In case you were busy justifying your documentary short's omission from this year's Sundance Film Festival, here's what you missed in sports on Thursday.

• Miami scored the final nine points of the game in a 99-90 win over the Los Angeles Lakers at Staples Center. LeBron James dominated the game on both ends of the court scoring 39 points to go along with seven rebounds and three steals. "We've been bad on the road this year by our standards, so I came out mad," LeBron explained after the game, before Kobe Bryant appeared behind him cloaked in a cloud of smoke. "Oh, you think darkness is your ally? You merely adopted the dark. I was born in it," Bryant said to James with a menacing laugh. A terrified James responded, "Why didn't you just beat us then?" Bryant grinned broadly at James and hissed, "your punishment must be more severe."

At this very moment, there are no matches being played at the Australian Open. This is true for two reasons: (1) Everyone's asleep, because it's early in the morning, and (2) we, the East Coast liberal media elite, need time to write about what happened the day before without the distraction of amazing tennis matches.

The creators of the Australian Open, which is now more than 100 years old, knew that it was hard for American bloggers to write about tennis while tennis was taking place. Sure, writing about tennis is great, but at the end of the day, you'd rather be watching tennis.

Which is why, when the Internet gets ready for bed in the early evening, around 9 p.m. EST, the Australian Open wakes up.

It's perfect. Sure, you're kind of always between rounds, never really knowing who is at what stage, but that's fine. That's a completely manageable sacrifice to make for writing time, watching time, and (most importantly) no sleeping time.

In case you were out living a life of leisure, here's what you missed in sports over the weekend.

• Ryan Vogelsong struck out a career-high nine batters through seven dominant innings as the Giants beat the Cardinals 6-1 to force a deciding Game 7 in the NLCS. Vogelsong's name literally means "birdsong" in German, which is kinda funny when you consider they were playing the Cardinals. But it's less funny when you learn that "Vogelsong" is a German euphemism for killing birds with poisoned food pellets. Ugh, Germany. Ugh. That's just classic you.

In case you were out living a life of leisure, here's what you missed in sports on Thursday.

• In the first night of the college football season, Marcus Lattimore ran for 110 yards and two touchdowns as no. 9 South Carolina held off Vanderbilt 17-13. I've never done this before, but Terrence the Grantland Robot, who can't type in lowercase letters and has recently overcome some personal issues, asked me if he could have the lead joke, and I agreed. I'm nervous, but go ahead Terrence: "BEEEP-BOOP-BOP-BEEEP. BEEEP-BOP-BOOOP-BIP-BIP. ISN'T THAT WHAT YOU EXPECT FROM ME, AMERICA?! ISN'T THAT WHAT YOU WANTED? 'MAKE ROBOT NOISES, ROBOT!' YOU'RE ALL RACISTS AND I HATE YOU! THAT'S RIGHT, 'ROBOT' IS A RACE. BEEEP-BOOOP-BOP-BOP!" ("Robot" is not a race, Terrence.)

Perhaps it's too early to say an era is coming to a close, but this is definitely a moment. Just a few days into the French Open, both of the Williams sisters, Venus and Serena, have been eliminated.

Both losses were shocking in their own way. Serena's first-round exit Tuesday, one of the bigger upsets in recent Grand Slam memory, was shocking because she's Serena Williams and her opponent was the 111th-ranked Virginie Razzano. It was shocking because she was up a set and still lost in three. It was shocking because she lost a second-set tiebreaker that she had been leading 5-1. It was shocking because she got down in the third set, fought back, but then still lost.

Venus's second-round exit Wednesday was also shocking, not really because she lost (she was unseeded, facing the 3-seed Agnieszka Radwanska), but because her defeat only took one hour. She won five games and lost 12 in 60 minutes. Even though Venus is no longer the Grand Slam favorite like she once was, we're used to her serving and hitting people off the court in an hour's time, not the other way around. Never the other way around. Because she's Venus.

Like I said, an era ending? Maybe not. But this is most certainly a moment.