The left hook is malice made into a thing of beauty. Boxing lore will tell you that the left hook has dashed more aspirations, left more men arrayed on the canvas like crime scene photographs than any other punch in the inventory.

Throw it as the punctuation on a jab-cross-hook combination and it is surreptitious, it crashes in from just outside the peripheral vision. The gifted can double up on it, take the hook downstairs to tenderize the rib cage and then bring it up to the temple where it makes men fall out like they’ve been touched by the Holy Ghost. A few can throw it at the beginning of a sequence and it’s like opening a conversation by telling a man you slept with his wife but only after you slapped his grandmother. Master it and you are a fighter; without it, you’re just someone throwing punches.

Joe Frazier was a fighter. There are few in the history who expressed the left hook as fluently as he and fewer still who deployed it with the devastating consequences he did. There was little poetry in Frazier’s approach to the craft; his style was a catalogue of tics, glove-to-forehead, shoulder-hunch-and-duck jerks, all as redundant as a blues verse. He fought like a car with a bad transmission: moving in one direction only. But inside that awkward motion was a mastery of technique that few could appreciate unless they’d tried actually defending against it. The novice believes that the hook is thrown from the shoulder, but Frazier knew its origins lie way further south — that it begins with a pivot in the left foot, the ill intent moving north, picking up torque in the hip and then finally expressing itself through the shoulder, the arm, the fist. The truth is that Frazier more than any boxer other than Floyd Patterson laid down the principles that the young Mike Tyson mined and remixed.

When Frazier and Muhammad Ali met for their first bout in 1971, nearly four years after Ali had been stripped of the title, the country boy shocked the former champion, absorbing his best and bobbing his way in to deliver a bulk shipment of left hands. In the 14th round one of those hooks found its mark and Ali found himself on the canvas. When doubters shrugged off Ali’s loss as the product of too much time away from the ring they overlooked the fact that he had always been vulnerable to left hands.

Years earlier Ali had been floored by a left from Henry Cooper, a British no-name best known for his capacity to bleed during a fight. Frazier fought in a relentless march of forward motion. Ali relished punishing his opponents while moving in reverse and earned his living lashing blinding jabs at his opponents. Frazier hardly ever threw the jab, preferring to introduce himself by way of the hook. In meeting Frazier, Ali had stepped into a ring with a man whose strengths perfectly aligned with his own weaknesses and defined what became their epic rivalry.

This went beyond boxing. Black people loved the charmed harlequin Muhammad Ali, but the truth is Frazier’s life contained our metaphors. Born to sharecroppers, Frazier’s pedigree included chopping cotton in South Carolina fields and brewing corn liquor. He came north to Philadelphia with the black tides of the Great Migration. Observers thought there was something of the blues in Frazier’s style, as if he had distilled that element of the Black south down into his personal rhythms inside the ring.

It was Frazier’s lot to bear the contempt of the public for the way Ali initially lost his title – stripped of it by the government for refusing induction into the Army in 1967. Ali took to referring to himself as “the People’s Champ,” implicitly casting Frazier as the man of the Establishment — Uncle Tom with a more talented left hand.

Black folk indulged Ali as he mined the worst of our collective self for slings to hurl at Frazier. Thus a man who sharpened his rhetorical skill trading lines with Malcolm X and Don King used his verbal gifts to do to Frazier precisely what he’d done to every other fighter since Sonny Liston – reduce them to the foil in his comedic routine. Even at the outset his nemesis got top billing – people referred to their initial fight as Ali-Frazier instead Frazier-Ali, with the reigning champion’s name listed first. Ali was selling the fight but Frazier, the dark-skinned, soft spoken, pork-eating Southern boy understood that there were acres of hurt in our history, far too many wounds not yet healed to grant Ali amnesty and call it all showmanship.

In thinking of him solely in association with Ali we forget far more than we remember about Smokin’ Joe, like the fact that long before a hyphen handcuffed his name to that of his greatest nemesis, he won the heavyweight Olympic medal in the 1964 Tokyo games. Or that he gave Ali money to keep him afloat during the years when the U.S. government had stripped his boxing license. Or that he buzz-sawed through the heavyweight division in the years following his Olympic medal, all but unstoppable until he ran into a force of nature named George Foreman in Jamaica.

