6 Thoughts
1) Oh my God, for the love of everything holy - what the hell happened? Miami loses its fourth straight at home, in a game that was never close. Memphis is sneaky-mediocre, but come on. After going out West and playing fantastic basketball, Miami has come home and been absolutely brutal. Now 6-7 at home - that's bad, very, very bad. It's inexplicable. But let's try to, umm, explicate it - that's what we do here. And, big treat at # 6.
2) I don't care how much longer - above the waist - the other team is - and Memphis is a lot longer - when you get out rebounded 49-26, your effort level is pathetic. One game after journeyman big man Eric Dampier embarrassed Miami inside, up-and-coming big man Marc Gasol went for 16 and 15 - in three quarters! He had 7 more rebounds than Jermaine O'Neal, Mike Beasley, and Udonis Haslem combined.
3) Looking for a silver lining? If you are going to get pounded by someone, get pounded by someone from Connecticut, so at least I can enjoy the game. Connecticut's Rudy Gay had a career high 41, with several highlight reel caliber dunks. Stayed in about 6 minutes longer than he should have in order to secure his first 40 point game - that's how we do it in the CT.
4) Heat announcer Eric Reid described a conversation he had with young Memphis point guard Mike Conley before the game. He asked Conley if there were any positives from the three games the irrepressibly selfish Allen Iverson spent this year with Memphis before being cut. Iverson missed most of training camp after signing a contract for the veteran minimum with Memphis when nobody else wanted him, then immediately started complaining when he wasn't anointed a starter upon his return, even though it had been made clear to him that he had been signed as a backup, and had missed training camp. Memphis has gone from bad to decent with Iverson's departure, and Iverson landed with an even worse team, Philadelphia, and has "rallied" them to several more losses. Conley cited one positive of the Iverson experience as "seeing how hard Iverson works to stay in shape to be able to compete at a high level for a long time." Also, when he left...
5) With the blowout, Memphis' third string center, Hamed Haddadi, saw 7 minutes of action. Haddadi is a 7 foot Iranian with all the foot speed and agility of the Pentagon. "Being so big," counseled Tony Fiorentino, "his strengths are low post play, shot-blocking, and _______." You make the joke. I mean, I just watched the Heat get blown out at home by a team with an Iranian center - be as mean, and politically incorrect as you want to.
6) Okay, let's let the loss go, it is just a basketball game after all, and there are things far more important in life, like talking to girls, and this next item. So often, in my travels around this great land, people will come up to me and say, "Hey, how come nobody has written a song about you yet?" And I always have the same response: "I don't know." Well, I am glad to report that this isn't going to be a problem any longer. Check this out below...
It's been a spectacularly unproductive year for Teenage Middle-Age Rage, which is not surprising given the fact that the band broke up in 2008. But then the wizened elder of the band ran into a rabid TMAR fan (in Miami, of all places), who demanded that the band reform. Well, they couldn't let down the fan base, so they reformed, recorded this tribute to the man (link below), and quickly broke up again. But it was glorious while it lasted!
TMAR
"Jeff Jeffrey Jeff"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Atm6YHiNNHc
