Motivation

In an interview with GQ magazine, LeBron James said the highly critical letter written by Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert the night James announced his decision to sign with the Heat will give him "a lot of motivation" when Miami plays Cleveland. Of Gilbert, James said: "I don't think he ever cared about LeBron. My mother always told me you will see the light of people when they hit adversity. You'll get a good sense of their character. Me and my family have seen the character of that man. " James also told the magazine that growing up in Akron, about 40 miles outside of Cleveland, he and his friends didn't like people from the bigger city.

Last May, Washington College ended a three-year drought from the NCAA tournament, but dropped a 5-4 decision to Goucher in a first-round game at Roy Kirby, Jr. Stadium in Chestertown. That quick exit has lingered around the program, and coach Jeff Shirk said the players are using it as motivation for Wednesday's first-round home game against Colorado College (13-4). “The big thing is, I think the guys believe they deserve to be there,” Shirk said Monday. “So we're not wide-eyed.

Maryland guard Terrell Stoglin was unhappy at not making first-team All-Atlantic Coast Conference. Stoglin became a rare statistic: a conference scoring leader who made second team rather than first team in the vote by media members. “It was very disappointing,” Stoglin said. He said he planned to use the perceived slight as “motivation.” Maryland coach Mark Turgeon said he believed Stoglin was victimized by Maryland's conference record. “Six and 10 wasn't good enough,” Turgeon said.

After less than a year on the job, Larry Tolliver is calling it quits as chief of the troubled Anne Arundel County Police Department. Tolliver, 67, said his resignation — or "return to retirement," as he called it — will take effect May 21. "I am resigning today because the department needs a chief who can focus solely on the department's mission, something that is challenging to do in the current environment," Tolliver wrote in a statement...

THERE is a major disinformation campaign under way about the meaning of American involvement in the Persian Gulf.The establishment news media, especially television, are regorging substantial amounts of misleading, superficial and often irrelevant ideas and images of this grotesque crisis. The result is that many people are left with the feeling that they know what's gong on when, in fact, the information they have been assimilating keeps them from asking the pertinent questions. If you ask the wrong questions, you get the wrong answers.

From extending inside linebacker Ray Lewis' last hurrah to getting to the Super Bowl for the first time since 2001 to beating a rival in the New England Patriots, the Ravens have plenty of motivation heading into Sunday's AFC championship game. But, according to the players, revenge is not one of them. Yes, the memory of last year's 23-20 loss to the Patriots in the AFC championship still lingers around town, but strong safety Bernard Pollard did not mince any words when asked if the team has some “unfinished business” to complete in Foxborough, Mass.

Being in Baltimore apparently has its privileges for Loyola. Not only did the Greyhounds have to make just a 34-mile trip from their campus to Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium in Annapolis for Saturday's NCAA tournament quarterfinal against Denver, but they also got a visit from Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis. In a video posted by the school, the 13-time Pro Bowler and two-time NFL Defensive Player of the Year spoke to the players before Wednesday's practice and encouraged them to play with passion and cooperation.

In the aftermath of the Ravens' 35-7 demolition of the Pittsburgh Steelers on Sept. 11, several Steelers players said they would remember what they deemed questionable behavior by the Ravens. Defensive linemen complained that the Ravens offensive line was using illegal cut blocks. A few players weren't happy about Sam Koch's two-point conversion to make the score 29-7 in the third quarter, and others accused the Ravens of trying to run up the score when quarterback Joe Flacco threw the ball to the end zone with a 32-7 advantage late in the fourth quarter.

WHEN A TEAM has been as up and down as the Blast -- marvelous one night, mediocre the next -- never taking the big step when it is theirs for the taking, people start asking questions.What's the matter? Where's the problem? Who's at fault?No one escapes the evaluation, not even the coach, as those who watch wonder if this team has heard coach Kenny Cooper's motivational speeches for so long that their impact has lessened.After his team performed impressively in a 6-4 victory over Kansas City last night, Cooper admitted if his team had lost, dropped three games behind the Comets and below .500 21 games into the season, it would have been very bad for everyone.

Atlanta -- The day before the national semifinals, the Florida players, almost to a man, presented "hate" as their motivational theme for the Final Four. The other teams hate us because we have what they want, they said. Other fans hate us because we're the champs. Everybody wants to see us get knocked off. "I'm not talking about someone trying to kill me," the Gators' Joakim Noah said Friday. "When I say `hate,' I'm talking about all the doubters. There have been a lot of doubters this year.

