6 Thoughts
1) Man, the Bucks - they were like a totally different team. In Game 1, Brandon Jennings and Monta Ellis came out jacking, and they tried to race up and down with the Heat a little bit and got chewed up. In Game 2, as a group Milwaukee committed to jamming up the paint and turned the game into a wrestling match on their defensive end of the floor. Further, Coach Jim Boylan somehow convinced Jennings and Ellis to get off the ball a little, and create looks for other people - I know, I wouldn't have believed it either if I hadn't seen it with my own two eyes. They executed beautifully, trailed by only 3 after three quarters, and had the Heat, especially King James James (Hubieism), visibly frustrated...But Bird is the word. What? BIRD IS THE WORD!!! Not only that, Birdman: "I drank a Let It Fly before the game." Yessir, of courseummmm, duh!!! LET IT FLY!
2) Up 3 to start the fourth quarter, Miami was playing hard, but ineffectively. The playoffs are difficult - all the teams are good. Maybe not the Celtics, they stink. But nobody can spurt like Miami (ewww). The fourth quarter started with a James foray to the rim that turned into a rugby match, and ended with Bird Andersen grabbing like the fifth tip, and he powered it back in while taking a hit for a three point play. After a stop, KJ got to the rim while absorbing a body check from Epke Udoh (uncalled): 5-0 run. The Bucks committed a live ball turnover and Norris Cole got out ahead of everybody, got fouled, and made both free throws for a 10 point lead. Right then Milwaukee coach Jim Boylan needed a timeout to regroup, call his best set, and try to hang in the game - there's no NBA coach who doesn't take a timeout there, but he didn't, and the Bucks turned it over again, Cole came steaming down court, eschewed an open KJ James waiting for a pass, tried to flush it left-handed on three Bucks, missed, KJ threw Udoh over the baseline to keep the ball alive, Cole somehow scrambled back to it, and flipped a deft pass to an absolutely, ummm, flying, Birdman, who finished for a 12 point lead (10 points and 6 boards in only 12 minutes for Bird). But still, even with the Trip starting to come apart at the hinges, Jim Boylan didn't call a timeout - JIM BOYLAN HATES TIMEOUTS - and the Bucks didn't score, KJ came down, penetrated, lasered a pass out to Cole, and he drilled a triple, 12-0 in a little over 2 minutes, Heat plus 15: ballgame. Annnnd thennnn, Jim Boylan called a timeout! Bucks never threatened again. After the game, Jim Boylan admitted he did not know timeouts were legal in the playoffs during an opponent's run: "if anyone had said anything at all to me..."
3) Second straight game Miami could not get the threes going. Milwaukee stood around in the paint and dared Miami to shoot from the edges, and again the shooters had good looks, but did not knock them down early, causing the offense to constrict. James, Wade, and Chalmers combined to shoot 15-19 in the first half, but everyone else was 3-17. Ray Allen made back-to-back threes halfway through the fourth quarter to turn the game into a laugher, but even with those, and Cole's earlier 4th quarter triple, the Heat only made 6-19. The Bucks only made 4-18, but Miami is pushed up on them, a lot of those are tough, contested shots. Miami's are open. Gotta knock those down, and free up the paint.
4) Because tonight the paint was jammed. Milwaukee sat everyone in the lane and dared Miami to shoot. Additionally, Luc Richard Mbah-a-Moute played KJ James about as physically as you can play him - he contested every bounce of the ball, he climbed all over him, and hounded him into a 6-14 night, 19 points (8 rebounds, 6 assists). In fairness, Miami was also allowed to be physical with drivers - refs did a great job in the fourth quarter when the Bucks got behind and Brandon Jennings went into his patented I-weigh-150-pounds-so-I-am-going-to-propel-myself-into-you-and-hurl-the-ball-at-the-rim-and-fall-down-as-hard-as-I-can offense to try to draw fouls, and the refs put their whistles away. Result: 3-15 night for Jennings, and more importantly, only 4 free throws...The only guy who really had success off the bounce was Dwyane Wade. He claimed after the game that his knee is still not back where he wants it to be, but he looked athletic and strong driving and tossing in layups, and also had two highlight reel dunks: one sailing one-hander off the dribble, and another flying tip-slam over the back of the indifferent Monta Ellis. 21 for Dwyane on 8-14, 7 rebounds. If the shooters make shots, these two will have more room at the rim.
5) Play of the game, runner-up: during garbage time, Mike Dunleavy took a three, the ball hit the iron and bounded up over the backboard, hit part of the stanchion that holds the shot clock up there, and dropped straight down. Everyone on the court stopped playing since that's out of bounds, especially Chris Bosh, who was standing right there and waited for the ball to drop. Instead, Ersan Ilyasova, the one player who didn't realize the ball was dead, darted in, grabbed it, and the Bucks scored when the refs failed to call it out of bounds. During an ensuing timeout, Bosh was explaining to referee Zach Zarba, who made some bizarrely bad calls (brain locked on a JJ Redick over and back in the first half, for example), what had happened, motioning how the ball was going one direction, then suddenly mid-flight changed directions and dropped straight down, in defiance of all known laws of physics. "This is a basketball court, not a classroom," Zarba told him, "do you want me to get my grandfather, Joey Crawford, to come down here and fight you?" Play of the game, winner: when Heat color commentator, the mustachioed Tony Fiorentino, called Bucks forward Marquis Daniels (who pronounces the "s" in his name, so it's kind of like "Maurice") "Marquee," like the signage over a theater. I don't know why this made me laugh out loud, but M.Minutos did, too. I didn't say we are smart or anything...
6) More evidence I am not smart: so every day for the past three weeks I have been experimenting with making protein frappucinos. I don't necessarily like to eat first thing in the morning, but my mom always told me that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. So I have been trying to combine protein (for energy), and coffee (for caffeine) into one drink. By the way, if you look up this sort of thing on the internet, you will find like 6000 recipes, so I know I didn't invent it, thank you in advance for pointing this out. And every day I have been trying to tweak the formula a little bit - add a little more skim milk to the iced coffee and protein power; or add cinnamon; or change the flavor of protein power; or take out the cinnamon, and add a fruit for flavor, etc...Each morning our kitchen island looks like a Jamba Juice, like a Jamba Juice left in the charge of the high school kids who work there after school while the owner is away on vacation in the Keys. M.Minutos hates it, I know. Besides the mess, there is endless pre-7am blending, and I am using all her traveling cups to drink the frappucinos on the way to work. But no matter how I tweak the frappucino recipe, no matter what I do, it's always a little bit off. It's never bad, but it's never that satisfying, either. What I'm looking for is a delicious, nutritious, and refreshing frosty coffee beverage, but what I am getting is mostly "mehhh." Then today, driving to work, I had a revelation: I don't like frappucinos. I don't mean like, "oh, so throughout this process of trial and error, I have learned something about myself: I don't like frappucinos." No. I mean, before I even started this process, I already knew I didn't like frappucinos! I've had them plenty of times, from Starbucks, from Dunkin Donuts, wherever, and I don't hate them, but I don't like them, either. I simply forgot. So all this time I have wasted experimenting with flavors was in vain, because I don't like the concept of the drink to begin with, and further, have always known that I do not...I'd really like to think that I am a smarter person than this, but there is a lot of mounting evidence that indicates otherwise...
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Next game is Thursday in Milwaukee. I figure we go to Milwaukee, get one hot shooting night, blow them out, maybe they get one of the two there, and then we come back here and politely finish them off 4-1. I'd be fine with that. If you need me before Thursday, I'll be celebrating my birthday tomorrow - turning 24! Cheers!
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