The ghosts of his loss to Ali in their third fight in Manila stayed with Frazier for decades. The indelible image of trainer Eddie Futch waving off the referee and stopping the fight in the 14th round was one that Frazier seemed never quite able to exorcise from his mind. Yet yesterday as Joe Frazier fought his final rounds against liver cancer, a challenger more wily and implacable than any he encountered in the ring, another image occurred to me. It is of the young Frazier, all sinew and bad intentions, crouched low, the left hand coming from a place as deep as the cotton fields and as ancient as the blues.

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The police found no signs of foul play. According to Rosen, Heavy D “was returning home from shopping. He experienced difficulty breathing while walking into his condominium building. He was being assisted up to his apartment by building personnel when he collapsed in an exterior hallway.”

Heavy D’s death comes almost a month after a comeback performance at the 2011 BET Hip-Hop Awards, when he performed a medley of his best-known singles, among them “Nuttin’ But Love,” “Is It Good to You” and “Now That We Found Love.”

On Twitter, he was known for posting affirming messages. His final tweet appeared early Tuesday morning.

HEAVY D @heavyd
HEAVY D
BE INSPIRED!
November 8, 2011 6:29 am via web Reply Retweet Favorite

Heavy D was born in Jamaica, and moved to Mt. Vernon, NY, when he was a child. Heavy D & The Boyz, the group which he fronted, was the first act signed to Uptown Records, the record company started by Andre Harrell.

“I remember getting him to work with then-choreographer Rosie Perez and him looking at me, like, ‘Should we really do this?’,” Harrell told Essence. “And I said, ‘a big man dancing is going to be really fun for people. It’s gonna make them love you.’”

The group enjoyed widespread fame in the early 1990s, and scored prominent cameos on hit songs with Michael Jackson and Janet Jackson. Heavy D also appeared on the theme songs for the popular sketch comedy shows “In Living Color” and “MadTV,” and later went on to run Uptown, the record label on which he’d spent much of his career.

But tragedy befell the group at the beginning of its commercial success. Troy Dixon, a member of the group known as Trouble T Roy, died in an accident after a show when he fell from an exit ramp. Dixon’s death was the inspiration for Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth’s “They Reminisce Over You (T.R.O.Y.),” which is widely considered one of the greatest hip-hop songs of all time.

Heavy D was name-checked on the Notorious B.I.G.’s first hit single, “Juicy,” in which Biggie Smalls remembered growing up and wanting the kind of fame enjoyed by rap pioneers like Heavy D and Salt ‘N Pepa. A young Biggie Smalls appeared on Heavy D’s 1992 album “Blue Funk.”

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At around 11:25 a.m., a 911 call was reportedly made, reporting an unconscious male outside.

TMZ reports that the “Now That We Found Love” rapper was conscious and talking when he was taken to the hospital.

There are reportedly no signs of foul play. Heavy D appears in the Ben Stiller and Eddie Murphy film “Tower Heist” and performed an old school set at the BET Hip-Hop Awards in October.

Stephen Hill, BET president of music programming and specials, said Heavy D was in good spirits when he performed at the hip-hop event. ” I’m so glad that we got to work together for his performance at last month’s BET Hip-Hop Awards,” Hill said in a statement. “Hev was focused, energetic and happy; he worked HARD, as he always had, to excite the crowd.”

Heavy D collaborated with a number of artists over the course of his career. He appears on the remix of Janet Jackson’s song “Alright” from her “Rhythm Nation 1814″ album, and on Michael Jackson’s “Jam” from his “Dangerous” set. His biggest single was his 1991 song “Now That We Found Love” that reached No. 11 on the pop charts.

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A reforestation project that paid poor women to plant trees is just one example of how Maathai, a Kenyan, empowered and educated local African people, particularly women.

“She was a fearless champion of nature and women,” Mark Tercek, president and CEO of the Nature Conservancy, told The Huffington Post.

On a panel last Thursday at the Clinton Global Initiative annual meeting in New York City, Tercek described the key role that forests play in flood control and water quality — a lesson that has been learned the hard way, repeatedly, around the world. It took a major flood that ravaged homes, topsoil and fish stocks throughout the Yangtze region two decades ago for China to recognize that a standing forest was worth three times its mere value in timber.

Overall, forests, watersheds and other ecosystems provide an estimated $33 trillion in essentially free goods and services for communities around the world. But because these services are typically excluded from market calculations, widespread environmental degradation continues more or less unabated.

“Many people think nature is nice because of its spiritual value, or they like hiking, or they want to preserve it to hand it off to their descendants,” said Tercek. “These are all good reasons, but there are some really practical reasons to value nature too.”

