6 Thoughts
1) That didn't go too well. I blame the New Jersey Nets. I mean, Miami tried to lose to the Nets in the last game of the season, didn't play their three best players, and played the backups to the backups much of the night, and still couldn't lose. Had the Nets not been so terrible, Miami would have been beating Atlanta tonight. Instead? Embarrassing beatdown in Boston to fall behind 2-0 in the series. Damn you, Nets!
2) Problem 1: The Heat can't score against the Celtics. Dwyane Wade can score - he was 11-18 for 29 points. But Jermaine O'Neal, for the second straight game, got absolutely beat up by the Celtic frontline. 1-10 for dos points for Jermaino. He can't get a clean look against Kendrick Perkins. Perkins is bigger, stronger, and quicker. He is a better defender than Jermaino is an offensive player at this point in their respective careers. The Heat's next best option? Well, it's Mike Beasley. Right - exactly. So the Celtics are loading up on Wade, daring anyone else to try to beat them, and no one else on Miami can. Under 80 points in two straight playoff games is, ummm, not good.
3) Problem 2: They are getting shoved around in the paint on the defensive end. With Kevin Garnett out for the evening, courtesy of a one game suspension for an elbow to The Pres Q's head, Baby Davis stepped in and annihilated the Heat down low, camping out in the lane and bullying his way to 23 and 8, while Perkins had 13 and 9. Two minutes into the second half, Davis had shot 10 free throws, Dwyane Wade had shot one; the Celtics had shot 20 as a team, the Heat 4; and Jermaino and Mike Beasley each had four fouls. Was part of that getting home-jobbed a little in a playoff game? Sure - this is the NBA, after all. But more of it was the Heat frontline just getting pushed around by a bigger and stronger Celtic group. I mean, if they are hitting you, and it's not a foul, and you are contesting their shots, and they are called fouls, you might as well hit them harder...That's not really what J.O. and Mike do, though. And that, my friends, is why we didn't want to play the Celtics in Round 1. Again - thanks Nets!
4) In Jax's halftime interview with assistant coach Ron Rothstein, with the Heat well on the way to getting blown out, Rothstein emphasized the need to try to get back in the game "one basket at a time." "One" basket at a time? We scored 76 points in Game 1, and 33 points in the first half of Game 2. We are not scoring "any" baskets at a time! With the Heat down 30 in the third quarter, Eric Reid exclaimed, "Have you ever seen anything like this?" Umm, not since, well, just last year, when the Heat and Atlanta played seven straight blowout games, including the infamous Josh Smith fiasco where he went behind the back and missed a breakaway dunk near the end of a Hawks laugher over the Heat in Atlanta. But, I mean, besides those seven of the last eight playoff games the Heat have played - besides those - no, I have never seen anything like this.
5) Best moment of the game? Besides when it ended, it was probably in the fourth quarter of an absolute blowout, when mercurial Celtic forward Rasheed Wallace, who had already accumulated a technical foul on his way to a disinterested 6 point night, half-heartedly posted up on the block, and was the target of an entry pass from Tony Allen, which he proceeded to watch bounce by him directly out of bounds, making absolutely no effort to catch it whatsoever. Looked at Allen like, "No - I told you don't throw it in here!" Love that Rasheed - watching him is fun all by itself.
6) The downside of the British Empire (for the indigenous people): slavery; exploitation of natural resources; rape; pillaging; forced subservience to a foreign power thousands of miles away with whom your population has nothing in common for hundreds of years; the Beatles, and tea. By the way, after the rape and slavery and, maybe, pillaging, I would say the Beatles are the worst element.
Upside: cricket.
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Okay, Friday night in Miami, we're back. Either Miami defends its home court and makes this a series, or the season is, for all intents and purposes, over. The latter isn't sounding too bad right now - I'm pretty, pretty sick of writing this blog. See you then!
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