6 Thoughts
1) Coach Spo's an All Star now, boy! He's a champ and an All Star - today's win clinched it! Did the always serious Spo relent and enjoy the moment, did he celebrate? "Well, the most important thing is that we have the best record in the East." He is a coaching robot! Lighten up, boy! Actually, he did smile and enjoy it a little bit - remember, Rondo's hurt. If Rondo's playing, no, I wouldn't want to coach the All Stars, either. #Doucheball...Good win for the Heat today, couldn't get a call again, and got a little frustrated, but stayed at it and the Big Three did enough to pull away at the end. Let's get through this quick and enjoy some football. Let it fly!
2) Chris Bosh came back to the city where he started his career and took his old team apart in the second half: 22 points after halftime, including a late dagger triple from the left corner to put the game away - I think it's only like #9 on the season for him. I predicted he'd hit 50; at this point I'd settle for 15. Umm, oops? For the game: 28 points on 12-19. KJ James backed him up with 30 on 10-16, and Dwyane Wade had 23 on 10-18. That's efficient - Heat shot 53% from the field, and held the Raptors to 37%. This would have been a blowout, except for...
3) ...the referees. For the second straight game, Miami had a rough shake of it. That happens on the road in the NBA, that's life. But, still, it's frustrating. Dwyane Wade had three early fouls called him - two very shaky - and had to sit down a lot of the first half. Chris Anderson got three quick ones as well. Raptors wings DeMar DeRozan and Rudy Gay wore out a path to the free throw line in the first three quarters. Meanwhile, KJ James kept driving with force, got repeatedly hammered, and couldn't get a call. On the last play of the first quarter, the Heat cleared out the top for KJ, he beat Rudy Gay off the dribble going right, got bodychecked, powered through it, got to the rim, took another blast, fought it off, and finished. No call. He never gets that call, especially at the end of a quarter - I don't know what you'd have to do to get a foul called on you while hitting KJ on the last play of a quarter - you would literally have to behead him, I think. Landed and freaked out a little - he just takes so many shots like that, it's completely bizarre. I don't know if refs want him to start falling down before they will call it a foul - I thought they were trying to take flopping out of the game. The Raptors shot 32 free throws to the Heat's 23, even though Miami lived in the paint all night. Frustrating. But even all that paled in comparison to what happened in the third quarter - with the Heat starting to pull away from the Raps, Mario Chalmers tried to penetrate from the top and dribbled the ball off his foot right into Rudy Gay's hands. Gay started to push the ball and Chalmers just grabbed him from behind to stop the break. Dwyane Wade was two steps in front of Gay just to his right, and retreating, and over on the left wing, KJ James was five steps ahead of Gay, and also retreating. It was even remotely a clear path foul - Rudy Gay wasn't even close to being behind all the Heat defenders - in fact, two guys were clearly ahead of him. One wayyy ahead of him. The game went to commercial, and when it came back, Gay was standing on an empty free throw line: clear path foul. I've seen bad calls that were more impactful, fouls in bigger spots, fouls in important games. But I don't think I've ever seen a worse call. Even Heat announcers Eric Reid and Tony Fiorentino were going mental as they showed the replay - most times, on clear path fouls, the refs are allowed to check the replay. It was unclear if they did or not, since the game was at commercial. Somehow Eric and Tony weren't sure if they had. If they didn't, somehow all three guys missed two Heat players a combined 15 feet ahead of the play; if they did, they don't know the clear path rule. That's not hard to believe - I've seen refs not know rules before. But that was brutal - I mean, refereeing is these guys' full-time jobs - you would think they could reach a certain baseline of competence. It didn't matter, ultimately, but the calls are swinging the wrong way on Miami right now. I want to fight Joey Crawford!
4) Play of the game: Dwyane Wade spent most of the first half on the bench with three fouls; Raptors guard DeMar DeRozan spent most of the first half standing on the free throw line, stroking freebies after bad calls. On the first play of the second half, with the Raptors leading by 6 (and Miami lucky to be down only that much after all the bizarre officiating), DeRozan tried to take Wade to the block, looking to score, or even better, draw Wade's fourth foul and sit him down again. He tried to back in, and back in, and Wade held his ground, and held his ground, and finally DeRozan turned over his shoulder to shoot a fadeaway and Wade went up with him and tattooed the ball back into his face. Emcee Chalmers picked it up, the Heat went down and scored, and then spent the last two quarters hammering Toronto - held them to 35 in the second half, phantom clear path foul calls and all. Again, for the one millionth time: don't f- with Dwyane Wade, don't clear out a side and try to back him down in space, and embarrass him. Unless you love the taste of leather on your lips, then, yes, by all means, do it. DumbMar DeRozan.
5) How do you get a rep as a L'il Turd? Umm, if you're John Lucas III, you do this: when KJ James sprints down an overthrown hit-ahead pass in transition, you're trailing him, KJ gets to the ball just before the baseline in the corner, comes to a stop, and is trying to balance so he doesn't fall out of bounds, and you reach out and shove him over the baseline. Then the ref calls a foul because, you know, it's one of the most obvious fouls of all-time, and you turn around and start screaming at him, right in front of the Raptors bench, which is retarded - you pushed the guy out of bounds on purpose! Even the Raptors bench looked mortified - can you imagine having to play with this guy in practice every day? You know he's the guy who gets his shot blocked cleanly in a three-on-three game, calls a foul cuz he's embarrassed, argues about it, then storms off, ruining the game. By the way, he's 5'9", 160 pounds - and last year he tried to fight KJ, after James wiped him out on a completely legal screen (one game after jumping completely over him and dunking!). L'il Turd...
6) I'm almost ready for the Super Bowl, I'm stoked, the lamb fajitas are looking sweet, and I got some fresh tzatziki from the corner Halal market. I'm not a football fan, really. One year I watched the Mickey Rourke classic comeback film The Wrestler on my laptop instead of the game - still not sure if the Steelers won that one or not. But, okay, okay, you want me to make a prediction? I think the Ravens will roar out on top, take a healthy lead into halftime, then run the opening kickoff of the second half back for a touchdown. I think something really weird could happen at that point - maybe the lights could go out in the stadium, or something like that, and the 49ers will storm back, and come within one play of winning the game, until Dick Bavetta no calls a pass interference in the back of the end zone on fourth down. Maybe the final score is something like 34-29? Nah, maybe the Ravens, like, take a safety right at the end to run clock, and it ends up 34-31. Just a wild guess. And by the way, even though the Ravens will win the game, I still think the 49ers are obviously the better team - #PacerLogic.
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We're off until, ugh - tomorrow. A long, dense stretch of games these next couple of weeks - everyone else in the league has played way more games than us - David Stern tried to backload it to see if he could wear us out down the stretch so we'll lose to the Knicks in the playoffs. If you need me before tomorrow, I'll be bathing in tzatziki sauce - so creamy. See you tomorrow!
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