Knicks 104 Heat 84

6 Thoughts

1) Hurricane Sandy is still in New York!  And it's raining triples!  It seemed like no team has ever made more triples in a game against Miami than the Knicks did tonight.  You know why?  BECAUSE NO TEAM HAS EVER MADE MORE TRIPLES IN A GAME AGAINST MIAMI THAN THE KNICKS DID TONIGHT!  EVEN WITHOUT MIKE BIBBY, WHOM THEY (AND 29 OTHER TEAMS) FOOLISHLY DIDN'T RE-SIGN IN THE OFFSEASON!  For pete's sake: 19-36 on three pointers for New York!  5 for Steve Novak, 4 for Melo Anthony (Hubie-ism!), and 3 for every other Knick, past, present and future.  By the way, you know whose record they broke for most threes in a game against Miami?  Their own - last year!  Let's never play this team again!

2) The Knicks were geared up and emotional for their season opener, especially considering the difficulty their city endured the past few days.  The Heat, meanwhile, dialed up the intensity to about a zero, led by Dwyane Wade, who made it known before the game that he thought it was stupid to play a game in a disaster area.  Ummm, make that two disaster areas, because the Heat got destroyed.  Dwyane couldn't be bothered to guard anyone, and he wasn't alone.  KJ James was soft on that end, as well, as the Heat perimeter players kept allowing easy dribble penetration to the Knicks, which collapsed the defense, and led to open threes.  Almario Vernard Chalmers set the tone with two early fouls, sending him to the bench, then reached some kind of fouling nadir in the third quarter (for a normal player, not for him - he's naded lower nadirs) when he somehow karate kicked the landlocked Jason Kidd with .000001 left on the shot clock 25 feet from the basket when Kidd didn't even look like he was going to actually try to shoot the ball.  Oh, Mariooooo....

3) We will point this out between twenty and seventy times this season, but even though he was terrible - didn't move the ball, lazy on defense, too many long jumpers - KJ James' final stat line was 23 points (8-16), 7 rebounds, 5 assists, and 3 blocks.  We say it a bunch of times every year: even KJ's terrible games are better than most player's good games.  Just looking at this box score, you know what else is depressing?  The Heat got killed by the Knicks - and Melo Anthony only made 10-28 shots!  Yikes!

4) You know who I hate so far?  Rashard Lewis.  One, he hasn't jumped yet through two games.  Two, he hasn't moved his feet yet defensively in two games.  Tonight he got stuck out on a wing against Melo Anthony, got blown by, Melo missed the layup, but somehow got it back on the total other wing, with Lewis still on him, and blew right by him again for a hoop.  Ugh.  Later, 70 year old Kurt Thomas beat him to a loose ball.  Three, he shoots the ball approximately every time he touches it.  He shot it well tonight, honestly, 5-9, including 4-6 triples, for 16 points in only 20 minutes, but not playing defense (or the inability to play defense) paired with shooting the ball every time you touch it, isn't a real endearing skill set.  Two games into his Heat career, I'm not a fan...By the way, Heat play-by-player Eric Reid, in Sunsports' first game tonight, claimed that the aformentioned Thomas, who started his career on the Heat, then was traded, and has since actively hated the organization for the past 17 or so years for "what they did to me," is on his 'retirement tour' at the age of 40.  Really?  Now?  Hasn't he been on a retirement tour since 2002?  Believe me, as long as there is a Miami Heat organization to hate, Kurt Thomas will never retire.  Do you hear me?  Never! 

5) Okay, one the greatest friends ever of this blog, Snets - in fact, he might be the first regular reader that I was aware of - plays in a band named Sierra.  They are totally awesome - he's the keyboard player, and I think you will notice in this clip how strong the keyboards are.  This short video was filmed this week, in my honor, I like to think - in the longer version, Snets actually shouts me out from the mike.  Now, all you have to do is imagine a fort-ahhh-fiftyyy-ishh year old "maybe" woman in hot pants, with cracking, faded, alabaster skin, and a body like a refrigerator, spinning her hands like a (more) evil John Travolta, and thrusting her powerful hips to and fro.  And then you will have felt approximately 1/1000 of the experience that GFOB Thor and I had in Atlanta at The Claremont two weeks ago.  Thanks for dredging up that horrible, horrible memory, and mocking me in public with it, Snets!  'Preciate it!

6) Here are my five favorite cutting actions:

     5) Slice

     4) Surgical incision

     3) Stab (non-fatal)

     2) Dice

     1) Rough chop

I asked R.Minutos for his take, and he said, "The first cut is the deepest." Great point.

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Well, let's just move on.  This could be a long season, since we don't have a meaningful game until the second round of the playoffs in May.  We are right back down here tomorrow night against a frisky Denver team.  If you need me before then, I'll be making a giant chef salad - rough chop, boy!  Have a great Saturday, Refrigerator Heads!  

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Heat 120 Celtics 107

6 Thoughts

1) Well, that was pretty good!  First, retiring NBA commissioner David Stern handed out rings to all the Heat players, after sending out his thoughts and prayers to the victims of "Hurricane Katrina."  Whoa, he's getting out just in time - wrong hurricane, Commish!  It was interesting that in Dwyane's city, Dwyane got his ring next to last, and KJ James got his last.  I was wondering how that would go, and I have to admit, I had a tinge of, like, I don't know, just a little, "ahhh."  Don't want Dwyane to get old...lose his athleticism...retire...then die...Goodness, sorry, that's kind of a downer.  Anyways, it's KJ's team now, I guess - he earned it!...Next, they raised the banner up to the rafters, while Queen's "We Are The Champions" blared.  M.Minutos wondered what we all would have done if Queen had never written that song...Oh yeah, then there was a game...annnnnd we killed the Celtics!  Same as it ever was!  Doucheball in town, and doucheball goes down...again!!!  Season's up, dude, season's up!!!  Let's go and do it, and let's go and get it, and let's get it on, and let's goooo!!! 

