6 Thoughts
1) It was a little ragged, a little rusty. The regular rotation hasn't played together much the last few weeks. The Bucks are quick, Miami turned the ball over a little, and anytime your game is reffed by Bennett Salvatore, it's going to be a disjointed, foul-filled affair with a lot of weird calls, and everyone on both teams is going to be frustrated. But we've played one playoff game, and we're still the champs (#Champs), so I guess it's going ok. Okay? OKAY? YEAHHHH, IT'S OKAYYY: PLAYYYYOFFFS, STUD DOOGIE ARE YOU WITH ME??? LET'S GO (KJ James), LET'S GO GET IT (Gabrielle Union), and LET IT FLYYYY (Mike Miller)!!!
2) It's playoff time, and that means KJ James takes it to a different place. And that place is the paint. He shot, I believe, 2 jump shots all night (1-2 triples). He eschewed the midrange jumper to either pound the rim, or move the ball to open shooters. On the one hand, Milwaukee's defense stinks. On the other hand, Miami turned it over 19 times, shot it miserably from the edges even though they got open looks for their best shooters (Battier, Allen, and Chalmers a combined 3-16 on threes), and still scored 110 points and were never really challenged in the second half. KJ: 27 points on 11 shots (9-11)! Bucks guard Brandon Jennings scored 26 on 20 shots, and Monta Ellis scored 22 on 19. So, you know, James was a little more efficient than those guys. KJ also had 10 rebounds and 8 assists, and frankly, was pretty mellow during the game - they didn't need him to take over except for one brief stretch at the end of the third quarter, and he only had to play 35 minutes. He's good.
3) Chris "Birdman" Anderson puts a lot of activity into his 16 minutes every night. Tonight he scored 10 points on three violent dunks, one little putback from an inch away, and 2 free throws; plus had 7 rebounds; plus had one sweet return pass to James for a 3 point play; plus performed about 6 different variations of the "Birdflap," including one where he power-dunked a Ray Allen "Allen-Oop" float-pass (20 for Ray off the bench) while getting fouled, looked into a sea of flapping Heat fans, put the arms out, but left them hanging, never flapped down, kept the landing gear up, soared to the free throw line, and made the freebie. First-ever use of "freebie" in this blog, by the way - hate that word. Heat fans love Bird - he can play, he's a wackadoo, and a lot of Heat fans have a lot of bad ink of their own, they can sympathize! Heat playoff crowds are bananas - I think only OKC is consistently as loud and geared up as The Trip. Ahh, maybe Madison Square Garden as well. Definitely not Boston, those people are depressed from years of Rajon Rondo and Kevin Garnett sucking out their souls. And it's like, if you have a loud, "big event" crowd that is prone to freaking out, the Dwyane Wade and KJ James Show brings a lot of dunks to freak out about, there were already a lot of opportunities for Heat fans to lose their junk every night. And then they added the Birdman! It was only Game 1 of the playoffs, and that building was wild - there's a high-pitched whine simmering all night long, just waiting to ignite. Miami crowds definitely come late - but they know how to party.
4) As everyone who reads this blog knows, I guaranteed Chris Bosh would make 50 triples this season. Annnddd, he made 21, so I was super-close, just missed. He only needed to double his actual total, and then make 8 more, and I would have been right there. But, honestly, he can drill that shot, especially from the corners - he made several huge ones in last year's playoff run. During the regular season, they really just didn't run sets that spaced him out to the corner - they have so many shooters, they didn't need him to do that. Soooo, of course tonight the Heat comes out and immediately starts running sets that put him in the corner, and he instantly makes 2 quick triples, and 3-4 for the game. Over the course of 82 games, at that pace, he would have made 246 threes - I knew he was punking me!!! Again, the moral of the story? Never bet on anything that relies on Chris Bosh to do something...
5) Brandon Jennings predicted Milwaukee would win the series in 6, but in fairness to him, I saw one of the interviews in which he said it, and he was laughing. It was a fairly typical Brandon Jennings night, he dribbled around like a wild man, took a ton shots, made a bunch, missed a bunch, and the Bucks lost. Overall, though, the night was a success for him: nobody closed South Beach. It's still there, everything's open, he's good to go.
6) Movie Review: My boys came home from school earlier in the week begging to see "42." They already know about Jackie Robinson - 10 year old O.Minutos because he has already memorized everything about sports, ever; and 8 year old P.Minutos, who does not like sports, because O.Minutos is constantly telling him everything about sports, ever...So we went yesterday evening. It's a pretty hacky movie - I think if you've seen the previews, you pretty much know the movie's perspective. Predictably, old white dudes save the day by allowing Jackie to play baseball, especially Harrison Ford, portraying Brooklyn Dodger owner Branch Rickey. When this movie went into production, do you think they were like, "well, white people save the day, so who's the whitest man alive? Exactly: Harrison Ford!" The movie is made remotely endurable by the performance of the dude playing Jackie Robinson - at the risk of upsetting M.Minutos again, he's some black guy. I've never seen him before. But he's excellent, very charismatic. Also, the fact that the movie is concentrated only on the two or three year period when Jackie is breaking into major league baseball helps - there's no syrupy, apocryphal backstory of his childhood. Still, all the characters, even Rickey and Robinson, are one-dimensional, and the cinematography and soundtrack are uncreative and uninteresting. Highlight of the film: when St. Louis Cardinal Enos Slaughter intentionally cleated Jackie in the back of the leg, and O.Minutos and I simultaneously started waving our hands around in the theater, simulating a yellow card...Lowlight of the film: when some of the white players on the Dodgers have to teach Robinson how to use eating utensils - that seemed a little over-the-top and racist, frankly...On the whole, this is a good movie for children, and old white people who would like to feel better about themselves, and who, en masse, erupted into applause at the end of the showing we attended. I'm very white, so I guess I'll give it a 10 out of 10...
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Game Two is Tuesday night in Miami - same night as Celtics-Knicks Game Two, unfortunately, so I won't be able to hate-watch that one ("there are no winners in this series, only losers...")...If you need me before then, I'll be hitting fungoes to the boys while screaming racial epithets. Just like every day...
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