1) That is 100 straight games for Dos Minutos - 100 straight, boy! I want to thank my man B.I., up in Heaven, lookin' down; I want to thank my man Al Gore for inventing Tivo; I want to thank my wife, M.Minutos, for having babies, so I can't go anywhere and am always home; but most of all, I want to thank my man Quentin Richardson for making game #100 a win. QRich did what QRich does. And, yes, I may have been drinking...
2) Please QRich, don't hurt 'em! Seven more triples for The President tonight, on eleven tries. Q is 25-50 on threes for March - that's the most triples in the league so far this month. Shooting 39% overall on the year on threes - that's very solid, more than a pleasant surprise, and he has been a rousing success most of the season. Blowing the smoke away from the barrel after each of his 4 first quarter threes, and hitting the biggest shot of the game, a pump-fake, okey-doke, step-to-the-side-and-drop-it three with 5 minutes to go when a depleted Bulls squad had cut it to 7. Ball game. Just another good, good night in a season filled with them for PresQ. In fact, you could make the case that, grading on a curve for ability, Q has had the best season of any Heat player. Just been there with focused effort, night after night after night - even Dwyane Wade can't say that.
3) Beyond that, Quentin produced the second funniest moment of the night. Jermaine O'Neal, who was outstanding with 25 points, has a hitch in his free throw motion which often causes opposing players to fall in to the lane too soon - which (explanation for Thor) results in Jermaino shooting the free throw again if he misses (assuming the ref calls the violation, which happens about once every fifteen times). For some reason, tonight Q decided that every time Jermaino shot a free throw, he was going to stand at his spot on the block, not contest the rebound, point at the Bull player inside of him, and scream "he's early!" On approximately his seventh try, which actually included a half-body turn towards the official to make sure he was heard, it worked and Jermaino shot an extra free throw, which he made. Questionable whether any Bull was ever in the lane early all night; arguable that the refs just got tired of Quentin shrieking at them.
4) The funniest moment of the night? It was Mike Beasley. Isn't it always Mike Beasley? And he wasn't even playing...Mid-second quarter, Bulls forward Hakim Warrick doggedly pursued a rebound heading toward the Heat bench while his teammates watched in horror and amazement, since no Bull had touched the ball and they were going to obtain possession, a circumstance that Hakim Warrick, alone out of eighteen thousand people in the AAA, didn't realize. As he made a final lunge at the ball, reaching it just in time to swipe it further out of bounds, allowing the Heat to retain possession, he landed right on the sneakered toe of Mr. Jim Buckets. Warrick got up and sheepishly walked back to his defensive assignment as his Bulls teammates looked at him with exasperation. Beasley, out tonight with contusion-like symptoms on his thigh, recoiled and grabbed at his foot, while Dwyane Wade, resting in the seat beside him, tried to imagine he was a million miles away...or, at least playing on the Knicks with LeBron. Beas eventually removed his sneaker and massaged his toe. Generally appeared okay. The incident was made thirty percent funnier by the fact that SuperCool was wearing an epauletted jacket from the House of Jermaino...
5) In honor of my 100th straight game, M.Minutos presented me with a Red Velvet cupcake before the game from...can't remember the name - the cupcake shop down Congress a ways, just north of Boynton Beach Boulevard, you know, on the east side. Brought a tear to my eye, and a sweetness to my tongue. That M.Minutos is a peach of a gal.
6) Okay, so a lot of people probably don't know - I promise, promise this is not a joke - but Quentin Richardson was engaged to the R & B singer Brandy in the mid-00s for a while. She used to be at his games when he was on Phoenix, and when he first got to the Knicks. People know who Brandy is, right? This is her with QRich - not too sure where they are doing here, maybe watching an Erykah Badu concert:
Now you remember, right? She had a sitcom named "Moesha" in the late 90s? A show about a young black ingenue just getting in touch with her womanhood as she blossomed in to- well, whatever, you know who she is...
What people don't know is that she had this reality show about her in between the time her sitcom ended, and her engagement to Quentin. It basically followed her around, the usual thing, except she was pregnant by this music producer named Robert, who was kind of a slow-talking, slow-moving, chunky dude, who didn't honestly seem to be much of a boyfriend or potential father.
Anyways, they split up after Brandy had the baby, obviously, since she got with The Pres. Robert moved to Miami, right around the same time M.Minutos and I did. Which, of course, was about the same time I was still trying to make it in the music business. A lot of people are always like, "oh, white Miami guys - right, there's Scott Storch, right," but I was doing it a little before he was, though, obviously, he was a lot more successful than I was ultimately. So one night I met Robert at Stephen Talkhouse, this club in South Beach which doesn't exist anymore, watching a hip-hoppish type, De La Soul kind of thing, and we sort of hit it off. I had seen him on Brandy's show, but in person I never really put two and two together - plus I was crazy stinky on E.
So he is telling me he is a music producer, and I am like, Whatever - mostly I just wanted to dance and touch booties, because I was stinky on E - but he convinced me to go to this little studio where he was working on tracks, and so we go there and he plays me this track, and I'm like, Fuck, that's a hit! And he's like, I know, but I don't have no singer (that's how he talked), just a Jamaican guy kind rapping over it in his patoi, and I'm like, Just get any girl, and he's like, No, I want another dude, and I'm like, Why do you want a duet with two dudes, and he's like, I just do...So, of course, I had gone to Boston College, and I'm like, Okay - Fuck, Dude - I know Johnny Gill, and he would totally do it, he is somewhat gay-ish!, which he did. So that is the story of how QRich's ex's ex and I produced "Slow and Sexy," by Shabba Ranks and Johnny Gill. Still getting residual checks for it, but, honestly, radio stations don't play that song nearly as often as they should...
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Sunday night - Sixers. Also, I will tell the story about how I recommended James Iha to Billy Corgan for The Smashing Pumpkins, which is a far, far less successful story...
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