1) This could have been another pedestrian, sloppy, first-game-back-from-the-All-Stars slogfest, but instead it turned out to be a great night in a lot of ways. The Heat were atrocious for three quarters, then exploded to win the fourth quarter 40-17...The Knicks got hammered in Indiana, so Miami has a 5 game lead in the Eastern Conference standings, for what it's worth. They have been second the last couple of years and still made it to the Finals, so it's probably not worth much...Oklahoma City lost in Houston (James Harden with an all-time "I hate what you did to me" game: 46 points!), and now, for all the complaining Heat fans do about Miami ("why can't we rebound," "Dwyane Wade doesn't run back on defense," "Chris Bosh plays defense like a statue"), the Heat have passed the Thunder, and now have the second best record in the NBA, behind only the Spurs....Finally, tonight ended an era, as the most Hawk-y Hawk of all, Josh Smith, probably played his last game for Atlanta. He's almost assuredly getting traded tomorrow. Glad we got to see his last game in the ATL, and it was vintage...We're heading down the home stretch now, kids, but Mike Mil-lar was out with the flu, so we can not let it fly...leggo!
2) Listen, let's be honest: the Hawks are not the most difficult team to trick. There's a fairly decent chance that if you set a screen off the ball, or make a cut to the rim, or even simply drive-and-kick, someone on their defense is going to get lost. Sometimes it might be Josh Smith, sometimes it might be DeShawn Stevenson, or Jeff Teague (it probably won't be Al Horford - AL HORFORD!) - in the end, does it matter which guy it is? For three quarters Miami didn't do any of that, and they trailed by 10. Cue the crafty old dudes for what one tweeter called "some basketry!" The fourth quarter started: corner triple by Shane Battier; Ray Allen sealing Korver on the block for a layup-and-1; Battier corner triple; Ray backdoor layup on a 25 foot, one bounce laser from Battioke - a couple of minutes into the quarter they already had the lead, all on crafty old dudes making crafty-old-dude plays! And it never stopped: Dwyane Wade (20 points) and KJ James (24 points, 11 dimes, 6 rebounds, 4 steals) started posting at the elbow, and letting Battioke and Ray sneak around and find cracks in the Hawks defense. Battioke finished 5-8 on triples and scored 17 (and frustrated Josh Smith on the defensive end), and Ray scored 13 in the fourth to finish with 15 in the game. Overall, 13 assists on 14 buckets in the fourth quarter for the Heat - that's crazy ball movement. On a night where Miami was mostly brutal on offense, and KJ and Dwyane never really dominated, they still scored 103. When those shooters make shots, man...
3) There are certain cities Miami goes to where the crowd isn't exactly intimidating. And by "isn't exactly intimidating," I mean, "most people are rooting for the Heat." It happens when they play the Nets, it happens when play Charlotte, but most of all, it happens when they play Atlanta. It was an overwhelmingly vocal crowd in favor of the Heat - M.Minutos was out of the room during part of the Heat fourth quarter run, heard the crowd roaring, and thought the Heat were getting blown out until she re-entered the room and remembered, "oh yeah - it's Atlanta: Miami's on a run!" After the game, Heat sideline reporter, the glorious Jason Jackson, noted the abundance of Heat fans in the Hawks' building to Shane Battier, who laughed and agreed: "Yeah, the crowd was great!" That reminds me, you know who should go to Atlanta? Dwight Howard. No one there cares too much about basketball; he won't have the hot spotlight on him for every dumb thing he says or does (and that's a lot of things); he's from there, so if there is anyone left in America who likes him, you would figure they live in that city; they have a couple of decent players; and if he gets healthy and makes them relevant after all these (wonderfully) mediocre years, he'll be a hero. It's so perfect that there is absolutely no way his serial-bad-decision-making self will figure it out. In fact, it makes so much sense that it is probably the one place on Earth that we can unequivocally rule out.