Tercek is overflowing with practical examples. In an effort to thwart poaching in Kenya, his organization helped persuade villages to appoint local men to work as rangers. As poaching rates then dropped and the wildlife returned, tourism revenue rose. With less threat of violence from poachers, the village women also felt safer. In fact, one told Tercek that she was sleeping without her shoes on for the first time in her life.

He also tells a story about Quito, Ecuador, where a few years ago local business leaders were contemplating a major investment in a water filtration plant. He and his colleagues persuaded the city to invest instead in conservation efforts to secure clean water, such as changes in farming methods in the villages upstream. Sewing machines were one of the early purchases. They allowed women to stop grazing sheep — a common practice that leads to deforestation — and start making clothes to sell at local markets. The village people continue to work together with city leaders to determine how to spend the upstream conservation fees, imposed in lieu of filtration taxes.

Today, not only does nature keep Quito’s water clean, but it does so at a lower cost than so-called grey infrastructure.

“This was beautiful habitat that we would want to protect anyway. But now the argument was different. It was an economic one,” Tercek told HuffPost in an interview after the meeting. “And it worked.”

“People are getting it,” he added. “Conservation pays for itself. No philanthropy needed.”

The Nature Conservancy plans to replicate the water conservation initiative within 30 other watersheds around Latin America.

“The potential is enormous,” said Marta Echavarria, founding director of EcoDecision, an environmental business promotion firm that worked with Tercek’s team in Ecuador, and another member of last Thursday’s panel. “Any mechanisms where we could link livelihoods and the conservation through water can really bring people together.”

The island of Dominica offers another case in point of how investing in natural infrastructure can benefit economic development. On one side, the Dominican Republic is home to vast stands of forest. While it is still a poor country, its economy is growing thanks in large part to a strong tourism industry. The other side of the island, however, tells a starkly different story.

“Haiti is a disaster,” said Tercek. The biggest difference, he noted, is that Haiti didn’t take care of its natural capital, including forests, topsoil, reefs and fish stocks. Or, as he put it simply, “They screwed themselves.”

Meanwhile, efforts started by Maathai in Africa are helping to fend off a similar disaster. Her Green Belt Movement has now planted more than 30 million trees and helped nearly 900,000 women.

“Maathai understood the value of nature — in particular, the value of trees — and she understood the role of the common people, especially women,” said Tercek. “The conservation movement doesn’t have enough heroes like her.”

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A high school basketball star was shot dead inside a Manhattan housing project Sunday in a slaying her family believes was a tragic case of mistaken identity.

Tayshana (Chicken) Murphy, 18, one of the top-rated basketball players in the country, was killed in Harlem’s Grant Houses around 4:10 a.m., police said.

She was trying to outrun a gunman in the fourth-floor hallway of her building, witnesses said.

“She was pleading for her life,” said friend Teka Taylor, 22. “She was saying, ‘No, please, I don’t have nothing to do with it.’”

Murphy had just started her senior year at Murry Bergtraum High School for Business Careers. Several colleges were actively recruiting her.

“She said, ‘Mom, I’m going to get you out of the projects,’ ” said Murphy’s mother, Tephanie Holston, whose shirt was stained with blood after she tried to save her daughter before emergency workers arrived. “She loved basketball, she lived and breathed basketball,” Holston said.

Witnesses believe Murphy, who was partying with friends from the project and was wearing a hooded sweatshirt, was mistaken for a boy from the group who had fought with young men from a nearby housing project.

She died at the scene after being chased into the building by her shooter.

Murphy’s mother kissed the body bag as it was loaded into a medical examiner van.

“No, no, no. I can’t believe this,” Murphy’s sister howled as she banged on the van with both her hands.
Murphy had a brush with violence last year, when she left Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School under threat of suspension after an altercation with a 15-year-old girl.

She transferred to St. Michael’s Academy in Manhattan, then started at Murry Bergtraum last September after St. Michael’s shut down.

Murphy was ecstatic to be returning to the court this fall after being sidelined last year with a knee injury. “She wanted in the worst way to play,” said Ed Grezinsky, her coach at Bergtraum. “She definitely would have been the leader of the team.”

She never lost sight of her dream of becoming a WNBA star. “That’s my goal,” she told the Daily News last year. “I want to be great.”

Police are investigating the killing. No arrests have been made.

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Edwards died on Monday from congestive heart failure, said manager Michael Frank, who also played harmonica in Edwards’ trio.

“Honeyboy was the quintessential Delta bluesman,” Frank said.

