First-year candidates Junior Seau, Kurt Warner and Orlando Pace are among 18 finalists for the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Ricky Rubio Jersey .The list of nominees was reduced Thursday to 15 from the modern era, one senior and two contributors. A finalist must receive at least 80 per cent of the votes from the 46-person selection committee to be elected.The class of 2015 will be announced Jan. 31 in Phoenix during NFL Honors, the TV show in which The Associated Press hands out its eight individual NFL awards. Inductions will be in August in Canton, Ohio.The modern-day finalists are kicker Morten Andersen, running back Jerome Bettis, wide receiver Tim Brown, coach Don Coryell, running back Terrell Davis, coach Tony Dungy, linebacker-defensive end Kevin Greene, linebacker-defensive end Charles Haley, wide receiver Marvin Harrison, coach Jimmy Johnson, safety John Lynch, and guard Will Shields.The senior nominee is former Vikings centre Mick Tingelhoff.Special contributors are Bill Polian and Ron Wolf, the architects of Super Bowl teams as executives.Of the three coaches on the ballot, Dungy is in his second year of eligibility, Johnson in his 16th and Coryell in his 28th. Hall of Fame rules for coaches changed in 2007, requiring the coach to be retired for five seasons.Seau, who committed suicide in 2012, played two decades with three teams and made 12 Pro Bowls. He was the NFL Defensive Player of the Year in 1992.Warner guided St. Louis to its only Super Bowl victory after the 1999 season and also led the Rams to the title game two years later. He helped Arizona get to its only Super Bowl after the 2008 season. He won league MVP honours in 1999 and 2001.Pace was the first overall draft pick in 1997 by the Rams and played 13 seasons, with five Pro Bowl selections.Like Dungy, one of his star players, Harrison, is in his second year of eligibility. The Colts star retired ranking second to Jerry Rice in receptions with 1,102.Andersen, seeking to become the only kicker other than Jan Stenerud in the hall, and Lynch are in their third years on the ballot. Andersen played 25 pro seasons with five franchises and set the NFL records for points (2,544), field goals (565) and games (382). Lynch spent 11 seasons with Tampa Bay, four with Denver, and made nine Pro Bowls.Shields, a Pro Bowl guard 12 straight years with Kansas City, is in his fourth year of eligibility. Bettis, nicknamed The Bus, carried the Steelers to the 2005 NFL championship in his final season and has been on the ballot for five years.Brown, a standout kick returner as well as pass catcher, is in his sixth year of eligibility. He made nine Pro Bowls, twice as a return man.Davis gave Denver an efficient running game to go with John Elways passing, and they took the Broncos to championships in 1997 and 1998. This is his ninth year on the ballot.Pass-rushing stars Haley and Greene are in their 11th year of eligibility. Greene played for four teams and made the Pro Bowl five times. Haley won five Super Bowls, two with San Francisco and three with Dallas, the only player to do so.Tingelhoff retired in 1978 after 17 seasons as one of the most durable and dependable centres in the league. He never missed a game, starting 240, and made it to four Super Bowls.___AP NFL website: www.pro32.ap.org and www.twitter.com/AP_NFL Zach LaVine Jersey . Dallas (2-0-1) sits atop the Western Conference with an MLS-best seven points. Castillo opened the scoring in the 71st minute off a Mauro Diaz set piece, and Watson outran defender Tony Lochhead on a long ball and then juked goalkeeper Ian Kennedy for the eventual game-winner in the 78th minute. Kelan Martin Jersey . The Toronto Argonauts running back hurt his left ankle during the teams practice Friday afternoon at Rogers Centre. https://www.cheaptimberwolves.com/1080j-jeff-teague-jersey-timberwolves.html .com) - Generally you want to be the guy who replaces the guy who replaced the legend.TORONTO - In his brief 10-month stint with the Raptors, Rudy Gay averaged just under 20 points per contest, accounting for the bulk of Torontos offence while hitting some big, game-winning shots before he was whisked away to Sacramento. His tenure wont be remembered for any of that, rightly or wrongly, and the Kings forward has mostly come to terms with that. He wont be remembered for the shots he made. No, "Rudy the Raptor" - as Kings coach Mike Malone refers to Gays previous incarnation - will be remembered for the shots he missed. All 530 of them. Even Gay himself, given the opportunity to sugarcoat his shooting woes ahead of Fridays return to Toronto, wouldnt put lipstick on the pig that was his horrid field