4) Ode to Josh Smith: no one loves the Hawks the last few years like I have loved the Hawks. They have had a motley collection of half-interested, talented dudes (Josh Smith, Joe Johnson); a huge lottery bust (Marvin Williams); a youtube icon (Al Horford, from the sock Steven A Smith videos - AL HORFORD!); and, of course, one of the greatest superstars this league has ever seen, Mike Bibby, who once spent an entire seven game playoff series against the Heat engaging in a perimeter slap-fest with then-Heat rookie Mario Chalmers - you know, the guy who turned out to be Almario Vernard "Emcee" Chalmers! It was an interesting group of kids - good enough to give you a game, but not good enough to beat a good team in a playoff series, and year-after-year they would get bounced in the second round of a fairly top-heavy Eastern Conference. But the Hawks have been systematically dismantling that group the last year or two, and Josh Smith was one of the last ones standing. And, really, the most interesting of all - he has gifts that most 6'10" guys don't have: he's coordinated, he's a willing and good passer; he's a good shot-blocker. He does everything well, as someone said tonight, but the one thing he doesn't do well, shoot from the perimeter, that's the thing he loves to do the most! There is no sound in the NBA like when Josh Smith catches the ball out on the wing in Atlanta, looks at the basket, nobody from the other team even remotely runs at him, the two hundred people actually rooting for the Hawks start going "nooooooo," and then, after a long pause like everyone is frozen in time, launches an iron-clanging moonball off the bracket attaching the rim to the backboard. M.Minutos said it best tonight: nothing anyone else says or does affects him one iota, not the other team, not his own team, not the coaches, not the refs. Josh Smith is gonna do the things that a Josh Smith does, and what a Josh Smith brings. And it is always fun to watch, he's one of my all-time favorites. He's gonna be traded tomorrow and tonight, fittingly, was a classic Josh Smith game: he made some great passes (9 assists), and some terrible ones (5 turnovers). He had 9 rebounds, but got lost a lot on defense - he couldn't figure out to stay spaced out to the Heat shooters, he always sagged to the paint, and Miami made 10-23 threes, 5 by his guy. He scored 10 points on 5-13 from the floor, including 1-8 from outside the paint, and 0-4 from the three point line, despite a guy 4 inches shorter than him guarding him all night. I felt like that was a shame, I would have liked to see him hit one triple on his way out the door, that stunk. Let it be noted that pretty much his last play as an Atlanta Hawk came with time running down in another not-too-close loss to a team that is simply a little better, when he drove the lane, nobody played defense because the game was over, he came to a jump stop with nobody around him whatsoever, and then the ball simply went flying out of his hands to the Heat. He'll get traded tomorrow to the Nets, or Celtics, or Bucks, or someone, and Miami will beat that team in the second round of the playoffs, just like always happens to Josh Smith, but it won't ever be the same. The Hawks are the Hawks no more - it will never be the same. Bon Voyage, Josh Smith, good luck in your new home. Can't wait to see you again. Don't forget your handbands!
5) Big feud swirling around the Heat right now, rapper Lil Wayne is mad at us...again. Famously, a couple of years ago he came to a Heat game in New Orleans - the day he got out of prison, I might add, though I'm sure it was a bum rap - and Dwyane and KJ did not say hi to him because they were, you know, busy playing basketball, and he got very angry. That hasn't really stopped him from coming to Heat games since then, but when he does, he roots for the other team - ha! He was ejected from the Heat-Lakers game last week because Heat fans were mocking him, and he turned around and pantomimed a shooting motion with his finger at one of them. Not satisfied with that, a few days later he claimed that he was banned from All-Star Weekend in Houston because he slept with Chris Bosh's wife. The most surprising thing about this claim is that someone believes that Chris Bosh has enough pull to get anyone banned from anything! So now they are feuding…Oh, no -not Lil Wayne and Chris Bosh - Chris Bosh could care less, he is trying to win a championship…Lil Wayne is feuding with septuagenarian Heat color commentator Tony Fiorentino!
Yeahhh, Tony! Gansta-up, boyyy!
Epilogue: around the time of the game, people reported that Lil Wayne went on the radio to apologize to KJ and the city of Miami, and to say that the only person on the Heat that he was actually mad at was Dwyane Wade, since during the Laker game, Dwyane said "fuck you," to him. Good job, Dwyane...
6) Worst possible outcome of the Blade Runner murder case: that it wasn't Oscar Blade Runner (Hubie-ism) who killed this woman, but actually another all-time great South African athlete, golfer Gary Player, who won the Masters golf tournament three times in the 1960s and 70s:
Eyes of a killer...
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The Heat have won 8 in a row, but have a game tomorrow night in Chicago. There's no worse team to play on a road back-to-back than Chicago, since they take every game so seriously. Nerds. If you need me before tomorrow, I won't be playing golf, I can assure you that. See you in Chicago!
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The Heat have won 8 in a row, but have a game tomorrow night in Chicago. There's no worse team to play on a road back-to-back than Chicago, since they take every game so seriously. Nerds. If you need me before tomorrow, I won't be playing golf, I can assure you that. See you in Chicago!
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