6 Thoughts
1) Man, the road can really take it out of you. I mean, when you have to be at your best when you are flying from city to city, schlepping your bags, going from one climate extreme to another - it can be difficult...Oh, not for the Heat, I have no idea what was wrong with them tonight. I mean for me - I had to be up at 4:30am this morning to catch the car service ride from my brother's house in DC to the airport. And, yet, here I am, standing tall, ready to deliver! I'm back and better than ever, although my body temperature may never recover from the last couple of days - dipped under 65 degrees more than once! Road warrior, baby! Come on, come on, DC-style, Allons-y!
2) Let's just start off by re-setting everything. You know - you know - the more things change, the more they stay the same. Any cliche you want. Same as it ever was. What goes around comes around - not sure that one fits, actually. My point is, Saturday, I came out of the Natural History Museum in DC, and on the Mall there was a large demonstration: pro-Atheism. Do you capitalize "Atheism?" It's not a religion, exactly. Anyways, they were up there yackety-yacking, you know, pro-science, anti-fundamentalism; and on the fringes of the demonstration, predictably, were the hard-core Christians, demonstrating against the demonstrators. Funny, by the way, how it's always Christian dudes who have the time to go demonstrate against the pro-science folks - you don't see a lot of Jews or Muslims down there being outraged over a bunch of wackadoos with nothing better to do on a Saturday. And I asked A.Minutos what he thought you had to do to have a large demonstration on the mall - get a permit? "Yeah, if you're soft," he sneered. It's a good point - if you are getting permission to have a demonstration, how important is the demonstration, really? Isn't it kind of an exercise in futility? Nothing that happened down on that Mall Saturday is really going to change anything - it's when someone gets really passionate and goes balls-to-the-wall with his beliefs that something has a chance to change. It's kind of like an NBA season - no one can really prove anything during the regular season. There is nothing Miami can do during this regular season to make anyone think any differently about them - if they won all 66 games, the national media is still going to be perched on the sidelines, just like the Christian dudes on the Mall, trying to explain why Miami has no chance to win the title. Maybe they will; maybe they won't. They just lost back-to-back road games against good teams, and didn't play particularly well. Still, they are 35-13. Chicago got blown out at home tonight and has 11 losses; OKC has 12. Everyone else has more. I'll get thirty-five emails tomorrow telling me they have no chance to win the title after these last two nights, but the reality is, Miami's got 18 games to go - they could lose them all, and I still really don't believe anyone but Chicago has a better than remote chance of beating them in a seven game series. This is just like last year - everyone thought Miami didn't win enough games during the regular season, but the regular season is a farce, it's meaningless, just like that demonstration on the Mall, just like the demonstration on the Mall last year, and just like the demonstration on the Mall the year before that. And, by the way, just saying, as a descendant of England (on my half-white side), this isn't a problem in English Premier League soccer, where almost every week has significance. Better system. My overall point? The regular season is stupid, and English people are smarter than us.
3) Annnd, yet, all that being said, I think we would all feel more confident if we had a power forward who didn't rebound like the FDR monument - with polio, sitting in a chair. Two rebounds in 36 minutes tonight for Chris Bosh. He looked exhausted - left back-to-back free throws short with 3 minutes left in the game. That never happens. I really don't know what is going to become of this kid. I honestly don't think he'll be here next year. Miami will either: 1 - play well, win the title, and then spin Bosh off for multiple parts to ease some of the rebounding and defending load on Dwyane and KJ; or, 2 - play poorly, not win the title, then spin Bosh off for multiple parts to ease some of the rebounding and defending load on Dwyane and KJ. Either way, it's tough to see how he returns, in my opinion. He's had a bad, bad year. He's a very good player, but the one thing they needed from him this year was a little more aggression defending and rebounding. Everyone knew that - he had to know it. Instead, he has rebounded and defended with the exact same level of aggression, which is to say, limited. Limited aggression...On the positive side, I couldn't go more than two feet the past week in Washington without seeing a statue, and it always reminded me of home!
4) Cherry blossoms, boy! It was Cherry blossom season in DC, and they were everywhere, raining down their pinkish white petals over everything within wind's reach. Just like Emcee Chalmers in the first quarter! As part of our "All Chalmers, All the Time" strategy, Chalmers dominated play on both ends of the court in the opening moments, and not always in a good way. Had: three steals; one alley-oop that he threw too high to Wade, and we didn't score; another alley-oop that he opted not to throw, going for a bounce pass to Wade, on which he also did not score; he made a layup and a triple; he travelled on a bizarre play in transition when he tried to run into Darren Collison to draw a foul, missed him, and stumbled through the lane; he committed an illegal screen when he cross-body-blocked a Pacer with two forearms, didn't hear a whistle, so then tried to shove him to the ground, all approximately two feet away from a referee; then committed a second foul by wildly careening into a driver, forcing Spo to lift him with three whole minutes still remaining in the quarter! We were down 8 or so when he left, so it was tough to say it was working, but we really got our money's worth from that stint!
5) George Washington > all other completely honest people throughout history > all marginally honest people (normal people) > pretty dishonest people > thieves and totally dishonest criminals > Frank Vogel #Don'tBelieveHisLies
6) As a half-Jew, half-White person, couldn't help but notice that the Charles Lindbergh exhibit in the Air and Space Museum spent a great deal of time extolling his "achievements" flying his dumb little plane to-and-fro, but totally left out the part where he was a raging anti-Semite, and a Nazi sympathizer. Oh, that's cool - I see how we do. Well, guess what, Air Space and Museum? I didn't leave a dollar in the giant donation box by the door when I left your museum, unlike the Natural History Museum, the National Gallery of Art, and every other museum I visited in which I did leave a dollar. So I guess your support of a virulent anti-Semite really hurt you more than it hurt me. Ha!
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I think we are off until Thursday, when we play Dallas! Hot dog, that should be a fun game in an otherwise sloggy last month of action. If you need me before then, I'll be throwing all my support behind Sully Sullenberger in this year's "Greatest All-Time American Aviator" contest. Roger out!
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