6 Thoughts
1) Do I have to say it? Do you really want me to say it? Okay...We're the Two Seed Champs, boy, Two Seed Champs! Clinched the two seed for the second year in a row!!! Two! Seed! Champs! Let's go!
2) Quick playoff scenario recap: Miami, with tonight's win, can't be lower than the two seed in the Eastern Conference. Several scenarios are still possible (Miami could still catch Chicago for the one seed; New York could rise or fall, etc), but what is highly probable is that Miami will play the Knicks in the first round, play Indiana in the second round, and play the Boston-Bulls winner in the Eastern Conference Finals (assuming we beat NYK and Indiana). On the one hand, for a top 4 seed, the Knicks are the hardest first round series - they are clearly better than Philadelphia, Orlando, and Atlanta, at least to me. That's a tough break. On the other hand, if you can't beat the Knicks, you certainly aren't going to beat the Bulls and, say, OKC, anyways, so the whole thing was pointless. And, on the positive side, while Indiana is a very good team, the hottest team in the East after the All-Star break has been Boston - letting them and Chicago hammer each other's brains out in the second round, and having to play only one of them is probably the most favorable path, although, personally, I would love nothing more than to be the team to send Kevin Garnett home for the season. Again.
3) Dwyane Wade sat out the game: preventative maintenance. Also sitting out, Chris Bosh: over his rebound quota, with 29 in the past 2 games. He's like a farmer on a government subsidy, he can only get so many rebounds a month before he gets shut down. GFOB Snets points out that Bosh left his rebounding fields fallow for much of the season while still getting paid, so he's actually under his quota for the year, but listen, this is a bureaucracy, we don't apply common sense. Rules are rules: he's over the quota for the month, he sits.
4) KJ James played. I suppose he probably should have rested, also - he hasn't taken a game off yet down the stretch, and he said he hasn't wanted to, that he likes to play too much. He did concede he'd be willing to take a game or two off next week, which absolutely should happen. And, Toronto is terrible when healthy - when they aren't even playing their guys, like tonight, they're not even an NBA team. But, dude, to watch KJ go out there tonight and not just play great, but to play with so much energy, and even more so, to play correctly - I mean, he's a machine, dude. Maybe he won't play well in the Finals again if Miami is lucky enough to get that far - he was great in the playoffs last year until the last couple of games - I don't know. But during this season, he has been a machine. He scored 28 points on 12-15 in three quarters, but it was one play in particular that stood out to me. On a meaningless third quarter possession, he came off an elbow screen and roll with Dexter Pittman into space, came to a jump stop, and threw a perfect little bounce pass back to Dex for a finish. Like, KJ could have shot the open jumper, he could have been like, "Dex is never going to finish that," but he didn't, he threw the perfect pass to an imperfect teammate, and the dude finished. KJ is so good at basketball, and say what you will about him, but he plays the right way. He isn't selfish, he plays hard, he defends - he plays the right way. You might not like him, or like The Decision, or whatever - personally, I like other dudes on the team way better - but I have total respect for his approach out there, even on a night like tonight when there is absolutely no reason that he has to play that way. Or even play at all. Admirable...
5) ...But he's also a physical freak, too. Toronto scored a bucket with about 4 seconds left in the first half. Mike Mil-lar (13 points on 3-4 triples) snatched the ball out of the basket, stepped out of bounds, and threw an overhand baseball pass down the court to just inside the three point line. KJ went up in between two large Toronto defenders (the Johnson brothers, James and Amir) and, one-handed, snatched the fastball out of the sky. He landed, lowered his head, and got his shoulder up ahead of James Johnson on his right, powered past him, and then with Amir Johnson still draped all over his left shoulder, kind of shrugged him off, and made a running, right-handed flip shot from the lane just before the buzzer sounded. Probably no other player in the league makes that play. Incredible athleticism.
6) Well, the Space Shuttle took its last flight this week. We're shutting down the shuttle program because it is too difficult and not cost-effective - like, it never really goes anywhere, or does anything meaningful, even though it costs taxpayers, I would imagine, thousands of dollars for even one flight. Like, we still haven't found the Martians, yet, or any aliens, for that matter. We just couldn't figure out a way to get anything done with the Space Shuttle program. Yet, I am supposed to still believe that forty years ago, with vastly inferior technology, we shot a rocket up off the revolving and rotating Earth, towards a revolving and rotating Moon, gave it enough power to get all the way there, but not so much that it wouldn't land perfectly and softly on a crater-filled surface with zero gravity...and then somehow, remotely, re-launched it and reversed the process perfectly? We can't do the Space Shuttle anymore - but the moon landing seems plausible to you? #DontBelieveTheirLies #TheTruthIsOutThere
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I am making a rare journey down to The Trip tomorrow night to see the Heat play the Bulls. Huge kudos to Great Friend of the Blog AH, who invited me to go. On the other hand, if I have to see Joakim Noah in person celebrating on The Trip's floor, I may never speak to AH again. If you need me before tomorrow night, I'll be ripping the sections on space "travel" out of O and P Minutos' science books, and replacing them with "Jack and the Beanstalk," since that is a far more realistic mode of space transport. Have a good night, naive lemmings!
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