2) Miami pretty much pummeled Boston - too much offense, especially from the Big Three, who all played well.  KJ James, somehow, started cramping again, just like in last year's Finals, so he couldn't play most of the fourth quarter, but in the 29 minutes he did play, he had 26 points (10-16) and 10 boards - drink those fluids, KJ!  As John McEnroe always used to point out during Andre Agassi tennis matches, you can't start drinking the fluids when you start cramping - then it's too late; have to drink them well before.  That's some free advice for KJ, and the Heat training staff.  Dwyane Wade looked quick, athletic, and somewhat out-of-control, but still scored 29 on 10-22.  Chris Bosh was a little starved for touches, I felt - there's no way Kevin Garnett can guard him anymore - but he scored six big points down the stretch, and choked out Boston's last gasp with a block of Paul Pierce at the rim.  Three blocks for Bosh (!), and 19 points and 10 rebounds.  He's gonna kill people this year!      

3) Key stretch of the game: midway through the third quarter, with KJ in the locker room swallowing Gatorade to try to stave off the cramps (too late - told you!), and Dwyane on the bench for his normal rest, the Heat ran out Bosh, Mike Mil-lar, Walter Ray Allen, Rashard Lewis, and Almario Vernard "Emcee" Chalmers: all shooters, all the time!  That group instantly ran off buckets on six straight possessions: Bosh post-up hoop; Lewis wing jumper; Chalmers drive-and-dump to Bosh for a dunk; Allen triple; Chalmers pull-up in the lane over Kevin Garnett; and a Rashard Lewis post-up hoop with the shot clock going off.  Boston had to stay at home on all the shooters, and it created gaps everywhere.  Miami's bench closed the quarter with a 17 point lead, effectively ending the game.  It's a lot of depth out there.  Walter Ray scored 19 on 5-7 (2-3 triples).  Lewis scored 10 on 4-5, and also blocked a Jason Terry layup without jumping, which wasn't coincidental, since I didn't see him jump one time all night.  And, quietly, Emcee Chalmers played, I thought, one of the better all-around games of his career.  He only scored 8 points (one huge driving bucket over Garnett late in the game when Boston was trying to scrap back in it), but he had 11 assists - many of them very high quality - and only 1 (!) turnover, with 3 steals.  For once, he looked like a confident, high-quality veteran.  He looked like a champion!

4) Doucheball Report: Look, this is what the Celtics do - they come to town, they pass the ball well, they make open shots, they defend at a high level (not tonight - lot of new guys, so they get a pass), and they act like a bunch of douchebags.  That's not a criticism or a judgement - it's descriptive only.  Here's the shopping list of what they did tonight: Kevin Garnett threw an elbow at Mario Chalmers' head, which missed, then later another one which hit him; when Ray Allen checked into the game for the first time, he ran by the Celtics' bench to shake everyones' hands, and everyone gladly did it, except Garnett, who ignored him, even as Ray gave him a smile and a tap on the shoulder; Garnett needlessly went up high with forearms to Udonis Haslem's face after a made Celtic bucket, then ran away from UD; Jason Terry, making himself instantly at home, slapped the ball out of Chalmers' hands 2 seconds after the whistle for a timeout; Rondo got a technical for arguing after surrendering a post-up hoop to Wade (Ray Allen shot the techincal free throw with the crowd chanting his name - ohhhh, sooo gooood!), then with 17 seconds left, and the Heat up 11, let Wade drive past him, and lassoed him around the neck, earning a flagrant foul.  Rondo is absolutely the Dick Cheney of the NBA - sooo unlikable!  Also, I'm pretty sure I saw him wearing a "Vote Romney" button on his sweater before the game!  Doc Rivers, as always, contested every call all night long, including ones which went the Celtics way, and one blatant defensive three seconds call on Garnett, which even Garnett himself acknowledged was accurate by raising his hand and nodding at the call in agreement!  Then the entire team left without shaking hands at all, or even making the polite waves to the other team that all (other) teams do after every NBA game.  Full night!  I mean, they really douched it up!  Still, they hung tough for much of the game, and I think they are easily the second best team in the East - so expect another date with them this spring.  Really looking forward to sending them home again!

5) We got a good compliment at our Twitter account yesterday from @GoodMourningMIA:

 

     "No way bro your blog is the cats ass"

 

Exactly! Finally someone who gets us! This is precisely what we have been going for: the cat's ass!!! Thanks, Dude!

 

6) Well, few things have, ummm, "electrified" our readership like the encounter that GFOB Thor and I had with Refrigerator Woman, the stripper from Atlanta's longest-running strip club, The Claremont. We described that encounter in #6 of our season preview, and we received a lot of comments and questions about her. GFOB Snets pointed out that his band often plays The Who's "Squeeze Box," the song to which Refrigerator Woman did the most bizarre hand-rolling, hip-thrusting 'exotic' dance ever. Look, I don't know what the best stripper song ever is - depending on the venue it's probably something by either Rihanna or Motley Crue - but I know what the worst is, and it's "Squeeze Box" by The Who. I'd suggest to GFOB Snets that his band discontinue playing that song immediately, but I'm not even sure that goes far enough. Probably better to just give up music altogether - I know I am…Anyways, we're gonna try to answer the questions we got here. Not gonna post the questions, just the answers. Remember, strippers at The Claremont don't necessarily conform to "conventionally-accepted standards of beauty." Or, any other standard of beauty. Okay, here are the answers (only) to all our readers' questions:

 

White; no, she had all her teeth; black and straight and greasy; plain over peanut, definitely; sickly sweet, like a combination of lilac and stale beer; white, again, like a faded and cracking alabaster wall; "Sweet Home Alabama," I assume; late 40s, I guess; no, black people are wayyy too smart for that; like getting a back scratch from Dan Dierdorf; awful; low-grade, medium-term erectile dysfunction.

