6 Thoughts
1) Make or miss league, example # 678: Tied with 30 seconds to go, hobbled by a bad knee and calf, Dwyane Wade ran the shot clock down as far as he could, and launched a 3 over the top with 11 seconds to go - no good. The Celtics called timeout, and Paul Pierce dribbled the clock to .5, took his patented step back jumper with Dorell Wright hanging all over him, buzzer off, lights on - good. Ballgame. Series. Wade and Haslem Era. Make or miss league - always, always a make or miss league.
2) Look, there will be a game Sunday, but, of course, no team has ever come back from a 3-0 defict in the NBA. Down 3-0 is the worst - I'd rather lose and get it over with, frankly. And it is unclear if Wade will be able to play - he had to be carried off the court (by the Big Cat, Jamal Magloire) after his missed 3 with 11 seconds left. Either way, this may have been the last meaningful game Dwyane ever plays for Miami. He was great: 34 points, 8 assists, 5 rebounds, 2 steals, 2 assists. He was heroic. He has always been heroic. He was the best player this franchise ever had. It has been great to watch him play 500 or so games - just fantastic. Thanks, Dwyane. Was that too gay? Sorry...
3) Both teams played really, really well - it was a good game, both teams played hard. Pierce was huge, Ray Allen was huge, and even Kevin Garnett dragged his bad leg around to make several big jumpers down the stretch. For Miami - shockingly - it was the kids. Dorell Wright was big-time: 15 points, 5 assists, and 4 rebounds in 31 minutes. He deserved better than Pierce hitting the game-winner over him. Two huge threes, and three big free throws down the stretch for Dorell, including an absolute nut-up triple from the right wing with a minute to go to tie the game, matching a potential dagger three by Pierce on the preceding trip. Emcee Chalmers battled his way to a feisty 10 points. And Mike Beasley. Mike Beasley. He's been bad for two months. Bad. Very, very bad. Tonight he was bad for three quarters. But at the beginning of the 4th quarter, with the Heat down 9, and looking ready to roll over, and Dwyane Wade on the bench, Mike made four jumpers in a row. Got the Heat back in the game. Kind of single-handedly. 16 and 6 tonight on 7-11 for SuperCool. Does it absolve him of the last two months? No. But at least he can go out on a good note for the year. Good job, Mike! Love you, kid. Please find another team for next year, though.
4) Oh, Jermaino. Jermaine O'Neal. Here were his three playoff games: 3-14, 8 points; 1-10, 2 points; 1-7, 2 points. That's a combined 5-31, for 12 points in the 3 games. By the way, he's the Heat's second best player. My goodness. This team won 47 games - now do you understand how good Dwyane Wade is? Coach Spo gave up on Jermaino tonight - played him only 19 minutes. Had JO played well in this series, a contender signs him next year for 2 years, 12 million. Now I bet he gets 1 year with an option at about 4 million guaranteed. That's a lot of cash he lost over the past week. Somehow it never seemed real that Jermaino was on the Heat - now, essentially, he is not. Can't say I loved the Jermaino Era. I mean, except for the name "Jermaino."
5) NBA Commissioner David Stern was at the game, and spent halftime with Jax in the Sunsport Lounge. I have a very love-hate type of relationship with Mr. Stern. First of all, he is Jewish; I'm half-Jewish. Good to feel like we are still running things. On the other hand, he is a completely disingenuous human being, for whom I have little respect. He has the last two days complaining about and fining Lakers coach Phil Jackson, Orlando coach Stan Van Gundy, and semi-conscious and overweight Celtic forward Rasheed Wallace. $35,000 each for complaining - very mildly in all three cases, by the way - about refereeing. Stern took exception to expressed concerns that referees may be influenced by crowds, or may give stars calls, or may have interpersonal agendas from time to time which affects the outcome of a given game. Stern's contention - and it is always his contention - is that none of these things is even remotely possible. Incidentally, in the last couple of years we have had one referee busted - while active in the league - for betting on NBA games (he just got released from prison, by the way); and another referee challenge Spur star Tim Duncan to a physical fight - during a game - get fired, and then re-hired after the season. Stern isn't an idiot - so to claim that the refereeing situation is good - no, flawless - that's patently disingenuous, and frankly, I find it insulting to my intelligence, and to the intelligence of all fans. Now he is threatening to suspend coaches and players who complain about refereeing. Whoops - my bad - forgot this was Amerika! No freedom of speech (or parking) allowed! In any case, it made me sick to watch Jax treating him like a welcome guest in The SS Lounge - the guy is a liar. I don't care how rich he is, or what his job is, or even how Jewish he is - he's kind of a piece of crap dude. It isn't a nice thing to say about someone, but he has kind of earned it. Which just makes the league even more fun, by the way - emotion is always good!