It wasn't so long ago that former Rutgers defensive tackle Eric LeGrand couldn't even move his shoulders, which is why it's hard not to marvel at his willingness to offer one of them to anybody facing a major life challenge. If you don't know his story, you probably missed last year's ESPY Awards or walked past the aisle at Barnes and Noble where his two books are on display. He was the 20-year-old special teams player who suffered a severe spinal cord injury in a 2010 game against Army at MetLife Stadium that left him paralyzed from the neck down.

Last year's regular-season finale ended on a sour note for UMBC when Binghamton stunned the Retrievers with a 15-8 rout in Vestal, N.Y. But the loss wasn't too costly as UMBC had already clinched a berth in the America East tournament. This Saturday should have a much different feel to it. The Retrievers (5-7 overall and 2-2 in the league) will meet the Bearcats (5-8, 1-3) this Saturday at UMBC Stadium in Catonsville to cap the 2013 campaign, but at stake is a spot in the conference tournament.

In July 2008, Angel Carpenter, better known as DJ AngelBaby, fulfilled her lifelong dream of earning an on-air position at 92Q, the city's hip-hop radio station. On one of her first days at the job, Carpenter spotted the source of her inspiration - Khia Edgerton, the beloved and ubiquitous queen of Baltimore Club music known as K-Swift. "There's a window right there, where you could see her on-air," remembered Carpenter, now 28 and a lover of Club music her entire life. "I was so weird and so scared.

An 8-year-old boy was among the three people killed and at least 176 people injured, many severely, by a pair of explosions near the finish line of the Boston Marathon on Monday. According to The Boston Globe, the boy, Martin Richard, was with his mother and sister, who were also seriously injured. Krystle Campbell, 29, a restaurant manager who was watching the race with a friend, was also killed. A pair of brothers each lost a leg. Doctors reported that dozens of others had been wounded by some kind of shrapnel - small nails and ball bearings or BBs - that had become embedded in their flesh.

Washington College's remarkable turnaround last season absorbed a little bit of a blow when the team fell to Dickinson, 11-6, in the title game of the Centennial Conference tournament on May 6. It was the second-to-last game as the Shoremen lost to Goucher, 5-4, in the first round of the NCAA tournament. Despite the heartache, coach Jeff Shirk said he doesn't want No. 10 Washington College (10-1 overall and 4-1 in the league) to remember that result or use it as a rallying cry when the No. 2 Red Devils (11-0, 4-0)

Detectives in Aberdeen received a tip they hoped would be their big break: A prisoner seeking leniency said he knew the man who abducted the mother of Orioles legend Cal Ripken Jr. But nearly nine months after the bizarre kidnapping, no suspect has been identified and police still don't know of a motive in the case, in which Violet R. Ripken was taken from her home by an unknown assailant and safely returned nearly 24 hours later. Michael Wayne Molitor claimed last year to know what happened and gave police a name; in return, police helped persuade a judge to grant him bail after a string of drug offenses.

With layoffs and belt-tightening becoming a way of life at many companies, managers are under pressure to get more work out of fewer employees at the same time the bonus pool is drying up.The challenge is to motivate without money -- to tap into workers' innate desire to do a good job. But many managers fail in these attempts largely because they believe what motivates one should motivate all."There's no one answer to motivation," says Fred Dickens, a Baltimore-area consultant who operates his own firm.

WASHINGON - Robert Hanssen was getting desperate. The man who spent more than 20 years stealing government secrets for the Soviet Union and Russia needed a little stroking. Defying orders from his Russian handlers not to include personal messages with his packages, in March 2000 Hanssen wrote, "I have come about as close as I ever want to come to sacrificing myself to help you, and I get silence. I hate silence. ... Please, at least say goodbye." Hanssen's letters have intrigued intelligence analysts since he was indicted as a spy last year.

If the No. 5 Stevenson men's lacrosse team needed any more motivation heading into Saturday night's contest at Mustang Stadium in Owings Mills against No. 8 Lynchburg, the visiting Hornets provided it - with their feet. The Mustangs emerged with a 12-11 overtime decision, but they got some inspiration when Lynchburg decided to run a lap around Stevenson's side of the field during pre-game warm-ups. According to Mustangs coach Paul Cantabene, NCAA rules prohibit teams from venturing across the midline during warm-ups.

A turbulent spring among a family of immigrants nine years ago led to a plot to slash the throats of three young children, prosecutors said Thursday in closing arguments in the murder trial of Policarpio Espinoza Perez. "There was something terribly wrong in that family dynamic," Assistant State's Attorney Nicole Lomartire said. Prosecutors told a story about the days and hours before the killings, pointing to romantic tensions among members of the large Espinoza Perez family of illegal immigrants from Mexico, but stopped short of spelling out a conclusive motive for the May 2004 killings.