6 Thoughts
1) It's amazing how much easier basketball is when the ball goes in...and your Mario Chalmers t-shit is freshly washed! Emcee Chalmers' #15 bounced out of the dryer 3 minutes before game-time, and avenged it's first loss. Now 6-1 in these playoffs - MARIO CHALMERS SHIRT POWER! Very important people in the Pacers organization - and by "very important people," I mean "Pacers radio announcer Mark Boyle" - criticized Heat fans after Game 2. I believe he used the word "losers" to describe Heat fans who left early during the loss. Tonight, when Pacers fans evacuated the arena with 3 minutes to go like Bob Evans was offering free cheese fries until midnight, obviously Mark Boyle was all over them, right? Umm, no. Crickets. I mean, crickets...except for the very, very conspicuous "Let's go Heat" chants ringing throughout the otherwise empty building! Pacers are 25th in attendance - I guess there were a lot of tickets available for Miami's loser fans. Let's go, let's let it fly, let's do what needs to be done - feels so much better to win than lose!
2) Early on in this game, King James took Paul George to the block and beat him up. Backed him down on the left block, turned over the right shoulder, and banked in left-handed jump hooks. Faked the same move, stepped through, and beat the help to the rim. Found cutters, and threw the ball back out to shooters over help. Drove against the halftime clock and made a running 12 foot floater to end the half while being body-checked by Roy Hibbert (of course, no foul - why would there be a foul, it's KJ James...).Went back out top, made a dribble handoff to Ray Allen, screened two dudes, and Allen hit a three. Spent time on both Paul George and Lance Stevenson, and helped hold those two guys to a combined 5-20. He scored 18 in the first half, when it was still a game, and spent the second half monitoring things, directing traffic from the top. His 22, 4, and 3 is a quiet stat line from him, but I'm not sure he could have dominated the game much more thoroughly. Not too much went on out there tonight that wasn't greatly affected by his presence. Numbers don't aways tell the whole story.
3) But sometimes they tell a big part of the story...KJ James was dominant in the first two games as well, but didn't get any help. Tonight? HE GOT ALL THE HELP! Dwyane Wade wound his way to the middle, pulled up in the paint, and made polite little jump hooks over Hibbert, and then, once he had him back peddling, found open teammates: 8-14 for 18 points, with 8 assists by Wade...The teammate he found on his drives? Udonis Haslem! UD, with everyone calling for his starting job, and his minutes in general, spaced out to the baseline, caught kickouts when Hibbert sank to the paint, and drilled jumpers. Three in a row to start the game, then threw in a running hookshot over Hibbert, then cut baseline, caught a pass from James, and took a hit from Hibbert as he powered the ball in. It was vintage UD, at least for one more night: 8-9, for 17 points, and 7 boards...And, maybe most importantly, Mario "Emcee" Chalmers scored 14 on 4-6, including back-to-back huge buckets in the third quarter during the Pacers only real run of the game. His drive-and-finish through a George Hill bodycheck stretched the lead back to double digits, and kind of ended the drama. And if you think that Chalmers was inspired by my newly cleaned t-shirt, you would be spot on - every player like to smell fresh (except Roy Hibbert, probably - that dude looks like he smells like butt; good player, yes - looks like he smells like absolute butt).
4) Play of the game: as we said, the first two games of this series, nothing went right for Miami. Indiana is a fantastic defensive teams - much credit to them - but Miami shot it poorly from the line, poorly from distance, and kept turning it over. Tonight was the opposite: even the bad plays worked out. With the Heat pouring it on late in the third quarter, KJ screened, rolled down the lane free, Norris Cole burned a perfect bullet into him, and it went right through James' hands...into the hands of a soaring Birdmandersen, who caught it and flushed it to send M.Minutos into an extended bird-flap (one flap only for me). Bird went for 9 and 9 with 2 blocks in 22 minutes. Not in my wildest dreams, dude...