Edwards was among the last musicians to know and play with legendary bluesman Robert Johnson, who died in 1938, and his career was intertwined with the likes of Charlie Patton, Big Joe Williams, Sonny Boy Williamson, Howlin’ Wolf, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Big Walter, Little Walter and Muddy Waters.

Edwards, who was born in 1915 in Shaw, Mississippi, earned a 2008 Grammy Award for best traditional blues album for “Last of the Great Mississippi Delta Bluesmen: Live In Dallas.” He was awarded a lifetime achievement Grammy in 2010.

Edwards usually performed on acoustic guitar, sitting in a chair on stage, although he was in constant movement.

“He was a very emotional and physical player and singer,” Frank said. “He used his body in his stage performance for effect.

“He had an eccentric style, with unusual timing. He would make changes unpredictably. That was the Honeyboy test. (Musicians who sat in) found out very quickly you can’t just count. He would do some funny turnaround, or funny lick, then look over and just laugh, knowing he was messing with us,” Frank said.

Edwards, who fell ill in April, last toured Europe in 2009, performing 10 shows back to back in England, Frank said. On tour, he played in small clubs, theaters, and music festivals.

In 1942, archivist Alan Lomax recorded Edwards in Clarksdale, Mississippi, for the Library of Congress, according to his website. Edwards did not record again commercially until 1951, when he made “Who May Your Regular Be” for Arc Records.

Although known more for rearranging other blues artists’ tunes, Edwards wrote several songs including “Long Tall Woman Blues,” “Gamblin’ Man” and “Just Like Jesse James.”

(Reporting by Andrew Stern; Editing by Bill Trott)

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Ashford, who along with wife Valerie Simpson wrote some of Motown’s biggest hits, died in a New York City hospital, said publicist Liz Rosenberg, who was Ashford’s longtime friend. He had been suffering from throat cancer and had undergone radiation treatment, she told The Associated Press.

Though they had some of their greatest success at Motown with classics like “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” and “Reach Out And Touch Somebody’s Hand” by Ross and “You’re All I Need To Get By” by Gaye and Tammi Terrell, Ashford & Simpson also created anthems for others, like “I’m Every Woman” by Khan (and later remade by Whitney Houston). Ashford & Simpson also had success writing for themselves: Perhaps the best-known song they sang was the 1980s hit “Solid As A Rock.”

“His music is unmatched in terms of great songwriting,” Verdine White of Earth, Wind and Fire said after learning of his friend’s death.

“They had magic and that’s what creates those wonderful hits, that magic,” White added. “Without those songs, those artists wouldn’t have been able to go to the next level.”

Others in the music industry also mourned the loss. On Twitter, Alicia Keys wrote, “I’m so sad that he’s gone. … So many of the greatest are going to a greater place … what a legacy of infectious music … man!”

Ashford and Simpson’s relationship stretched more than four decades. They met in 1964 in a New York City church. Ashford, a South Carolina native, had come to the city to pursue a dance career. Simpson was a music student, and after connecting with her, they decided to start to write songs together.

“They were always comfortable with each other and they made all of us comfortable, because they were comfortable,” White said.

Their first major success occurred when they came up with “Let’s Go Get Stoned” for Ray Charles. The bluesy, gospel-tinged song became a huge hit for Charles, and soon, they came to the attention of Motown Records and began penning hits for their artists.

They started out writing soulful, romantic works for the duo of Gaye and Terrell that would become instant classics, like “Your Precious Love,” and “Ain’t Nothin’ Like The Real Thing.” In fact, “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” was originally their hit, until Ross later rerecorded it with a new arrangement that had sweeping pop grandeur and made it her signature song.

Ross may have been their greatest muse: With her, they had some of their biggest songs and helped give her career-defining hits that would distinguish her solo career apart from The Supremes. Among the songs Ross made hits were “Reach Out and Touch,” ”The Boss,” ”My House,” and “Missing You,” a tribute to the late Gaye and others. They also composed some of the music for “The Wiz,” the movie musical that starred Ross and Michael Jackson.

In an industry where marriages and partnerships are fleeting, Ashford and Simpson stood the test of time.

“The thing is they were married and working together, that was what was special about them. Everybody admired that,” White said.

The duo, married for 38 years, helped sell millions of records for several artists. They also had success as their own entity, but despite “Solid As a Rock,” their songs were dwarfed by those they penned for others. They continued to craft hits even into the new millennium: They are credited as co-writers on Amy Winehouse’s “Tears Dry On Their Own.”