Think that covers them all! If you have any more questions about her, please write in!       

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Here we go, off on another NBA season, and it feels so good...for now...six weeks from now, I will start praying for the All-Star break, and the eventual end of the season, or the sweet release of death, whichever comes frst.  Next game should be Friday, in New York, against the Knicks!  Doesn't get any better than Celtics-Knicks to start the season!  If you need me before Friday, I'll be rubbing down KJ James' legs while listening to "Squeeze Box" - got to keep that boy limber!  See you Friday, Hurricane Katrina survivors!  

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2012-13 Season Preview!!!

Annnnd, we’re back!  Annnnd – heyyyyyy – we’re the Champs!!!  Super-fired up for the new season, which begins Tuesday at home against Boston.  Raise the banner!  As LeBron James and Gabrielle Union would say, Let’s Go, and Let’s Go Get It! 

 6 Thoughts

1) New Guys: We got Walter Ray Allen, Rashard Lewis, and, probably, Jorts.  Who?  Jorts is Josh Harrelson, your stereotypical big, dorky, white dude who takes up space, fouls at an alarming rate because he is too slow to move his feet defensively, wears jean shorts (hence the mash-it-up’d nickname “Jorts”) and knocks down triples like I knocked down Cucumber Martinis all summer!  Wait…what?  He knocks down triples?  Yeah, man – he can knock down a triple, and it looks like he is going to make the team, even with a non-guaranteed contract.  Look, in the NBA you can never have too many bigs, especially if he can knock down a triple, and especially if he can knock down a triple and is playing with Dwyane Wade and LeBron James – a big guy who can space the floor is worth his weight in cucumbers, mixologically-speaking…Though he was obviously horrendously coached in college (Kentucky, head coach: Satan), Jorts looked a little frisky in limited minutes with the Knicks last year, and at a minimum, will provide Heat fans with a dude to root for at the end of blowouts – he’s going to get a defensive rebound some Tuesday night against Detroit with the Heat leading by 30 and the crowd is instantly going to scream for him to launch a three from 80 feet away.  Let’s hope he complies.  Overall, I’m a big Jorts guy, if only because I love saying “Jorts.”  By the way, if he gets released over the weekend in favor of Terrell Harris and Garrett Temple, forget I wrote any of this (editor's note: Jorts made the team!)…As for the other guys, if healthy, Ray Allen is going to make about a thousand threes, and Rashard Lewis’ impact on the championship chase is ultimately going to fall somewhere between “none” and “absolutely none.”  No legs anymore for Rashard…In related news, M.Minutos has delivered on a new notepad for the season (to avoid me writing game notes on scraps on paper which I leave around the house in perpetuity, and then see like 7 months later – “Hey, I just found this old note – remember the time Mario Chalmers dribbled the ball off the shot clock?”).  The notepad was a new strategy last year, and we won the title, so you’re welcome.  Here’s this season’s notepad:

 

2) Dwayne Wade and Udonis Haslem: I’ve watched about 10 minutes total of the preseason, and none of those minutes have included Dwyane Wade.  However, more dedicated fans than I have reported that he is looking spry, quick, on balance in the air, and generally more athletic after post-season knee surgery.  I don’t know if it can last all season, but it’s good to know his rehab is slightly ahead of schedule – he wasn’t necessarily scheduled to be ready to begin the season.  I’m hoping that the depth of the roster (along with a guy named KJ James) will allow Dwyane (and Allen) to take nights off during the season to keep the legs as fresh as possible.  One thing about Dwyane: if you go back and watch that Oklahoma City series, which I have done about 300 times over the summer, he played incredibly well, other than two mind-numbing, late-game turnovers (both of which they survived).  Because KJ controlled the offense, and anchored the defense, it allowed Dwyane to run all over the court like a maniac, making “home run” plays: a back cut for a dunk here, a blocked shot at the rim there, and a steal and finish on the reprehensible Russell Westbrook, which was the signature play of the championship.  This is the perfect role for him as he gets older (and older).  He doesn’t have to carry the team anymore – that’s all KJ.  All he has to do is roam around and use his basketball intelligence, and still-considerable athleticism, to make plays.  That’s what the playoffs are all about, by the way: bad things happen from time-to-time; you just have to continue to make plays…As for Udonis Haslem: uh-oh.  He missed most of preseason with a strained hamstring.  He played really, really poorly last season coming off of foot surgery.  Uh-oh.  Love him anyways…Reminder: when Dwyane and UD are both gone, I’m gone.  We came up together, we've won this franchise two championships (so far), and we’re all going out together.  Enjoy us while you can, Miami.