6) Right on, so we'll probably watch the game Sunday, although there is nothing more meaningless than an 0-3 game. Blog will probably focus on off-season scenarios and, hopefully, a big night out with M.Minutos, Thor, and several other Dos luminaries Sunday night to see a comedy show at the Hard Rock. More on that Sunday. So we want to take this # 6 to say "hey" to everyone that read the blog this year. It seemed like a lot more people than last year, which I guess is good; but you didn't always seem smarter than last year! Just kidding. We had many people tell us Dwyane Wade stinks, and many people tell us Coach Spo stinks. Neither of those assertions are accurate. If you watched this series so far, you now can see that those two guys won 47 games with exactly one NBA-level starter. We also had one guy blame us for his troubled relationship, and vow to stop reading the blog - that was definitely the funniest reader we had this year! We had one reader send us a really nice email late in the year telling us that he waits until noon the day after the game to read the blog, because it makes for an enjoyable lunch time - that was super-cool in the gayest way possible, because I do that with other peoples' blogs! We had one dude ask us if I might be interested in investigating ways to try to "monetize the blog" - I think he means sell advertising on it to make money. Yes, we would, but only if it involves pornography. We had a couple of dudes ask us if I would write articles for their various blogs - that seemed like they were really desperate. I mean, I think my only contribution to the Heat literary legacy was figuring out that Jermaine O'Neal should be called Jermaino - which, admittedly, is pretty big. I went through a major, major depression from November through January - kind of like a mid-life crisis, for no reason, broke out of it, only to have Mike Beasley, after a good start while I was depressed, suddenly slip in to a (second) early-life crisis. That was weird. I think only one of us can be happy at a time. For the second straight year, the most important reader was M.Minutos, because all of it was really only to make her laugh. Every morning she wakes up and while we are all eating our Hostess breakfast donuts and drinking mimosas, she reads the blog and laughs. Even when it isn't funny, which is most of the time. She is the best M.Minutos ever. This is a good time to mention that we probably won't have this blog next year. I really want to write these three books - I can actually write, like, normal, too - and it seems like this blog thing, with its instant-gratification, short-news-bite, free type of format is destined to die out and give way to long-form, complex, hard-cover, expensive reading in the very near future, and I'd like to be in on the ground floor of that. One book is my fake memoirs - it is about a third done. Some of you readers are in that, although it is a fake memoir, so the stuff you do isn't usually stuff you really did. Doesn't always put you in the best light, either - sorry about that. I'll change the names, I guess, but I am sure everyone you know will still recognize you...Then of course we are having the classic "Mennonite forbidden-love story" set in Belize - we've said this before, but it is like From Here to Eternity crossed with a Graham Greene novel. And, finally, for our history graduate program we are going to write some kind of definitive history about 1950s Miami. So we have a lot on our plate - you can look for all those at your bookstore sometime in the future - if they still have bookstores, that is. I mean, don't get me wrong, if we get Dwyane back, with LeBron and Chris Bosh, we'll be writing this blog like it's the New York Times, but failing that...
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See you Sunday, sort of. Look at the bright side - you'll probably never have to look at this stupid blog after that! Time to celebrate!
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