goal percentage. It was bad, and he knows it. Surrounded by the sizeable Toronto media army he left behind for small-market Sacramento following Kings practice on Thursday, Gay was asked if he feels slighted when hes been called inefficient. "I was inefficient when I was here," he admitted, to the surprise of those who may have expected him to dance around the obvious. "Im not anymore. I was when I was here." Fridays game will mark Gays first visit to Air Canada Centre since he was sent to the Kings, along with Quincy Acy and Aaron Gray, on Dec. 9 in exchange for Patrick Patterson, Greivis Vasquez, John Salmons and Chuck Hayes. He was acquired from Memphis less than a year earlier, a trade engineered by former Raptors general manager Bryan Colangelo in the hopes of landing a star player that could dig the team out of its playoff hole and, in doing so, save his own skin. The experiment was short-lived. "He was put in a tough situation where he was looked on to be the saviour," coach Dwane Casey said of Gays time in Toronto. "Thats not his role as far as [the] type of guys we had. Hes a dynamic player, a big-time talent. He was brought here for the right reasons. It ended up turning into something that wasnt meant to be." After he and the Raptors closed out last season on a high note, the team opened with a record of 6-12 as Gay struggled, putting up some of the worst numbers of his eight-year career. "For whatever reason in Toronto he was only shooting 38 per cent, taking over 18 shots a game and everyone wanted to say he was the most inefficient player in the NBA," Malone said. "All I can base his play on is as a King. Hes been shooting the ball over 50 per cent, 20 points a night and hes a proven playmaker and rebounder as well." Nearly three months removed from his time in Toronto, Gay is enjoying a career resurgence as a member of the Kings. Hes scoring more points, taking three less shots per game while getting to the free throw line at a higherr rate. Robert Covington Jersey. . He has shot 50 per cent or better in 23 of 37 games as a King, something he accomplished once in 18 contests with the Raptors this season. Whats responsible for his turnaround? It has a lot to do with the space occupied and the attention drawn by the Kings beast of a centre. "If you go back to his time in Memphis. when he had the luxury of playing with a very talented frontcourt in Marc Gasol and Zach Randolph. he was much more efficient with that line-up," Malone pointed out. "So we felt that he and DeMarcus (Cousins), especially the inside-outside combination, would be very tough to guard." With Gay, Cousins and breakout point guard Isaiah Thomas, the Kings are the NBAs only team that features three 20-point scorers. Although the record hasnt necessarily reflected it - Sacramento is 16-26 since the trade - that trio has co-existed better than expected. As a team, the Kings rank 12th in offensive efficiency, despite dropping to the bottom of league in assists. For a collection of reasons, many of which are probably too tough to explain or quantify, Gay has found a home in Sacramento and he seems to fit. Of course, he is not the only one with a new lease on life in the aftermath of the trade. The Raptors are now 27-14 without Gay in the line-up, jockeying for playoff position in the Eastern Conference as the Kings toil in the basement of West. Gay is genuinely happy for his old teammates, many of whom he considers close friends, but the Kings forward doesnt necessarily buy into the correlation between his departure and his former teams success. "We dont know if that would have happened if I were there, too," said the 27-year-old. "It happened early in the season. Nobody knows. Its one of those things that it has happened now, the trade happened, now theyre a playoff team. Of course, Id like to be a part of that, but Im in Sacramento now and I have to build this team." However, Raptors fans remember the missed shots, they remember the isolation-centric offence that torpedoed their teams overall watchability for the first month of the season, but, most of all, they remember the losses. In Gay, the Raptors got what they paid for and their inevitable break-up should not have come as too much of a surprise. He probably doesnt deserve to be booed when he returns to the ACC wearing visiting purple Friday night, but he will be and when he is, he wont be caught off guard. "I dont care," he said. "Im just going out there and doing my job. Honestly, I joke with these guys all of the time. I say, If you put two rims up in the kitchen, Ill go out and play. It really doesnt matter what happens, whos booing, whos cheering. It doesnt matter." ' ' '