6 Thoughts
1) Back at home after West Coast trip, pounded by Dallas. Heat drop to 11-10, and a sickly 6-6 at home. You can't go .500 at home and make the playoffs - you just can't. Out-of-state members of the Minutos family in town this weekend, so I'm exhausted. Let's roll through this quick.
2) Huge factor tonight: two missing starters. Jermaine O'Neal, his second straight missed game to deal with a death in the family (his, not mine), and Quentin Richardson, who gave it a go with a strained hamstring, but hung it up after 7 minutes. The Heat's two best defenders. In a related story, Dallas blistered the Heat with over 50% shooting in the first half, 49% for the game, with 30 assists on 39 baskets, and committed only 9 turnovers. Particularly awful - Jermaino's replacement Joel Anthony. In limited minutes Anthony can be effective as an undersized, high-energy shotblocker: he had 4 rejections tonight in 32 minutes. But this only serves to underscore the relative uselessness of the blocked shot in assessing defensive performance. Anthony tends to chase the ball without discretion: his athleticism allows him to block shots, but he often leaves the rim unattended. His cover, Mavs journeyman Eric Dampier, erupted for 20 points and 17 rebounds in the game, all in a two foot circle around the rim. Biggest factor in the Heat's loss.
3)Mavs' J.J. Barea (12 points, 10 assists) clearly outperformed the Heat's Carlos Arroyo (3 points, 1 assist) in the battle of Puerto Rican backup point guards. La Bamba!
4) Halftime segment showed backup Heat forward and three point specialist James Jones handing out turkeys to the underprivileged in his hometown of Miami. I am almost certain that I saw over-gregarious and over-fed Heat sideline reporter Jason Jackson in line to receive one of the free turkeys. As the segment ended, back in the studio Jackson encouraged Heat fans to email in questions to himself, Eric Reid, and Tony Firorentino at asktheheatannouncers.com, so that they can answer them on the air. If I write in, I'm asking why he stole the turkey from the poor people. Or, alternately, how Tony Fiorentino has obtained such a nice moustache. Man, do I wish I could grow a nice moustache...
5) Mavericks forward Shawn Marion spent parts of two awkward seasons with the Heat. And by "awkward" I mean, of course, the ungainly, spastic runners he shoots from absolutely unmakeable positions on the court. Was 4 of 10 tonight, and two were layups at the rim, so by my calculations that's 2-8 on the spastic runners. Marion was quite possibly my second least favorite Heat player ever, surpassed only by Gary Grant, who played 28 bone chilling games for Miami in the 1996-97 season, during which he took 110 shots, making 39 of them (35.5%). Grant's specialty was to dribble 19 seconds off the 24 second shot clock, then make a wild, head-down foray in to the lane, run in to traffic, and then shoot the ball over the backboard. I lost at least 2 months off my life watching those 110 shots. Seemed more like 110 thousand. When, after 28 games, you eventually trade a guy for uber-stiff Duane Causwell - and feel like you cheated the other team - you really know you're not enjoying a guy's "performance"...
6) Great question discussed at Dos Headquarters today. With the number of high profile cheaters lately - Tiger, Dave Letterman, Don Draper, etc. - do we ever reach a point in our society where cheating becomes accepted, and, in a sense, "cool?" As we have noted many times in this very space, here in Amerika, we live in the strictest of right-wing police states, with Christian conservative elements attempting to dictate to us "non-whites" whom we can and can not marry, what we can and can not do to our own bodies, and, most importantly, where we may and may not park. In other, freer parts of the world, people actually can just park where it makes sense, and where you aren't bothering anyone. No, really, it's true! Perhaps this someday becomes the norm with our personal relationships as well, and even celebrities could have the occasional dalliance without the right-wing, conservative media like Fox News, The Enquirer and TMZ jumping all down their throats. As The Captain dreamily enthused today: "Let's hope so..."