In recent years, the pair continued to perform. They also were owners of the New York City restaurant Sugar Bar, where many top names and emerging talents would put on showcases.

In 2002, Ashford & Simpson were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

Ashford is survived by his wife and two daughters. Rosenberg said there is no information yet on funeral arrangements.

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The Grammy award-winning soul singer with her trademark beehive battled with well-documented addictions that she documented in her hit single “Rehab”. Her death is being treated as unexplained, Scotland Yard said.

“Police were called by London Ambulance Service to an address in Camden Square shortly before 4:05 pm (1505 GMT) today, Saturday 23 July, following reports of a woman found deceased,” a police statement said.

“On arrival officers found the body of a 27-year-old female who was pronounced dead at the scene.

“Enquiries continue into the circumstances of the death. At this early stage it is being treated as unexplained.”

London Ambulance Service said it had been called to the flat at 3:54 pm (1454 GMT) and sent two ambulances.

Police officers remained on duty outside her home Saturday.

There was no immediate comment from her agents.

Winehouse rocketed to fame after winning five Grammy awards off the back of her 2006 second album “Back to Black” and the hit single “Rehab”.

In the run-up to her live return, Winehouse spent a week earlier this year at an addiction treatment clinic in London, reportedly at the suggestion of her father, Mitch, over concerns that she was drinking too much before her shows.

But Winehouse pulled out of her European comeback tour following a disastrous opening performance in Serbia on June 18.

She was booed at the performance in Belgrade, as she appeared to be too drunk to sing.

Some 20,000 people gathered for the highly-promoted concert at the sixth-century Kalemegdan fortress, but many soon left.

During the concert, which lasted about 90 minutes, Winehouse could only mumble some of the lyrics, failing to follow her band.

Winehouse left the stage twice, with many fans showing their displeasure despite her band’s attempts to calm the crowd.

“Amy Winehouse is withdrawing from all scheduled performances,” a statement from her representatives said.

“Everyone involved wishes to do everything they can to help her return to her best and she will be given as long as it takes for this to happen.”

She had also been scheduled to perform in Istanbul, Athens, Bilbao in Spain, Locarno in Switzerland, Italy’s Lucca festival, Switzerland’s Paleo Festival in Nyon, Nova Jazz and Blues Night in Wiesen, Austria, and Poland’s Bydgoszcz Artpop Festival.

Known for her distinctive voice and beehive hairdo, Winehouse’s debut album “Frank” was released in 2003 and brought her wide acclaim. It went triple platinum in Britain.

The follow-up, “Back to Black”, was a worldwide smash hit, reaching number one in Britain and number two in the US charts. It went six times platinum in Britain and double platinum in the United States.

She married Blake Fielder-Civil in Miami in May 2007 but they had a tempestuous relationship. He spent part of their marriage behind bars for a vicious attack on a pub landlord and a subsequent attempt to cover it up.

They divorced in July 2009.

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Fans of Jackson are mobilizing to raise money for an opponent — any opponent — to run against Rep. Pete King, R-N.Y., following the critical remarks the congressman made about the recently deceased pop icon.

Over the weekend, King said that the media had gone far over the top in glorifying Jackson, who he deemed a “low-life” pervert who “may have been a good singer” and “did some dancing.”

Now, an ActBlue fundraising site has been set up by “A fan of Michael Jackson” titled “Michael Jackson Fans AGAINST Peter King.”

Here is the offensive video

The site says……”Congressman Peter King is at again, this time defaming the late Michael Jackson, calling MJ a “pervert’, ‘low-life”, and a “pedophile”. As Rick Sanchez noted on CNN, Michael Jackson was acquitted of the charges against him. Peter King ought to let Jackson rest in peace, and focus on the needs of his constituents. As we mourn the loss of an American legend, political grandstanding is not what we need right now!”

“Peter King ought to let Jackson rest in peace, and focus on the needs of his constituents. As we mourn the loss of an American legend, political grandstanding is not what we need right now!” the page reads. “Fans of Michael Jackson and his legacy stand united against Peter King’s hateful words. Please donate here to show Peter King that true MJ fans won’t stand for the smearing of a pop sensation!”

The fund is being set up to benefit the Democratic nominee for New York’s third congressional district — a reliable Republican stronghold. The problem is that at this time, there is no Democratic nominee. And King has flirted with a run for New York’s governor’s chair in 2010. Still, it will be interesting to see the extent to which Michael Jackson devotees can mobilize politically. Who would have thought that the King of Pop’s legacy would become a partisan issue?

