6 Thoughts
1) I'm not gonna lie: when the Boston Celtics died in round two, a little part of me died with them. That series had nothing to do with basketball - it was personal. Boston spent all season dismissing Miami's chances against them in a series, which served to drive both teams - and me - into an emotional frenzy for the five short games it lasted. When the Heat played the Bulls in game one on Sunday, I definitely had a feeling of, "Why are we still playing? This isn't over yet?" It seemed totally unimportant to me if Miami won or lost the series. Yes, I'd prefer to win the championship, but I was also relishing the end of the season. The NBA season is looooong - at a certain point, enough is enough. I've spent the last week on a total media blackout - I didn't want to read or hear people prattling on about basketball anymore this year. We get it - Miami smoked Boston - it's just a basketball series, really, it isn't the end of civilization, People-From-Boston. Heading into tonight's game, I was ready for it to end, in a way, ready to let the Bulls run roughshod over Miami, take a sweep, end this stupid blog, and get on with the summer. It's probably the Jewish side of my heritage - people been trying to run roughshod over us for thousands of years, with a good amount of success, frankly. Really, there was one, and only one, scenario that could have drawn me back in to this series. We need to get to that immediately, like in # 2...Lomir Geyn!!!
2) UDONIS HASLEM. UDONISHASLEM. U-DONIS HAS-LEM!!! Are you freakin' kidding me? After six months on the shelf, with only 7 rusty minutes of playoff action so far under his belt, Udonis Haslem got thrown into this game out of necessity - foul trouble, rebounding trouble, acquiring loose ball trouble, toughness trouble - late in the third quarter, and single-handedly triggered a 10-0 Heat run that gave them a 6 point lead after three quarters, and allowed them to hang around and pull the game out at the end. UD started the run with a run-out, posterization, one-handed flush over Keith Bogans for a three point play; followed by a LeBron run-out finish on Derrick Rose's head for a 3 point play; followed by a Wade run-out, Euro-step hoop on Rose; followed by a Haslem run-out dunk on Rose. In the final four minutes of the quarter, UD was 4-4 from the floor, and finished with 13 points and 5 boards in 23 totally unexpected minutes. With Wade and LeBron having to do virtually everything, with occasional casual-ish assistance from Bosh, adding a reasonably healthy UD just gives Miami one more guy in the fight. It's why it is so frustrating when people - like TNT announcer Steve Kerr tonight - claim that Miami spent so much on Wade, LeBron, and Bosh that they have no depth. That's wrong - they have no depth because UD and Mike Miller (who gutted out 7 rebounds in 18 thumbless minutes of his own tonight) haven't played all season. Before tonight, UD and Miller had never played together in a game. Most importantly, UD is my favorite basketball player of all-time. And he pulled me back in the fight. If we have to go down, at least we're going down with UD. I'm still maintaining my media blackout, but I'm ready to go. And that's super-important since, obviously, the whole team gets their emotional cues from me. Love you, UD!!!
3) UD kept Miami in the game. But down the stretch, again, LeBron won the game. Tied at 73 with four minutes to go, LeBron went: triple off a Bibby screen; short post-up jumper; putback of his own driving layup, the kind where everyone bounces off him, and he is alone at the rim to gather his own rebound and lay it back in politely; step back jumper, and guarded Derrick Rose on the defensive end, as Miami closed on a 12-2 run to end it. LeBron (29 points on 21 shots) and Wade (24 on 16) were more aggressive and efficient offensively than they were in game one. But they also did more. One game after getting absolutely annihilated on the glass, LeBron grabbed 10 boards, Dwyane had 9, and Miami won the rebounding battle by 4. LeBron also had 3 steals, including a key rip of Deng in the closing run, and Wade had 2 rejections, including a key block of a Rose triple in the same run. Every time Miami has struggled this season, the response has been to ask Dwyane and LeBron for more. Tonight, at least for one more game, they had it...
4) Listen, any game in which you are playing the best team in the league, on the road, in a playoff game, against the reigning MVP, after getting blown out in game one, and you're clinging to a 3 point lead with three minutes to go, and the fans are at a fever pitch, and you miss a shot, and Chicago gets a run-out with the 6'8" Luol Deng, who is an excellent finisher, bearing down in a one-on-one situation with the 6'2" Mike Bibby, who may be the least athletic person -including front office employees and announcers - in professional sports, and who has spent his entire 35 minutes on the court, which he had to play because Mario Chalmers performed tonight like a methadone patient, getting run into screens and getting knocked down, and setting screens and getting knocked down, causing his headband to be dislodged from his person several times, and is basically a punch-drunk aging fighter just trying to stay on his feet to the bell by this juncture of the game, and then Deng elevates, and Bibby - sort of - elevates, and blocks Deng's shot, and then LeBron instantly scores on the other end to give Miami a five point lead and put them in firm control of the game, I think to myself: "Mike Bibby - I am the only one who truly believed in you. Not only that - I believed in you more than any human being has ever believed in any other human being, and I now dub thee 'The Modern Day Shaka Zulu...'"
5) Listen: I see you over there on the bench, Kurt Thomas, telling Joakim Noah, and Carlos Boozer, and Derrick Rose, and Taj Gibson, and the like, about "I hate what they did to me." All we did was trade you, to try to make our team better - A DECADE AND A HALF AGO! Dudes get traded all the time - why did you have to be the one guy who, years later, before a Heat-Knick playoff series when you were on the Knicks, claim, "I want to beat them because I hate what they did to me." You started a whole phenomenon: The "I Hate What They Did To Me" Game, where a player comes back with an irrational hatred to try to bury his old team. Just because you aren't playing in these games, Kurt Thomas, don't think I don't see the smirk on your face every time we miss a shot, or turn the ball over, or commit a foul. I see it. And, by the way - you're not in my head at all. Do you hear me? NOT AT ALL!
6) Movie pitch: Contact II. As you know Contact I, or as it is more commonly referred to as, Contact, ended with Jodie Foster sort of going into an alternate space and time in her mind, through a wrinkle in our continuum reality called a black hole, to meet her dad, who is that tall, creepy guy David Morse. In Contact II, Morse comes back through the black hole to snatch Foster back into the alternate reality to hold her captive - it turns out he isn't actually her dad at all, just an alien posing as her dad. Matthew McConaughey isn't in this one, he's replaced by Hugh Jackman, who talks in that weird accent he sometimes has and says things like, "Egad - I fear we've lost her forevah." Anyways, everyone else thinks that Jodie Foster has just moved to, like, the beach in Belize, or Tahoe, or something, but Jackman can sense that she actually got kidnapped by aliens posing as her dad, and he vows to find her. He re-creates that giant space machine, and tries to duplicate her experience, including the "Okay to go" line, which nearly got me arrested in Puerto Rico this winter when I tried to call Thor from the site where they filmed that scene to say the line to him, despite military everywhere and giant signs reading, essentially, "WHATEVER YOU DO, DON'T EVEN CONSIDER USING YOUR CELL PHONE." Anyways, Jackman drops in the water, just like Jodie Foster did, and doesn't go anywhere, but then he realizes that time and space is just a construct of the human mind, so he wills himself into the alternate reality where Jodie Foster is being held captive, and fucking saves her after a major battle, mano-a-mano style, with David Morse. The end.
We are off until Sunday, when the series moves back to Miami for game 3. If you need me before then, I'll be working on the Contact II script, and smoking hash. See you on Sunday!
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