5) Neither Dwyane Wade (leaping karate chop to Lance Stevenson's head) nor David West (vicious cheap shot elbow to Mario Chalmers' injured shoulder...which West injured with a cheap shot screen, by the way) were suspended. Dwyane got back to basketball, trying to recapture an acceptable baseline of efficiency. West, on the other hand, got back to arguing, petulantly scowling at the refs, his opponents, and even his own teammates when he was displeased with some real or imagined transgression. He's an excellent player - had another great game with 21 and 10 - but an atrocious teammate, and the dirtiest non-Artest player in the league. He generally douched it up all night long - one thing about him, he's a huge front runner. When things are going well, he's very "la-di-da!" but when things turn for the worse, he starts bitching at everyone around him, and throwing wild elbows - you can literally watch him melt down out there. In the third quarter, with the game almost gone, he committed ridiculous back-to-back fouls on Battier: (another) needless elbow whistled at him, and then grabbed him around the neck on a rebound and threw him down. Absurd. Imagine encountering him in normal life, you'd be, like, waiting in line to pay for your Mennen Speed Stick at Target - you know, cuz you're smelling like Hibbert's booty a little (hey, it's okay, it's hot in Florida this time of year) - and you got West in behind you in line, like his forearm planted in your lower back, pushing you forward into the lady with the diapers in front of you, while he's mean-mugging and screaming at the cashier, "Hey - this the express lane!" This is definitely the guy in your circle of friends that no one likes because his act is embarrassing, but no one ever says anything to him, because it's not worth the 2 hour argument you're gonna have when he's trying to tell you why he was right to curse at the waitress in the TGIF's he insisted you all go to for lunch...You're a grown-ass man, David West, goodness gracious.
6) Got a brochure in the mail from a company called Fresh Diet. It is a company that delivers meals to your door. Man, this sounds terrific, it isn't like a lot of meal delivery plans where the food may not be optimally fresh. Fresh Diet's meals are "never heavily processed, vacuum-packed, or frozen," and they will be waiting on my doorstep each morning when I wake up. Wow - I really like fresh food! According to the brochure, Forbes Magazine calls Fresh Diet one of "America's top 20 most promising companies," and Gayle King, Oprah's best friend, exclaims "every time I pick out my meals, my mouth does a happy dance!" I'm starting to think this is for me, I could really use the convenience of someone preparing my meals for me, the menus are nutritional, and the cost is not prohibitive. Look at this sample menu: Apricot Cream Cheese Crepes for breakfast; Asian-Style Chicken Salad for lunch; and Turkey Chili Con Carne for dinner! Delicious! And for dessert, Chocolate Dipped Strawberries with Creamy Vanilla Ricotta Chee- whoa, whoa, WHOA! What the freak?!? Are you trying to kill me, Fresh Diet? Ricotta cheese? Blechhhh-yyyy, ricotta cheese is the most vile food stuff in existence, no human palate can survive the soft, stinky disgustingness of ricotta cheese ("disgustingness," probably not a word, I acknowledge). Good God, this Fresh Diet is a menace, this meal plan is only for people who really, really hate good food, or themselves, or both, or who drive a Kia Rondo...
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Game 4 is Tuesday night. If you need me before then, I definitely won't be re-living the hightlights of Fast and Furious 6 in my mind, because how could I, since I can't see that film, since I'm an adult with a college education? It's really more for like, ummm, well, I'm just gonna say it: Pacers fans...So I definitely won't be thinking about Vin Diesel's heroic pursuit of Michelle Rodriguez, including the most dramatic "flying car catch" of all-time. And I won't be thinking about the hilarious hijinks perpetrated by Tyrese and Ludacris, who never lose their respective joie de vivres, even in impossibly dangerous situations. And I absolutely won't be dreaming of Paul Walker's dreamy blue-eyed heroic gesture to get himself inserted into a maximum security prison, just to try to help make amends for an earlier mistake that he made in one of the other Fast and Furious movies which, of course, I did not see. Don't do it, Paul Walker - I love you, boy! Do you know what can happen to a guy like you in prison? I LOVE YOU, BOY!!!...See you all Tuesday, even Mark Boyle!
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