6 Thoughts
1) Another good peer win over a middling Eastern Conference team. Miami goes to a season high 4 games over .500 (16-12) while the Bulls drop to 13-16. The heroes of this game were the kids - Beasley and Cook ignited a run at the beginning of the fourth quarter with Wade on the bench and the game tied after three. Beasley had 8 of his 14 in the quarter and Cook made 3 threes, pushing the Heat out to a comfortable lead that they cruised home with. Good thing, too - the schedule gets brutal over the next month. The next 3 are Cleveland, Cleveland, Orlando, followed a week later by a looong trip out west. Statistically Miami has played the easiest schedule in basketball thus far - this next month will tell if they can stay up in the playoff race for good.
2) Derrick Rose vs. Mario Chalmers. A battle of rookie point guards. Nobody here at Dos Minutos is going to make the argument that Emcee Chalmers is a better rookie point guard than Derrick Rose. Rose, who went first in the draft - just before Miami selected Beasley - is incredibly talented. I would trade Beasley and Chalmers for him in a heartbeat. But on this night, Chalmers outplayed him. Stayed in front of him and forced Rose in to a 3-14 shooting night with 5 turnovers, while Emcee scored 16 of his own on 6-9, and added 6 assists and 5 rebounds. Rose is going to be an all-star, and he has little productive help on this Bulls team - they ask him, as a rookie, to do far, far too much. But Chalmers is improving as the season goes on, and showing that he, too, has a productive future in this league. It looked like he took his draft night slide personally tonight, matched up against the # 1 pick, and he delivered.
3) Tonight's game was on ESPN, which meant no Eric Reid and Tony Fiorentino - instead ESPN broadcaster Dan Shulman and color commentator Doris Burke. Doris, generally as charismatic as an ironing board, spent several minutes trying to force a joke about Barack Obama's basketball ability: "I've seen the video - he's got no game," droned Doris. For his part, Shulman was hyper aware of injuries, though oddly non-committal. After a Dwyane Wade-Ty Thomas collision left Wade grimacing and clutching his ornaments on the way back up court, Shulman announced, "Wade seems to be a little banged up and he may be reaching for his groin, but it's hard to tell." A quarter later, Bull Andreas Nocioni arose from one of his frequent collisions holding the back of his neck: "He hurt his head in practice yesterday, had an MRI. This may be related to that, but I don't want to speculate," reported Shulman. Shulman is pretty sure Miami won the game, but he doesn't want to jump to any conclusions.
4) Nice feature on Dwyane Wade buying a new house for a woman whose young nephew burned down her old house. However, Mami Minutos was alarmed by video of the presentation: "They are letting the kid right back in the new house!" Get the fire extinguishers ready.
5) If this is the best that former Florida Gator, high lottery draft pick, and pre-op tranny Joakim Noah can play, it is extremely troubling. He looks underfed, tentative, and confused out there. I mean, this is a guy who had a tremendous amount of fire and success in college, and I would have used a high selection on him myself. You should have seen the way my face would light up when I had the opportunity to watch him play. But he is losing minutes to large blanco stiff Aaron Gray and co-lottery bust Tyrus Thomas, seems dispirited, and is one of the reasons the future of the Chicago franchise appears so murky right now...and, of course, he's also a dear, dear friend. In all seriousness, he shouldn't be this bad, neither should Ty Thomas, and their offense consists of Derrick Rose going one-on-one while everyone else watches. They have drafted poorly; their best scorer, Ben Gordon, has been alienated by the franchise and barely touched the ball in the second half; and they seem to lack any direction at all. Only because of Rose' brilliance have they won 13 so far this season. This is a team that needs a big shakeup - badly.
6) Great post-game analysis of the rookie class by former player and current ESPN analyst Jalen Rose. The one thing that he really likes about Blazer rookie Rudy Fernandez is that "he has a moxie." Still, when pressed to name the one rookie that he likes more than all the others, he choose "Rose and Mayo." Dos' all-time favorite Jalen moment was recounted in the book Fab Five, the story of the University of Michigan college hoops team, of which Jalen was a prominent member. On a trip to Hawaii for a tournament, upon arriving at their beachfront hotel, Jalen promptly went to his room, threw open the windows, and plugged in his Sega. "Nothing like the cool ocean breeze blowing over you while you are playing your Madden to make you feel like the man," crowed Motor City native Rose...
------------
Time for a new feature called "Reviewing White Music for Eric."
Today's reviewed album: Tom Petty's new/old band Mudcrutch, with the album Mudcrutch. It is fine, but I didn't like it. I like Tom Petty as much as any other white person from the northeast, but not as much as someone from any state where the public school system is ranked in the bottom third nationally. On a whim I downloaded it during my recent vacation on the theory that it was going to be super cool, sludgy, fuzzy, funk-country slop, with Petty snarling and howling over the top. I mean, that's what "mudcrutch" sounds like, to me. But, it was more like a Byrds album - which is to say, like a jangly country folk album, which is not at all what I was hoping for. For me, it is a pass, but more importantly, for Eric, not worth turning the Billy Joel off for.
