Known as Weapon X when he was a dominant safety Calais Campbell Jersey , Brian Dawkins recognizes it could have been Weapon P, as in Philadelphia.

Dawkins, who enters the Pro Football Hall of Fame on Saturday night, spent 13 seasons as the leader of the Eagles defense, the emotional center of a team that made four straight NFC championship games and one Super Bowl. The connection with Philly will never fade for a guy who grew up in Florida and attended Clemson.

"They loved me and they will be here to be inducted together with me," Dawkins said Friday about Eagles fans and the city he grew to love. "I made it and now they have made it and will experience the Hall of Fame. Enjoy it.

"I played with emotion and passion. The other thing is they recognized I don't make mistakes. You can boo me for one thing I did wrong, but you won't ever boo me again because I would not make it again.

"I gave 100 percent of my 100 percent every game. I didn't back down from anyone or anything in a football game. I was a worker who didn't make excuses, and that's Philly."

Dawkins, who closed out his career with three seasons in Denver, where he also was supremely popular, made five All-Pro teams and was voted the Eagles' defensive MVP five times. He said making the hall never was on his mind until very late in his career.

"I was thinking it would be cool and wonderful if that happened," he noted, "but I didn't understand at that point it could be possible."

Hey Brian, it's possible and true.

WHO'S AN OLD MAN?

Randy Moss is 41, the same age his quarterback during Moss' greatest season, Tom Brady, reached Friday. Brady shows no signs of slowing down, and Moss believes he could still be effective at wide receiver at his advanced (for football) age.

"My last year (2012 with San Francisco) Brandin Cooks Jersey , I didn't really get the chance to show I could still play," Moss said. "At 41 now, I still could play and believe I could score 10 touchdowns. The game itself came easy and I really feel that I could bring that much to the game."

In his final season, Moss had only 28 receptions and three scores. During his heyday with Minnesota and then New England, he was the most dangerous deep threat in the sport. In 2007, when New England went unbeaten before losing the Super Bowl to the Giants, he had a stunning 23 touchdowns on 98 receptions, gaining 1,493 yards. He was targeted 160 times by Brady that year.

"It was a great ride," Moss said.

CHUCK NOLL AWARD

The South JeffCo Mustangs from Littleton, Colorado are the winners of the Chuck Noll Hall of Fame Game for Life Award.

The group will be presented with a $10,000 check from The DICK'S Sporting Goods Foundation.

The award, established last summer, recognizes 50 youth football leagues around the country for their commitment to coaching education; best practices in player safety; teaching lessons about how to win rather than emphasizing winning; and nurturing a culture that celebrates preparation, discipline, accountability and respect through the fun and fitness of football and how it applies to success beyond the field.

Former NFL player Merril Hoge created the award to celebrate the legacy of Noll, the Pro Football Hall of Fame coach who transformed the Pittsburgh Steelers from a downtrodden franchise to one of the most dominant teams in NFL history.

PASSION OVERFLOW

If there have been two more passionate defensive players in recent NFL annals than Ray Lewis and Brian Dawkins, they're hard to identify.

They never were teammates on the Ravens Braxton Miller Jersey , the only team Lewis played for, but enter the Pro Football Hall of Fame together in the class of 2018. What if they had been on the field together?

"With all the energy he exudes and all I exude," Dawkins said, "it would've been tough on the other guys (to match). I would've loved to have played with him, but man."

Lewis, who has campaigned for Ed Reed to make the hall when the former Ravens star safety becomes eligible, also has the utmost regard for Dawkins.

"I knew he had a similar chip on his shoulder and that's why I love BDawk," Lewis said. "He's one of the guys I'd love to have played with. I can't imagine a football field with me and BDawk on the field together.

"It's an honor to go into the Hall of Fame with a guy like Brian Dawkins."

WILL THE TEARS FLOW?

Brian Urlacher says there's no threat of crying when he practices his Pro Football Hall of Fame induction speech. As for when he delivers it ...

"When I go over it, I am OK," Urlacher explained. "But all the guys are telling me I am going to cry during the speech."

Lots of inductees do, even the toughest of former players. So Urlacher would join a long list of weepers.

Some have joked about an over/under number for how many times Ray Lewis breaks down.

As for Brian Dawkins, he guarantees he'll cry.

