6 Thoughts
1) Absolutely horrific performance in Atlanta, the team directly above Miami in the playoff standings - one of the year's worst. Dwyane Wade - disinterested. Udonis Haslem - slow. Jermaine O'Neal - innumerable shots missed right at the rim. Mario Chalmers - indescribably awful. Mike Beasley - Mike Beasley was great, actually. The one guy for Miami who showed up. 23 points in 25 minutes for Mike, 16 in the fourth quarter. He gave the Heat a chance to hang in there, but never got any help.
2) Huge game at home tomorrow against the New York Knicks. Heat need to keep grinding out wins where they can if they want to hold on to a playoff spot. The Knicks are a sub .500 team, who also played a game tonight. Have to have it. 30-27, but the schedule is huge: two games against Cleveland next week. That's not good.
3) The rotation is in disarray. This is partly due to the trade, but partly due to some changes with the existing roster. Jamal Magloire hasn't played in two weeks - Haslem now plays the backup center minutes, with Beasley playing the power forward spot next to him. Moon and Diawara split the small forward minutes, though Moon has looked like the better player. Most significantly, Chris Quinn has been de-rotationed for the last two weeks. Wade has played the backup point guard minutes, with Daequan Cook playing more minutes next to him. This is problematic as it increases the workload for Wade. Especially on a night where Chalmers struggles, it gives Wade far too much to do - it helps him immensely to get him off the ball some of the time. But Quinn's struggles defensively, and Cook's continued progress in that area, make it difficult not to give Daequan Quinn's minutes. It's fluid, but it is troublesome going down the stretch when you want guys to know their roles as specifically as possible.
4) Why people hate (and don't trust) referees, pt. 412: Atlanta's Marvin Williams motored down the court in transition with Chalmers tracking him from the side, and Udonis Haslem sitting back at the top of the key. Williams tried to cross over his dribble to go around Haslem, tangled up his own feet, and fell to the court. Referee Ed Malloy, on the opposite side of the court from Chalmers (thus, with Williams in between the ref and Mario), blew his whistle and called a tripping foul on Chalmers. He couldn't possibly have known if Chalmers tripped Williams because Williams himself was blocking his view. And, in fact, Chalmers was at least five feet away from Williams - he wasn't close enough to have stuck out his foot intentionally to trip Williams, even if he had wanted to. Stupid call - don't call something if you are only guessing - but fine, it can happen in the heat of the moment. However, referee Tom Washington - Dos Minutos' least favorite ref - running with the play on Chalmers' side, knew perfectly well that Chalmers wasn't close enough to have tripped Williams. On Malloy's foul call, Chalmers, instead of appealing to Malloy across the court, intuitively immediately turned to Washington to plead his case, knowing Washington would have seen the play correctly, would have had to, given his angle. Washington, the most incompetent and arrogant of officials - he has the little man's syndrome - dismissed Chalmers with a wave off and ran away from him back down the court. Look, I know a referee is never going to go over to one of his partners and say, "hey, look, I had a better angle - Chalmers didn't trip him - he wasn't even close enough." I assume it is against league policy, even though the league claims that it is not. But I don't understand why. It just seems like in the case of a call blown that badly, it would improve everyone's respect for the refs if they could admit a mistake was made, and correct it. It wasn't a big call in the game. However, the NBA is the one professional American sport where fans actually believe that referees are sent out by the league - especially in the playoffs - with an agenda to try to control an outcome. Whether it is true or not, fans - and, frankly, players - believe it. Why not try to create a little more respect for the position by admitting a blatant error once in a while?
5) The Heat relaxed its "no headbands" rule for the first time in memory, allowing Jermaine O'Neal to don his signature forehead-wear. In a related story, O'Neal was 3-10 - all from approximately two feet - for 8 points, while Atlanta center Al Horford went bananas with a career game of 21 points and 22 rebounds. That's why we have the rule, Jermaine.
6) Okay, time for "What Dos Minutos is Listening to This Week." This week it is an old album, the Afghan Whigs' Black Love, from 1996. Look, it isn't even their best album - that would be, easily, Gentlemen - but it is certainly the best album ever about a crazed white guy living in a post-apocalyptic, crime-ridden, black inner city, trying to fend off hood gangsters and salvage a relationship with a black ghetto queen that he knows is doomed to fail due to both circumstance and his own inability to stay coherent. Sounds crazy, right? It's f-ed the hell up... "My Enemy" is the best song written about having guys creeping up on you from behind, and "Step in to the Light" is a top quality slow burner about a brief moment of clarity and plea for help from a guy who knows he is going irreversibly down. The Whigs are basically a white dude soul and funk band who turn up the electric guitars to "dissonant feedback," and don't worry much about singing in tune, or syncing the choruses up correctly in post-production. "Summer's Kiss" is the best "Baba O'Riley" knock-off ever - it's like they tried to cover the Who classic even though they didn't really remember how it goes, or know the lyrics. Plus, it is isn't quite finished. But it is recklessly excellent. They are one of the great 90s bands that never quite made it, but only because people have bad taste, not because they weren't awesome. As The Captain would say, do yourself a favor...
