6 Thoughts
1) Three or four games a year, you feel like you didn't have a fair chance to win because the referees had a bad night. This was one of those nights. If I showed you a tape of the game, with the foul calls taken out, you would have assumed Miami shot a bunch more free throws, and won the game handily. In real life, the Bobcats shot 30, Miami shot 16, Charlotte backup point guard DJ Augustin out free throw attempted Dwyane Wade 6-4, and Charlotte squeaked by with a huge home win in a battle for the final playoff spot for the East. Miami was fuming - when they missed a short jumper down two, with about 12 seconds to go, Quentin Richardson instantly grabbed Augustin to stop the clock and send him to the line, and inexplicably referee Danny Crawford, standing two feet away, brain froze and didn't call a foul, even though all ten players on the court essentially had stopped playing. I mean, that play happens every game, three times a game - Danny Crawford blowing that call is a total dereliction of his duty. There is no excuse for it - you just messed up. It's not competent. By the time Miami realized he hadn't blown his whistle and fouled again, 6 more seconds had elapsed. That cost them one extra possession in the game. Probably didn't cost them the game - but, somehow, as Wade and Richardson argued to Crawford on the way up the court, he took offense and yelled at them. I've never understood why refs do this. Obviously Crawford felt bad - he knew he messed up, and I am sure he wished he did call the first foul on Quentin Richardson when he should have. I can't believe that if he looked at Wade and QRich on the way up the court, and said, "you know what - I'm sorry, I missed the play," that's not a better solution than escalating the situation by yelling at the guys. They didn't mess up; you messed up. Jesus, use your brain and try some diplomacy. NBA referees are brutal, generally-speaking. They seem bent on making their jobs harder than they ought to be...
2) Just to reset - damaging loss. Minds were fairly right, the Heat played hard, just couldn't get a call. Having said that, Miami is now tied with Charlotte for the final playoff spot, pending the outcome of Chicago's game against Utah. Worse, Miami can't win a tiebreaker against Charlotte because they are 0-3 against them, with one left to play. 32-32 - eighteen games left. 43 wins is the goal...
3) Michael Jordan recently bought the Bobcats from BET owner Robert Johnson. On the one hand, this is a positive because Johnson seemed like one of the stingiest owners in the league - not fun to have teams that aren't even trying to compete around. On the other hand, Jordan has, thus far, proved to be awful at running basketball teams. Was terrible as the first player/general manager in history on the Bullets - in both roles - and has been terrible as the president of the Bobcats thus far. The dude has drafted both Kwame Brown and Adam Morrison in the top five of drafts, traded Richard Hamilton for Jerry Stackhouse, and Emeka Okafor for barely ambulatory Tyson Chandler. Isn't it time for him to butt out? As much as he may think the league can't go on without him, it can. Do I sound bitter? He's my least-favorite basketball player of all-time - after Richard Jefferson, and Brandon Roy, of course. He is the best player I ever saw, too - just hard to root for a guy whose personality is such a turnoff. LeBron James recently said he is giving up #23 and switching to #6 next year, to honor Jordan by vacating his number, and to try to be more like Mario Chalmers. If it were me, I'd change too, but I'd do it during a game by ripping off the #23, throwing it down at mid-court, dropping my trousers, and taking a dump on it. You know what? I think I am kind of tired, and in a bad mood...
4) Nothing even really happened in the game, I've got no other points to make. It was incredibly slow-paced, and Charlotte shot like 20 fourth quarter free throws to 2 for Miami. That's not funny. It was the least funny game of the year - nothing even happened. There's nothing even to say about that. Thank God I'm not Jax and have to run a postgame show. I think I'd just leave, and let Gerald Wallace stand there and interview himself. Or, let Danny Crawford interview him - he seems to want to run things his way anyhow. Everyone was mediocre, on both teams, except in the fourth quarter, when there wasn't even any basketball played, just a series of free throws at one end of the court. I'm turning it over to The Captain at #5, regrouping, and coming back with a Corey Booker impression at #6 - that will be a first!
5) We had a post a while back where we listed our five greatest "white dude" songs, and, of course, we got into a big argument with The Captain over it. Here is his rejoinder. By the way, if there are any Yes songs on the list, I am going to complain to Danny Crawford:
"OK, now that I have had some time to recover from seeing that picture of Shaquille O' Neal in tights and a pink Speedo, I am ready to give you the real greatest songs of all time. My advanced years and unparalleled whiteness give me the right and possibly more insight than a young whippersnapper like Dos.