"Tear up? No question. The people I will talk about meant so much to me," he said Friday at a news conference. "I'm about to cry now."

LeBron James gets to the NBA Finals every year, masking the East’s mediocrity.

Lately, he’s been the underdog and the finals’ outcome has been predictable.

That doesn’t seem like the best thing for a championship series, though James representing the East is a better finals option for the NBA than a Kyrie Irving-less Celtics squad or the uninspiring Raptors.

James provides the star power to drive TV ratings. So the NBA hasn’t needed the best teams in the finals; it has had the best player.

”The real answer is it’s better to have both,” said Scott Rosner, the academic director of the sports management program at Columbia University. ”The NBA John Timu Jersey , if you step back from it, has been very much on an upward trend, you can argue more than any of the other big four sports leagues. There’s a lot of different reasons for that, but clearly it’s a star-driven league.”

For eight years running James has provided the glimmer of hope that the JV against the varsity really can be competitive. He can almost single-handedly create compelling basketball. Still, he’s on the verge of losing in the NBA Finals without winning more than a game for the fourth time. Nonetheless, fans are still watching in huge numbers.

It’s been a nice run, but the NBA probably needs to think about getting the best teams in the finals when James isn’t.

He could leave Cleveland as a free agent this summer, maybe even head West. And once he’s done slipping on his Eastern Conference champion hat every spring, the problem that’s been concealed by his immense talent comes into full view.

The Larry O’Brien Trophy won’t be awarded before Friday night in Cleveland, or maybe sometime next week back in California. But the NBA championship was essentially decided on Memorial Day in Houston, when the Warriors rallied to take Game 7 from a Rockets team that was the only one with a realistic chance to beat them, and would likely be beating Cleveland now.

”To me, Houston wasn’t just one half away from advancing to the finals. They were one half away from winning a championship,” ABC analyst Jeff Van Gundy said.

That’s why Van Gundy advocates a playoff format where the top 16 teams were seeded by their records. That would allow any two teams to meet in the final round, rather than the current system that mandates East against West.

”Listen, I’m for the best teams meeting in the finals,” Van Gundy said. ”I’d be fine if they played the conferences for travel purposes through the year to minimize how many times you’d have to go cross-country. But I’ve always been for the top 16 records should be in the playoffs, and I would be absolutely fine if you then seeded 1 through 16 Kurt Warner Jersey , regardless of what conference you played in during the regular season.”

Commissioner Adam Silver continues to say concerns about too much travel make that change impossible for now. James has said he prefers the traditional East-West format, and it’s hard to blame him since it’s helped provide him such a smooth path to the finals. Even in a season like this, when he doesn’t have the strongest of teams around him – and one of the worst in the league defensively – he can carry them through seven-game series in the East.

Silver said he looked it up and found that James has had 59 different teammates during his run, so it’s not as if his teams need continuity and cohesiveness. All it’s taken to play for the title the last eight years is James.

”My point before, if you have LeBron James playing with 59 different players over eight years, it means that presumably the team LeBron is on is going to be a dominant team,” Silver said. ”Whether they get to the finals every year is a separate issue.”

They almost certainly wouldn’t have won more than one round this season, where as the sixth-winningest team in the league they would have been slotted to meet the third-seeded Warriors in round two in a 1-16 format.

That could create must-see matchups in every round of the nearly two-month march to the championship, but it comes with risk to the league.

Having James home in mid-May would be disastrous from a business standpoint. His mesmerizing performances against the Celtics, when he played all 48 minutes in a Game 7 victory in Boston, catapulted ESPN to the most-watched Eastern Conference finals since 2012. And questions about his future dominate the sports headlines as long as the Cavs are playing.

If the East loses its most imposing player and most important personality, the league and its marketing partners would be left to sell an NBA Finals matchup lacking its marquee product.

”It is certainly a situation where all things being equal you’d rather have your best teams with your best players in it, your superstar players in it,” Rosner said. ”That said, given your druthers would really prefer to have a competitive series.”

There are only a handful of teams considered legitimate championship contenders. The number could grow even smaller this summer after James makes his future plans.

”Can our system be improved upon?” Silver said. ”I think it can. I think it’s something we’re constantly looking at.”

Better hurry. James won’t be around forever.

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