goals and 11 assists. http://www.bearsfootballpro.com/Authentic_Jim-McMahon_Bears_Jersey/ . But Bourque, who has missed three games with a lower-body injury, wont be in the lineup when the Habs travel to Buffalo to take on the Sabres on Wednesday. Anthony Miller Youth Jersey . The Cincinnati Reds remain perfect with their speedy rookie outfielder in the starting lineup. Gale Sayers Jersey . Its an influence in football and a big part of the game.The momentous Kevin Durant announcement of July 4, 2016, was foreshadowed years earlier, before the Golden State Warriors commanded enough attention for people to notice.Three years ago, Andre Iguodala joined the team that had just eliminated his squad from the playoffs, to considerably less criticism than Durant currently is receiving. Upon arriving in Golden State by way of Denver, Iguodala said this of Steph Curry in his first Oakland news conference on July 11, 2013:Steph and I played together in 2010 in Turkey, and after practice we would come back to the gym at night when we were overseas and just [get] some shots up. I believe it was Kevin Durant [who] was with us, a lot of the time. So it was us three, maybe one or two other guys, but us three were always together. Kinda got a chance to see him work. Knew how in love he was with the game, so we built a pretty good relationship. We had chapels together before every game so we definitely got to know each other.Us three were always together.If the 2013 Warriors were at a then-Lakers level of clout, such a statement would have reverberated across the internet, fueling rumors far and wide. But the 2013 Warriors had nowhere near the cachet they enjoy today. They had done well to even get into the room to make a pitch to Dwight Howard that offseason. Wooing Iguodala was quite the coup for an organization fresh off its second playoff run in 19 years.What a difference three years can make. Thats how quickly this new, dominant Warriors reality emerged from a long-standing reputation as the ignoble underdog. Thats how fast a team goes from being the harmless bastion of comical futility to the leagues existential threat.In 2013, neophyte 6-seed Golden State shocked Denver and put a scare into San Antonio in the playoffs. In that offseason, GM Bob Myers pulled off what he called the hardest thing he has ever done professionally when he moved massive amounts of salary to secure Iguodala. A year later, the Warriors lost in Round 1 to the Clippers and controversially fired Mark Jackson. Then came Steve Kerrs hire, Draymond Greens move into the starting lineup, Currys MVP ascendance, 67 wins and a championship.And all of that was followed by last seasons 73 wins, a painful loss in Game 7 of the NBA Finals after holding a 3-1 series lead and, now, the pretext for a team unlike anything the league has seen.This remarkable three-year sprint to fame and possibly infamy was in some ways set up six years ago by the FIBA World Championship in Turkey that Iguodala referenced upon joining the Warriors. That was Durants tournament (he won MVP), if you recall, a time when he was heralded as a new, wholesome alternative to a LeBron James whod just left Cleveland on national television.In contrast to LeBrons garish Cleveland exit, Durant garnered praise in the summer of 2010 with a tweet announcing his Oklahoma City Thunder extension. Little did people know that the seeds for Durants eventual departure were being sown at that moment in basketball history, as he got to know Team USA teammates Iguodala and Curry. Given the state of the 2010 Warriors, none of the actors involved could have known where this was headed.Flash forward to the Warriors 2016 pitch to Durant. Iguodala reminded KD of those Turkey days and how much fun they all had together. The veteran swingman is sarcastic by nature and extremely cynical. SSome posit that his guard remains up because of his Philly experience, where a rabid local media shredded a young, pass-first wing for being something less than Allen Iverson.dddddddddddd A sincere, emotional Iguodala brought that up too, conveying how money and status cant compare to his current situation.The 2015 Finals MVP also offered a bit of time travel in his pitch to Durant. He explained how, when your career is finished, you want to reminisce with friends like these. He depicted a future where so much of the present NBA entanglements fade away and a career becomes a memory. When that happens, theres meaning in having great memories. When that happens, theres meaning in being able to revisit those memories with great people.As Marc J. Spears reported on The Undefeated, Curry conveyed that he cared more about winning than credit or sneaker sales. Warriors officials relayed that Durant seemed eager to hear that message. Green and Myers both spoke to how cooperation would result in more championships than any other method. The endearingly spacey Klay Thompson noted that he would get open shots with Durant there, before sheepishly getting back on message and acknowledging KD would probably get open shots too. (This caused some laughter in the room.)Golden States pitch had all of these elements, augmented by a Jerry West phone call. Its difficult to determine if any speeches were needed, though. Most of the actors here knew each other. It would be naive to think communication was confined to a room in the Hamptons.This has been a long process, and one the Warriors were confident in for some time. Some within the organization believed Russell Westbrook and Durant had some chemistry issues in Oklahoma City, and in those issues lay an opening. The Warriors could offer glory, brotherhood and an unselfish playing style, not to mention Bay Area business opportunities.Still, there were no guarantees and despite whatever assurances were offered, Warriors officials were nervous until the news broke officially. So much planning could have been dashed in a decision Durant made in an instant. Its staggering to consider all that had to go right.The Warriors were helped by Currys ankle blessing them with the best contract in sports. They were helped by Thompson agreeing to a max-ish contract that wasnt pegged to the rising salary cap. They were helped by Green accepting a below-market deal. They were helped by the players union rejecting cap smoothing, which opened up the space needed to get Durant in 2016. Myers needed to be better than great and just as fortunate.When asked how long planning for Durant took, a Warriors official quipped, About three light-years. Then, a correction: Actually, light-years is a measure of distance, not time.In a short period of time, Golden State leaped forward a great distance, far beyond any reasonable expectation and possibly beyond anything weve ever seen in the sport. This team looks more complementary than the feared 2010 Miami Heat, especially after the cheap acquisition of center Zaza Pachulia. The best-shooting team ever just added Kevin Durant. Its a staggering reality to behold. The power of shared memory just helped launch a basketball team into what feels further than futuristic. ' ' '