6 Thoughts
1) Sunday afternoon games suck so hard. Why does a team from Miami get stuck playing every Sunday just because they are good? Who wants to be locked in the house in South Florida watching a stupid basketball game when you could be at the beach, or chilling outside, or fishing, or anything fun? Why not have the teams from crappy cold weather cities play on Sundays? Doesn't that make more sense? Not only that, because the preceding Celtics-Knicks epic battle for the 7th playoff seed in the East went to overtime, we missed almost the entire first quarter of Heat-Lakers. Why wouldn't you at least switch the Miami and LA markets to their game when it is ready to start? In any case, this game was atrocious. The Lakers slowed the game to an absolute crawl and turned it into a dull-fest. I'm not criticizing them, that's what they had to do to win, but it certainly didn't make for an entertaining afternoon on a beautiful Florida day. Let's just get this over with and catch the last few moments of sunshine. I don't care what you say: I'm mailing this post in.
2) Chris Bosh missed his third straight game with a death in the family. Should be back for Tuesday against, I think, New Jersey. Anyone - like me - who loves to ride Chris Bosh for all his flaws should be forced to watch this game over and over. I'm not going to, I can promise you that, but I should. The key to the Lakers win was how well they played defensively, especially their center Andrew Bynum. Bynum did a good job of ignoring the Heat bigs - Joel, UD, Pitt, even Juwan Howard! - and jamming up the lane. If Chris Bosh is available, he can't play that way. Bosh is big enough to finish inside, or good enough to step to the free throw line, receive a pass, and make a high percentage of jump shots. With Bosh available, the Heat could have gone small with LeBron at the 4 - he played there a bunch anyways and totally handled Pau Gasol defensively - and Bynum would have had to play Bosh straight up, opening up the lane. Against most teams, Bosh's absence really wouldn't matter, but today it really hurt.
3) Dwyane Wade fouled out of the game for only the second time in 7 seasons! He was the first Heat player to foul out in the last 88 games, an all-time NBA record! Which raises the point: where was Eric Reid on this? He wasn't on the air today, as Miami had to play the national ABC game for seemingly the 4,000th consecutive weekend, but this is the kind of Heat statistical minutae he thrives on - he lives for knowing that the Heat haven't had anyone foul out for over a season! Nothing has surprised me more this season than seeing that stat show up on the screen and realizing that Reid hadn't mentioned it once. Come on, Eric Reid: Pick it up!
4) You can't be a bigger, self-aggrandizing douche than Ron Artest. He spent the last 5 minutes of the game trying to start a fight, as usual. He even got KJ James mad, which takes some doing. Just once I'd like to see the opening tip of a Laker game, then have the ref instantly blow his whistle and eject Artest. I mean, it's not like we don't know he is going to spend the entire game trying to injure people - why waste everyone's time? Just throw him out and get on with it.
5) Kobe Bryant had to wear a face mask because Dwyane Wade broke his nose in the All-Star Game last week. I'm not going to lie, it was kind of worth it to lose the game just to see him look so dopey wearing that stupid mask, knowing Dwyane had done it to him. Did I mention Sunday games suck, and I didn't enjoy watching this game at all?
6) I'm too bored to tell a story. Just know this: if you aren't watching Piers Morgan on the regular, you ain't living. Scary talented - can ask any question in the book. Piers Morgan: every weeknight on, I think, whatever station Larry King used to be on, whichever one that is.
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I'm pretty sure we are back home and play the Nets on Tuesday. If you need me before then, I'll be trying to recover from this snooze-fest by doing something more exciting, like peeling potatoes, or listening to Beatles albums. La-ter.
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