3)      KJ James (King James James – Hubeism!) and Chris Bosh: KJ James is going to kill people this season.  He was so good by the end of last season that the gap between him and the next best player was probably bigger than the gap between the second best player, whoever that is (probably Mario Chalmers), and me.  His mid-post game is ridiculously good now, and he’s got so many shooters surrounding him this season to space the floor.  Here’s the list of guys on the Heat who can efficiently knock down threes: Chalmers, Mike Mil-lar (healthy…for the moment), Shane Battier, Chris Bosh, Walter Ray Allen (the best shooter in the history of the NBA), Rashard Lewis, James Jones, and Jorts.  That’s crazy.  It doesn’t even include Dwyane Wade, who threw in a few huge threes in the playoffs.  Also, KJ can make them himself.  KJ is going to freaking kill people – he’ll be the MVP easily.  I don’t know if the writers will vote for him, but no one is going to be remotely as good.  In the ten minutes of preseason I saw, he had about 15 dunks…The other dude who is going to kill people is Chris Bosh.  For almost two entire seasons, Chris Bosh got the brunt of the ire of every Heat fan who was worried that we were never going to win a title – the reasoning went that spending near-max dollars on a big who rebounded like his feet were asleep, and defended the rim like a statue, killed the flexibility to bring in other interior players who could supply those skills.  Not in this blog, of course – I always believed in Chris Bosh more than I have ever believed in anybody, except Mike Bibby, and my mom…Then, suddenly, in the Finals, Bosh started making all the plays everyone always imagined that he could make – he rebounded the ball out of his area; he tried to identify when and where an offensive player might try to shoot the ball, and attempted to deter him; he finished plays in traffic.  He was tremendous.  And, from the little I’ve seen so far in the preseason, it seems like he has picked right back up where he finished.  He looks leaner and more muscular, and his full-time move to the center spot makes him an incredibly tough cover.  I saw 10 minutes of him against Charlotte and he was drooling for the ball against Charlotte’s bigs – when he touched it, he instantly either swished a 14 footer, or looked at the shot, froze the defender, and blew by him to the rim for a bucket.  He is also going to spot up in the corner, opening the lane for Dwyane and KJ rim attacks, and then knock down triples after his man leaves him to protect the basket – I predict he makes more than 50 this year (he’s never made more than 12 in a season before).  I think he will play a little freer and more aggressively with the title-monkey off his back, and I think he is going to kill people.  I don’t know if he’ll get enough touches to surpass Dwyane and become Miami’s second-leading scorer, but I wouldn’t be shocked if it happens.

4) Mario Chalmers: Listen, I didn’t think I would ever love a point guard as much as I loved Mike Bibby.  And I won’t.  But this Mario “Emcee” Chalmers is getting awfully close.  He is stealing my heart.  What doesn’t this kid do?  Last season he: returned to his role as the starting point guard; made a bunch of triples, often in key moments; threw approximately 300 alley-oop passes, with a success rate somewhere between 35 and 0 percent; had more times where he drove under the rim and tried to dance along the baseline, only to just dribble the ball directly out of bounds, than any guard in history; got yelled at so much by KJ James that it started to become uncomfortable tv viewing, yet never once changed expression, nor gave any indication, either in his demeanor or his subsequent play on the court, that he even one time heard one thing that KJ said; single-handedly won Game 4 of the Finals, the KJ James cramp game, to put the Heat up 3-1, and then became (even more) legendary when Dwyane Wade was captured by tv cameras in the locker room tunnel immediately after the game coming off the court screaming at him “Mario Motherfucking Chalmers…you motherfucker!!!”  What a season!  Oh yeah, then one game later, he became a championship point guard!  Oh yeah, then over the offseason, young Golden State Warrior point guard Stephon Curry said in an interview, “Every night you play a great point guard in this league – Derrick Rose, Chris Paul, Russell Westbrook, Mario Chalmers!”  Oh yeah, then when asked about Curry’s comments, and asked where he ranked himself amongst NBA point guards, Emcee offered, “Towards the top of the top ten!”  What doesn’t this kid do to entertain us?  Answer: nothing!  He missed most of preseason with bad wheels, but that can’t affect him too much – already so slow for a guard!  He’ll be back out there to do all the things that it is that Mario Chalmers do soon enough, cuz that's what he do.  Love this boy!  Forever!

5)      People always want us to make predictions.  That’s not really what I do, but let’s give it a go.  I predict that at some point during the season Mike Mil-lar will get injured.  I predict Bosh will make more than 50 threes.  I predict that Rashard Lewis and Udonis Haslem will be non-factors, but that Jorts will play a lot of regular season minutes (ouch – kills me to write that about UD).  KJ is going to kill people.  Bosh is going to kill people.  The Heat will win 61 games (why exert themselves any harder than that?), and beat the Celtics in the Eastern Finals.  We’ll all think Doucheball is dead (again).  We’ll all be wrong (again).  Heat over the Lakers in 6 in The Finals.  Let’s Go, and Let’s Go Get It.  Also, in the words of the immortal Chauncey Billups (when, exactly, is he getting to come down here to play – seems like we’ve all been planning on that forever): Let’s Get It On!

