6 Thoughts
1) I'm not gonna lie to you: I'm a little angsty tonight, just a little bit uptight. Been that way all day. One of my favorite basketball players ever, Jalen Rose, made a documentary that people banged on all day in a way that felt a little uncomfortably close to being racially motivated; I've been locked in the house for three straight days with two boys nursing strep throat; and my eight year old soccer team has its first game Saturday, and we lost 80 percent of our offense from last year, so it could get ugly quick. I wish I were doing better, but I'm not. Heat lost a lackluster, meaningless game to a pretty good team - that's the least of my worries...Let's go!
2) Miami beat the Thunder earlier this year in Oklahoma. That made tonight's rematch one of the two or three biggest games the Thunder will play this season. And they came out and worked. On the other hand, for Miami, there really aren't any big regular season games left. They proved they can beat good teams by handing the Lakers their only post-All Star game loss, and pasting league-leading San Antonio over the course of five days, with a blowout of playoff-team Memphis in between. They are pretty much locked in to the third spot in the East for the playoffs. That makes the next fifteen or so games tedious - they know their whole season is going to be judged on the playoff results. They came out tonight hoping to keep it close for three and a half quarters with minimal effort and steal it at the end - it almost worked when Dwyane Wade got out in transition down 7 with three minutes to go. But he failed to finish over a hard Serge Ibaka contest, James Harden banged a three at the other end, and it was ballgame. Was it a great effort? No. Did it matter after beating Los Angeles and San Antonio? Not really. It actually felt good to lose a game and not have it feel like a referendum on the team success, or lack thereof, over the next five seasons. Is what it is - a loss...
3) After a week of super-efficient offensive play, Miami mostly eschewed the pick-and-roll for the stand-around-looking-exhausted-since-we-have-played-a-ton-of-games-in-a-row-against-playoff-contenders-and-we're-not-really-feeling-it offense. Bosh had 21 on 17 shots; Wade 21 on 21; and LeBron, most lethargic of all, had 19 on 21.
4) Best player in the game: Serge Ibaka. His 12 rebounds and 3 blocks felt like 35 rebounds and 15 blocks. It seemed like he was everywhere, and not only because I kept mistaking him for the similarly built and skin-colored Nazr Mohammed, who had 9 rebounds of his own. Okay, it was partly that...But Ibaka has been helped immensely by the recent acquisition of Kendrick Perkins, who is still working himself back in to shape from knee surgery. Perkins' acquisition gives OKC the best on the ball post defender in the league, and frees up Ibaka to roam the lane defensively looking for blocks and rebounds. This team still feels a little young and wild to win a title, specifically point guard Russell Westbrook, who can be baited into bad shots and poor decisions. But they are coming: Durant is great, Westbrook is freakishly athletic, they have solid role players, and everyone is sleeping on them, partially because the Chicago Bulls are having the youthful breakout season that everyone expected might come from OKC. This is a super-nice team - I like them...Okay, that was gay. But still...
5) Most incorrect comment of the game: When Tony Fiorentino described Wade's "gravity-defying zigging and zagging" as something that would be good on gas mileage. Wouldn't the opposite be true? Wouldn't all the stopping and starting, and sudden bursts of speed, and changes of direction, actually be terrible for gas mileage? Not to mention what the hard landings would do to your chassis. I feel like the better choice for gas mileage would be Mike Bibby. First of all, you cut down on the raw distance traveled, since he never goes inside the three point line at either end of the court. Second of all, he rarely actually runs. Third of all, he is very light-skinned, and would deflect heat, rather than absorb it, which means you could run the air conditioner less.
6) Okay, okay, okay. We rarely do this, but we want to thank one of our readers named Tommy. Tommy remembered that I had mentioned, many moons ago, that I rarely get to see all the viral videos - and whatnot - on the internet, and I end up looking like a dork when I am talking to folks. So he sent along two popular videos, the first a virulently racist anti-Asian diatribe by a white UCLA student, and then an answer video from an Asian UCLA student. I have included the whole videos here, but you only need to watch about 25 seconds of each to get the idea. Down below, we'll choose the winner of the exchange.
Okay, first of all, the white girl really did make some excellent points. Asian people, obviously, can be very annoying in a library-type setting. If anything, I feel like she didn't go far enough. I'm a white dude from the suburbs of Connecticut, and you know who I have found knows how to behave in a library? Only white dudes from the suburbs of Connecticut! Because we, above all, value not making a scene! We didn't actually have Asians, or blacks, or Hispanics in my state, so I can't comment on them, but believe me, we had plenty of white refugees who escaped Long Island to move to my state, coming in with their Mets gear, and their Billy Joel, and their guttural accents, and we didn't like seeing them in a library, either. So I say: Incredibly-racist Girl, I feel your pain.
But the winner, quite obviously, is the Asian dude. Did you see that beard! Holy Amish-beard, Asian dude: you are super awesome!!! I have heard many Asians - okay one, on NPR - lament that while Asian women can be sex symbols in America, Asian men almost never are. But whoever said that never saw this guy - I feel like if all Asian dudes grew beards like this, they'd be getting a whole lot more respect around the way. Game, set, match: Asian dude!!! And thanks, Tommy! Keep the videos coming!
I am not 100% sure, and I don't feel like clicking two buttons to find out, but I think the next game is Friday in Atlanta. This is about the time of the season where I am really, really ready for the playoffs to start. Nothing too important can happen from now until the end of the season, save for an inj-...jinx alert, jinx alert! Jinx, I cast thee out!!! See you Friday!!!
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