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The jilted wife:Steve McNair married Mechelle Cartwright in Vicksburg, Miss., on June 21, 1997.

Man , I am feeling worse for Steve McNair’s poor wife than I do for him right now. What is it with these men who follow every predictable route that a woman assumes a man will take and end up cheating with a woman who is 16 years younger than him? Forget about the fact that this girl Sahel Kazemi is not black, to be honest I am shocked that Steve McNair’s wife is even black because a black athlete marrying an actual black woman is almost unheard of, no joke…it’s the CHEATING and planning to marry another woman half your age, going on exotic vacations with the 20 year old waitress you met from Dave & Busters while your wife and 4 kids are at home with no clue is what’s real shady. Now it’s looking like this is a murder suicide possibly by the hands of Kazemi?

Sahel Kazemi, 20, was found dead of gunshot wounds along with the former NFL quarterback on July 4.

This is a clear lesson in why you should keep your house in order at all times, and if you want to dump your loyal wife of 12 years for a 20 year old waitress, then be honest and tell the woman, and not let her find out in the newspapers. I still feel bad that the guy is dead, no one deserves to die, especially for cheating..but just imagine..Steve McNair would be alive today if he wasn’t cheating on his wife and kids. Oh well…here’s the story:

 

The wife of slain quarterback Steve McNair may have only learned about the gridiron star’s affair with a gorgeous young woman after the clandestine couple’s grisly deaths, sources close to the football player said Sunday.

“She’s blindsided by this,” one source said of Mechelle McNair, who was holed up in her family’s home just 6 miles from the condo her husband used to bed his mistress. “She’s crushed. Her whole world is shattered.”

Nashville cops confirmed that Steve McNair, 36, was killed by four bullets fired at close range, two of which hit him in the head, and ruled his death a homicide.

His lover, Sahel Kazemi, 20, died of a single gunshot from the same semiautomatic found on the floor under her body, police also said.

They stopped short of calling the slayings a murder-suicide carried out by Kazemi, but said they are not looking for any suspects.

Cops ruled McNair’s death a homicide and have not ruled on Kazemi’s death, citing the need for more tests.

Kazemi and McNair, a dad of four boys, were dating for several months, friends told cops; McNair apparently kept the affair a secret from his wife.

Photos obtained by TMZ.com show a smiling McNair parasailing on a recent tropical vacation with the curvy Kazemi, whom he met as she waitressed at a Dave & Buster’s sports bar.

“He started to talk to her a little,” Kazemi’s aunt Sepideh Salmani told The Tennessean newspaper. “They exchanged phone numbers, and started dating from there.”

Salmani said her beautiful, raven-haired niece believed that McNair was in the process of getting a divorce.

Kazemi’s sister told The Florida Times-Union of Jacksonville that Kazemi had expected to wed McNair.

“She said they were planning to get married,” Soheyla Kazemi told the paper.”

County records do not indicate that a divorce is pending, but the McNair family home is up for sale for $3 million.

Investigators said McNair had been drinking at a pair of Nashville bars – Blue Moon Lagoon Bar and Loser’s Bar – into the early-morning hours of Saturday and then returned to the downtown condo he shared with a pal.

Although neighbors have not reported hearing gunshots, cops believe McNair and Kazemi died about 2 a.m., nearly 12 hours before their bodies were found.

There was no sign of forced entry at the condo, and investigators are checking whether the couple had been having a “lovers’ quarrel,” cops said.

It was not immediately known whom the pistol belonged to, although McNair did have a permit to carry a gun, police said.

Kazemi, who was raised by an aunt in Florida after her parents were killed in Iran, moved to Nashville with her ex-boyfriend, Keith Norfleet.

Norfleet, whom investigators want to interview, had a “volatile” relationship with Kazemi but was trying to win her back from McNair, Norfleet’s stepmother said.

“They had a lot of jealousy in their relationship and they’d fight and break up a lot,” said Trudie Norfleet. “He loved her. … He’s awful torn up about it.”

The quarterback, renowned in Nashville for his extensive work in the community, rented the condo overlooking the Titans stadium with sporting goods dealer Wayne Neeley, who called McNair’s best friend after seeing the bodies sprawled on a couch.

“It’s a picture I’ll never get out of my head,” a weeping Robert Gaddy told the Daily News. “It’s the most terrible sight I’ve ever seen.”

“This was a great man, a man who’d do anything for you,” said Gaddy, who had been friends with the Heisman finalist since meeting him at Alcorn State University.

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