6) So, okay, people are always like, "What do you do in the offseason?  Do you like, break down game tape of Heat games?"  Answer: I don't 'break down' game tape - I'm just watching the old games over and over for my own enjoyment.  "Do you read other blogs for ideas on how to improve Dos Minutos?"  Answer: Have you ever seen an improvement in this blog?  Okay, there you go!...So what do I do?  Go on the road with 1990s alternative rock gods The Afghan Whigs!  Yeahhh, boyyy!  Great Friend of the Blog (GFOB) Thor and I went on a road trip to Atlanta to watch them play!  This story isn't about that, though - this story is about what happened on the Saturday afternoon before the show...So GFOB Thor and I were walking around an ill, relaxed part of dowtown Atlanta on Saturday, early afternoon.  We'd had brunch, including maybe a Mimosa here, a Bloody Mary there, we were checking out a store that sells eco-friendly gifts, we were shopping for vintage t-shirts...You know - we were gaying it up, in the most non-perjorative manner humanly possible.  So all of a sudden, GFOB Thor goes, "Hey, I forgot - my friend said we should check out The Claremont Hotel, have a drink there."  We google it up, and I'm like, "Gosh, it seems kind of out of our way, but alright, let's give it a shot."  So we headed out east, and we walk, and we walk, and we walk.  We walked so far out of the city that we got to a neighborhood that was gentrifying, kind of, but kind of not.  It's like, Thor had to drop a deuce out there, so we happened upon a Whole Foods, and we're like, "Oh, that will be a clean wash room," but then we get in there, and the store was Whole Foods, but the wash room was Albertson's, you feel me?  Ick...Anyways, he felt better, and we are both like, "Damn, are we ever going to get there?"  So Thor googles it again - realize we didn't really know what The Claremont was, we weren't smart enough to think about that - someone told us to go there, we go...So now on this google, Thor goes, "Uh-oh," and I'm like, "what," and he starts reading from a review of The Claremont, and it's like, "Atlanta's oldest, continually-running gentleman's club, known for its strippers who don't necessarily conform to generally-accepted standards of beauty."  Dude - I am super, super uncomfortable in strip clubs where the strippers do conform to generally-accepted standards of beauty.  The whole transaction is super-creeepy to me.  So Thor is like, "Well, we can go back," but really, we had walked so far by this point, and this blog needs material.  So we went for it.  Like 5 minutes later we were there.  It's on the outskirts of East Atlanta - not a nice neighborhood - and it's in the basement of a four story motor lodge, which is abandoned - if you're looking to buy a seedy hotel, I've got a super-hot lead for you.  We walk down behind the hotel to the entrance - I was making a noise like, "uhhhooohhhuuuhhhooohhh," to calm my nerves, and Thor's like, "Stop that, you're making me more nervous" but I really couldn't.  By the way, yes, we are adults; no, I don't know what the hell is wrong with us...Down at the entrance there was a dude sitting on a stool with a- well, basically he looked like a carny with a high school dance cash box.  And next to him was a, ummm, I'd guess you'd call her a stripper (exotic dancer?  there was nothing exotic about her) wearing hot pants and a bikini.  Thor has since described her as "the ugliest woman I have ever seen, assuming that she is actually a woman."   I think that's inaccurate - I've seen way uglier - but nowhere close to a strip club.  She was a pasty, mannish looking woman with a body like a refrigerator.  I assumed the guy was charging a cover - I mean, he had a cash box with him - and I was so nervous I essentially just grabbed a wad of bills out of my pocket, like $200, and shoved it at him, but he's like, "no, no cover, just go on in," and the stripper smiled, and coos (echhh), "I'll be right in to see you boys."  Uhhhooohhhuuuhhh...So we go in,  What the hell, what choice did we have?  So the club is this tiny little room with a small oval bar, and a 10 foot dance runaway jutting out into the middle of the bar, so that basically the dancers are sweating on to the alcohol.  At one end of the room there are like 2 other dancers sitting there, and a ghostly old bleached-blond behind the bar, and they are all like, "Heyyy, y'all, welcome, have a seat!!!"  THERE ARE NO OTHER CUSTOMERS IN THE BAR!!!  We sit down, as far away from the girls as possible, which isn't that far because the place is so tiny.  Immediately, this young stripper comes over and says to me, "Mind if I sit with you," and I'm like, "Great!"  She was probably 19, 5'6' 210 pounds.  Listen, one thing about me: I am not necessarily a nice person, or considerate, or thoughtful, or anything like that - just ask M.Minutos, or, alternately, anyone else on Earth who knows me at all.  But nothing - nothing - is more important to  me than strangers thinking that I am polite.  So I put all my unease and semi-revulsion aside and chatted her up as best I could.  What I learned: her name (Bonnie?  I forgot - I only have to seem polite in the moment, I don't have to remember peoples' names); she has two kids; she used to work daycare with her mom (!), but it wasn't enough money; she changed to online porn sites and sex phone lines, but she didn't like it because guys kept asking her to do things that were illegal; and that she loves working at The Claremont, it's the first place she feels "at home."  Oh, also, the busiest times at the club are Friday and Saturday nights (okay, okay, that was a dumb question- I choked a bit).  Meanwhile, the ghostly old woman has come over and told Thor, "They say The Claremont is where old strippers go to die - I'm living proof of that!"  Wow.  Then Refrigerator Woman comes over and stands behind us and starts scratching our backs, up and down, up and down, and a lil lower, and a lil lower, and a lil lower, and I'm all tense, my body is locked up and I'm paralyzed with fear thinking, "It's super-dark in here, she can't even tell I'm old, she just thinks I'm a cute little white boy!" Uhhhooohhhuuuhhh!  Oh - forgot something important!  It was really, really dark in there, tough to see, especially coming in from the bright Atlanta sun.  I sat down and put my elbows on the edge of the bar, and I have this thought: "That feels like duct tape."  A slightly closer inspection revealed: duct tape!  Like the leather had ripped off the padded cushion of the bar, and over time they had just taped up the bar with duct tape.  Ewwwwww!!!  So, now the, ummm, chunky gal is like, "Hey, I've got my two songs coming up - want to pick the music," and I'm like, "well, I don't go to a lot of strip clubs, I don't really know what to pick," and she's like, "well what music do you like," and I'm, like, "ummm, Jay Z?"  I know it's a stupid answer - I've been listening to a lot of Jay Z lately and, again, I panicked.  She said they didn't have a lot of rap, but she leads me over to the juke box and I start flipping through the pages.  You know how a normal juke box has CD covers so you can pick the songs?  This one had those, except they were CD covers from, like, burned CDs, with sloppily handwritten titles like, "Ella's Southern Rock CD."  Goodness gracious.  I didn't even know most of the songs, the ones whose titles I could read through the extremely poor penmanship.  Finally I see a Smashing Pumpkins song, "Zero," and I'm like, "that."  Bad move - that was my favorite band ever; now the thought of them brings a bone-chilling iciness into my spine.  So, she's like, "Great, see you in a minute," and goes back backstage.  I come back to the bar, and Thor and I are finally alone.  Refrigerator Woman is on stage doing the worst stripper dance in the history of strippers (and dancing in general), a Travolta-esque hand-roll while jolting her hips roughly side-to-side to The Who's "Squeeze Box."   Thor stages-hisses, "C'mon, let's go!!!"  And I grimmace, and whisper back "I can't."  And he's like, "Why," and I'm like, "I picked the fat girl's song - I can't leave now, I have to see the dance - it would be rude to leave."  And Thor's like, "Are you shitting me?  You're not even polite!" - see what I mean - and I'm like, "No, that's just to people I know; I don't know her, I can't be rude," and he's like, "Oh, God..."  So we watch her dance to Smashing Pumpkins - it's hard to describe what she was doing as dancing exactly - and then she starts her second song, and I look over at Thor and nod, and we both shoot up from the table and holler, "Bye, thanks!"  and bolt.  We get 100 yards out of the club, out of eyeshot and earshot, and instinctively we both suddenly kneel down as though we had been punched in the stomach and lost our winds.  Then we spent the rest of day arguing about why I felt the need to be polite to the fat stripper.  Thor kept saying, "She left her last job because guys kept asking her to do things that were illegal; you think you leaving before she dances is going to faze her?"  I mean, now, in retrospect, I can kind of see his point.  (Also, we argued about the worst places to drop a deuce - we didn't see the wash room in The Claremont, but we figured it had to be top ten.  Worst?  Port-O-Potty on a hot day in Afghanistan)...In summation, though, you know what?  The women there were all actually very friendly, and seemed to be enjoying themselves.  And they were very nice to Thor and I.  They didn't have the problem; we had the problem, we expected them to be a certain way, to have a certain type of look, because they are "strippers."  But you know what?  That's not fair.  And for that, I blame Thor.  He freaked me out.  The end!
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Let's have a great season!  See you on Tuesday!  Boston Celtics (#Doucheball) in town to watch us raise our banner!  If you need me before then, I'll be, ummm, "entertaining myself" to Smashing Pumpkins' "Zero!"  I love you people!                  
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Summer Update!