Without further ado-whack-a-do:
#5. Shadow of the Sun by Audioslave. Chris Cornell and Tom Morello at their best. Oh and by the way, white guys really like guitars.
#4. Siberian Khatru by Yes. No band can blend so many appealing sounds into one song and get away with it. And oh yeah, the guitars.
#3. Deacon Blues by Steely Dan. Becker and Fagan. Roll a fatty, sit back and enjoy some of the finest musicianship this side W.A. Mozart.
#2. A Day in the Life by The Beatles. The greatest song writing duo ever at the height of their careers. They could create a mood that would become part of your soul. And yes it is ok to incorporate symphonic instruments into rock music. Lennon and Mc Cartney invented it. Other artists have been tinkering with it ever since without being able to improve it. Don't even bother boys.
And now the moment you have all been waiting for.
#1.Whole Lot of Love by, you know, the greatest rock band of all time. The definitive white guy guitar song of it's time and likely ever since. Led Zeppelin constantly reminded white guys of the late 60s and early 70s how important it is to take some time out of each day to slam your head against the wall. It doesn't hurt. Trust me. But sometimes it can make you repeat yourself. But it doesn't hurt. Trust me."
6) Does anyone here know who Corey Booker is? The almost-unbelievably positive mayor of Newark? Here is his website http://www.corybooker.com/. He is a gifted communicator who one day is either going to be president, or be involved in a a sordid, sordid double murder. There is no possible in-between scenario. Well, at Casa Dos we've been working on a Corey Booker impression. Here is Corey Booker on the Heat point guard situation:
"The Heat point guard situation is certainly challenging, but at the same time, it presents an incredible opportunity for positive change! When Coach Spoelstra - whom I know only from afar, but who appears to be doing an incredible job of maintaining the culture that was started in the organization by Pat Riley - last week decided to promote Carlos Arroyo to a starting position, incumbent point guard Rafer Alston found that very challenging. That's incredibly understandable. And when Mario Chalmers - who on the surface has had a challenging second season - continued to play the backup minutes, meaning Rafer had more opportunity to study the game from the bench, that presented a special, incredible challenge for Rafer. And I understand that: if I am a fireman and I am trying to put out a fire, I'm not going to be happy if someone takes my hose away from me, I am going to find that challenging. And the Heat organization found it challenging when Rafer stopped showing up for work, and began communicating only by text message, and some people have been disappointed in Rafer for that, but you know what? My parents always taught me that you have embrace new technology, not fear it, and if Rafer feels that the best way to confront his challenge is through text messaging, it is our job - as a community - to embrace that, and seek to deal with it in the best manner possible. We had a similar situation in Newark where we felt like our point guards' assist to turnover ratios were just too low. When I became mayor, our point guards were averaging only one assist for every three and a half turnovers. It was challenging. So what we did was - as a community, because turnovers affect all of us, black, white, Democrat, Republican - what we did was to train inner city, out-of-work indigent gypsies to refurbish former nuclear waste testing sites into NBA Skills Competition obstacle courses which we copied from the NBA's All-Star weekend. This was great, by the way, because that is a sustainable skill - those gypsies can now task out to other inner city areas across the nation and the world where there are former nuclear waste testing sites and turn them into NBA Skills Competition obstacle courses...Then we gathered all our point guards and gave them school credit for time spent on the obstacle courses, improving their skills, which also had the ancillary benefit of reducing the teacher-student ratios in the classes for the other kids while the point guards were out on the obstacle courses. What we found was, in six days, the point guards had gone from one assist to every three and a half turnovers, to nine assists for every one turnover, the non-point guard students benefited from the reduced teacher-student ratio by increasing their SAT scores an average of over two hundred and thirty points during the six days, and we also triggered a federal matching program that allowed us to receive stimulus money to refurbish even more former nuclear waste testing sites - we are working on turning some of them into field goal practice facilities now, because we find that long-range field goal kicking has become a challenge in our city. So I would challenge the entire Heat organization to look for creative solutions to their challenges at point guard, as we did in Newark. Or, alternatively, they could just give the ball to Dwyane Wade and tell everyone else to get the fuck out of his way."
Back tomorrow night against the Clippers. I got invited to the game by my boy Matty, but I have some challenges at home to attend to, so I'm not going. I'll be here for you...
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