6 Thoughts

1) Time for a lil summer update, see what's up, see what the dilly, see what's the haps, see what's really goin' on...First of all, we signed WALTER RAY ALLEN.  Listen, in Casa Minutos, there are really only three basketball players that matter.  I mean really matter.  One, Udonis Haslem - no one is chiller, no one bleeds Miami more than UD.  No one matters more than UD.  Two, Dwyane Wade.  He's the best player in franchise history - by a mile.  He's one of the best players in the history of the league.  I mean, he's not one of the 10 best, no, but he's certainly one of the greatest two guards of all-time, any list of all-time guards has to include him.  He's won one title as Finals MVP, then constructed a totally different team that went to back-to-back Finals and won another title.  Not many players in the history of the league have a resume better than that.  Three, Walter Ray Allen.  I'm from Connecticut; he's the all-time Connecticut hero.  No one has ever represented a state better than he has repped our state - he is bright, personable, cool, and the best shooter in the history of the NBA.  He starred in a major motion picture ("He Got Game").  He won a title a couple of years ago, albeit under difficult and extremely unpleasant circumstances.  Maybe most importantly, he went bald gracefully - in this way, his signing alone should be a major positive (Lebron - do you feel me?).  For the last five years or so, he's been in basketball hell, surrounded by the douchiest collection of players in NBA history.  Now, not only has he been freed from Boston's chamber of douche-y horrors, he's taken less money to come to Miami to spot up and fire open triples for two months next spring when the playoffs roll around.  AND HE'S PLAYING WITH UDONIS HASLEM AND DWYANE WADE!!!  THE ONLY THREE BASKETBALL PLAYERS WHO MATTER - ON THE SAME TEAM!!! 

2) Well, LeBron won us an Olympic gold medal, just like Dwyane won us one in 2008.  You're welcome again, America.

3) Listen, as I wrote many times in this blog, I supported whatever Dwight Howard felt he had to do to get out of Orlando.  Just because the city is so dreadful, it is probably the worst playing situation in the NBA, outside of Boston.  I didn't really want him to end up on the Lakers - although, to my credit, I think I predicted about 400 times that this was where he would end up - because with Kobe, Pau Gasol, and Steve Nash, that team would be a super-big problem in the Finals.  But it sure is better than some Eastern Conference team building a squad around him capable of making it difficult for Miami to make it to the Finals.  Whewwwww!  I played this one straight up, too - easily could have tried to reverse jinx him off of Brooklyn or Atlanta or the Knicks, but I didn't.  I sincerely felt like he would end up in LA all along, I said so, and it worked out for us.  Sometimes honesty pays off - not often, true, but sometimes...Smooottthhhh sailing in the Eastern Conference, peoples!

4) NBA champ Almario Vernard Chalmers' Twitter Corner: "For one of my last vacations I think I wanna go back to Alaska for the State Fair.  Who wanna go wit me?  The fair food is amazing.  Turkey leg."

5) Okay, so me and the fam went up to New England, where I'm from, for about ten days.  I noticed a couple of things.  One, a lot of white people where I come from.  A lottttt.  I mean, we really have a legacy of whiteness up there.  Our absolute lack of diversity is noticeable, and not a little bit inspiring...Second, and more importantly, just like down here: YOU CAN'T FUCKING PARK ANYWHERE JUST BY USING COMMON SENSE!!!  Yes, I got another parking ticket.  As M.Minutos is my witness, and she was, I drove around for at least, umm, 4 minutes trying to find a parking spot on a Newport side street that didn't require a neighborhood parking sticker.  Exactly - a neighborhood parking sticker.  The heck?   "Yeah, I know these are public streets with, like, businesses and restaurants and stuff that people want to go to, but you can only park on them if you have a special sticker that you pay for."  Oh, my bad, that totally makes sense.  But at least you didn't fail to put up a sign anywhere for three blocks either way identifying this particular street as sticker-worthy, then slap a $25 ticket on my mom's Volvo station wagon six minutes after I put it in park.  Je-sus!  Guess what, Mr. Po-lice-Meter-Maid - I'm paying that ticket!  You know why?  Because I parked illegally there so I could run in and booty your sister before you got off your shift!  Best $25 I ever spent...Predictably, upon my return to South Florida, The Captain placed all the blame on me, claiming that I probably just didn't look hard enough for a restricted parking sign.  Guess where else people had that attitude?  Munich, in 1939 - "oh, no - the government's just trying to help people figure out where to park!  Yeah, whites over here, Jews over here, blacks over there...you know, they're just trying to keep everything organized!"

6) This is a totally true story: my family has a beach house in Jamestown, Rhode Island, which is just across the bridge from Newport.  It's a small little little island and the house is within easy walking distance of the "downtown" - one small street of fairly upscale restaurants and drinking establishments (it's kind of a fancy island).  Every night, M.Minutos and I would walk into town after dinner and have a cocktail or two.  One evening we were joined by Great Friend of the Blog Plumber and his wife.  We went to the outside bar at this little restaurant Fish.  We hadn't been in there for 5 minutes before I looked over to my left and saw the great American actor Conrad Bain.  You know: Mr. Drummond from "Different Strokes!"  This dude:

I mean, understandably, I was excited.  Some of my companions were skeptical but, honestly, there really wasn't a credible argument that he wasn't Conrad Bain.  Okay, there was one potentially credible argument - M.Minutos googled him on her phone and learned that he has a twin brother named Bonar Bain - but, really, would Bonar Bain be at an outside patio bar at Fish in Jamestown, Rhode Island?  Exactly - no, he wouldn't.  So Mr. Drummond and his companions - a handsome woman of about 80, and another elderly couple, were seated at a high "bar-type" table, and there were some low-slung couches directly behind them.  As soon as those couches were vacated, I scooted over there to get a better view, and also to hear if he was going to talk at all about raising two young black kids (hey  I'm just like Mr.D!) - he didn't, unfortunately.  I also may have convinced a couple sitting nearby us that this was indeed Mr. Drummond, and there may have been some pointing, some whispering, and some chortling.  Finally, after a long while, Drummond got up to leave, and this woman whom I had included in my stakeout gestures him over and says, "Do you know you look like a very famous actor?" - by the way, I appreciated the effort, but this made me mad; he didn't look like him, he was him!  But before she could even get it all out, Drummond interrupted her, looked out over all of us, and goes, "Do you people know you look like a bunch of toads in a swamp?"  And then he strode (drunkenly) off!  HAAAAAAA!!!  This was the best possible thing he could have said!  M.Minutos and I have been arguing about it since the moment he said it - she thinks, somehow, that he was saying we were all on drugs.  I don't really follow her logic, but she is very adamant.  I think he was basically calling us nincompoops, and that since we were sitting down there on low-slung couches, he kind of played off that imagery, like we were down below him like toads in a swamp.  Either way, the most important thing?  He didn't deny that he was Mr. Drummond!  Score!!!...Epilogue: the next night for a brief moment I thought Kurt Russell was at Spinnaker's Ice Cream Shop, but a closer look revealed that it wasn't him.

Back soon!  Enjoy the rest of your summer!  Oh yeah, one more thing: Champs.

Heat 121 OKC 106 Heat win series 4-1

8 Thoughts (special championship edition)

1) Champs.

2) KJ James.  For two straight days, all I could think about was what if somehow this title slips away, what if OKC comes back and wins three straight?  There's no way I could watch KJ James go through that, there's no way I could watch another human being go through that, come so close to his dream, and then watch it disappear - no, I couldn't watch anyone go through that, I'd have to drink arsenic or something, because I could never watch another human being go through that (okay - maybe Kevin Garnett, I could watch him go through that)...Thankfully, no one had to.  You know why?  Cuz: BALL SO HARD, WE BALL SO HARD, YOU THE CHAMP, KJ, YOU DID IT BOY, YOU REALLY DID IT, YOU THE CHAMP, BOY, YOU DID IT!  BALL SO HARD, BALL SO HARD, BOY!!!  YEAAAAAHHHHHHHAARRRRGGGHHHHH!!!!!!!  26 points, 13 assists, 11 rebounds in an elimination game!  He dominated this game by getting middle, finishing with force at the rim, and finding and trusting shooters (and did they ever deliver).  Everything anyone ever wanted from KJ, he delivered in this series.  He beat Kevin Durant up so bad in the post that they had to take Durant off him, and then beat up Sefalosha and Harden the same way.  He lived in the lane - he was 7-38 from outside the paint in the series.  That's 18%.  He dominated this series without making jump shots.  He had one of the greatest regular seasons anyone has ever played, and he had one of the greatest postseasons anyone has ever had.  What are people going to talk about now?  He's The King - (King James James - Hubeism!).  He's not Dwyane in this city - no one will ever be Dwyane in this city - but he'll do.

3) Mike Mutherf*cking Mil-lar.  Oh, you mutherf*cker!  HE MADE 7 F*CKING TRIPLES IN AN ELIMINATION GAME EVEN THOUGH HE CAN'T WALK!  HE MADE 7-8 TRIPLES!!! HE SCORED 23 POINTS!!! YOU MUTHERF*CKER!!!  One game after Almario Vernard Chalmers (he's the starting point guard for the current NBA champs, you know) had a dream game with 25 points, prompting Dwyane Wade to strut down the tunnel at The Trip, live on national television, screaming at him, "Mario Mutherf*cking Chalmers!  Youuu mutherf*cker!," Mil-lar, maybe, topped it.  Certainly it was less expected - at least Emcee Chalmers is ambulatory.  Mil-lar's four first half triples helped push Miami out to a 17 point lead.  OKC was ready to go - a series of bizarre flop calls, primarily drawn by James Harden, helped temporarily keep them around, only down 10 at halftime.  But Mil-lar, and the rest of the team, never stopped making threes - Mil-lar hit back-to-backers to start the fourth quarter, his 6th and 7th of the game, to push the lead to 27, and essentially end all the drama.  Mil-lar made 7-8; NBA champion Almario Vernard Chalmers made 2-4; Shane Battier, who was unbelievably good this series on both ends of the court, made 3-7; Norris Cole made 1-2; and Chris Bosh (more on him in #5) hit the only three he took off a KJ drive-and-kick (they were pretty much all off KJ drive-and-kicks!) late in the third quarter to push the lead to 22, which made you think, "it can't get any better, it just can't go any better," except for a moment later Mike Mil-lar made his 5th of the game to push the lead to 25!  Miami made 100 out of 100 triples in this game - you can't do any better than that, it was unbelievable!!! Wait- what?  Oh: 14-26!  Still - so awesome!  Don't think anyone saw that coming!

4) Don't want to even write this one.  I love Dwyane Wade so much.  I love that man, and every time I think of him in the aftermath here, I choke up a little.  I love basketball - it brings such joy into my life, I grew up with it.  I shared it with my brother as kids, and now as adults.  I share it with my family - M.Minutos and I have spent more time watching basketball together than doing anything else, except getting freaky between the sheets.  I shared it with my best friends in high school, and in college, like GFOB Plumber, and even Celtics fans like Delaney and Web.  My kids love it - okay, one of them loves it, P.Minutos could care less (but for a kid who could care less, he knows more about it than any other kid who could care less alive, since he lives in Casa Minutos - example: he looks at twitter the other day, sees my home page, and goes, "hey, Pat Riley" - he's 8).  And, I share it with all "you people."  Watching Dwyane Wade play basketball these past 9 seasons has been so much fun.  It's not just that he has been so successful, and won two titles, and been to the Finals three times - it's also that his style of play is so exciting.  He swashes buckles!  He storms barns!  He was great tonight, he scored 20 points, and had 8 (!) rebounds, and 3 assists, and 3 (more!) blocks, and in a game filled with plays I will always remember, he probably made my favorite: with the rout on late in the third quarter, he caught the ball in full gallop down the left side of the court with only the impossibly rude and insolent Russell Westbrook back for OKC.  Everyone knew what was coming - everyone knew what was coming - and Wade looked right, across the lane, at a phantom teammate cutter, the reprehensible Westbrook leaned slightly that direction, and then Wade Euro-stepped him back to the left, Westbrook tried to grab him around the shoulders, but Wade ripped through, finished, and made the free throw for a 26 point lead with a minute left in the third quarter.  Dwyane Wade won one title, in 2006, pretty much by himself; then put this team together, pretty much by himself, and won another title.  That's a pretty good resume.  Remember that play tonight forever, boy; love you forever, boy...

5) Chris Bosh might have been the best defensive player on the court in this series.  Think about that for a second: Chris Bosh might have been the best defensive player on the court in this series.  It was like he saved every ounce of aggression, energy, and effort for this one series.  He has always been a guy who played defense correctly, positionally, but in this series he added a genuine passion for stopping the offensive players!  If you only watched tape of this series, you'd say, "Oh, this guy is one of the better defensive players in the league, that's clear."  Umm, nooooo, not exactly.  Listen, it helps that OKC neither has a strong rolling threat to the basket (Perkins, Ibaka, and Collison are not great finishers, though they have other skills), nor perimeter players who are overly skilled at moving the ball to open bigs (although they are absolutely incredible scorers), so Bosh could pretty much ignore his cover and help defend OKC's wings.  But he was so conscientious about it, he closed out so hard on shooters, he made such an effort to get to loose balls, and rebounds - he wasn't recognizable as Chris Bosh, he really wasn't.  Tonight he was also great offensively, with OKC trying to double KJ more, he rolled to the rim, caught passes, and finished: 9-14, 24 points, 7 rebounds, and 2 blocks.  I think it is safe to say that Miami's struggles against Indiana and Boston were primarily a function of losing Bosh early in the Pacers series (and having to adjust how they played on the fly).  It is tough to remember that two different times, Miami was on the ropes: down 2-1 and 10 at half in Indiana, and down 3-2 and going to Boston.  But once Bosh came back and found his legs, Miami got right.  I hope that he feels incredibly proud of himself.  He's a champion now.   

6) Someone said this well on tv, don't remember who: OKC got outplayed in this series, but not outclassed.  He meant on the court, talent-wise, and he was spot on.  They walked into a tornado tonight, they got pummeled from start to finish (first basket: a thunderous KJ James tomahawk dunk in transition), but the first 4 games were very close - Miami was able to play from ahead down the stretch in most of them, and made a few more plays at key moments.  I would also add that, aside from Russell Westbrook, they didn't get outclassed as people, either.  I don't remember another playoff series in which I liked the opponent so much - that's mostly because I love Durant, I guess, who was as gracious as always in defeat: hugged KJ James for a long time at midcourt, and made sure to congratulate every member of the Heat.  And what a scorer: even tonight, going against two of the best wing defenders in the league, he poured in 32 points on 13-24.  He's one of my favorite players in this league...And I love their coach Scott Brooks, who never complained about refereeing during the series, even when he had reason to, and who conducted himself with grace and dignity on the sidelines at all times, in stark contrast to the last series, in which Boston coach Doc Rivers constantly whined about the officiating in his press conferences and during off days, and questioned every call during the games, even the ones which went Boston's way (#doucheball).  With four minutes to go and the Thunder down by 60 points, Brooks pulled his starters and told his team, "when this games ends, as much as it hurts, we are going to stay out here and show respect to Miami and congratulate them on a job well done, because they beat us fair and square." As M.Minutos noted, all this was really only for Russell Westbrook's benefit - every other player would have known to do that already.  Westbrook spent the waning moments of the game sulking on the bench and planning his vacation next week with Rajon Rondo to the Wisconsin Dells, in which they sit in their hotel room, pout, and watch movies for 10 days (#TeamEdward).  Westbrook aside, I love this team, and they will be back.  As pure scorers, this team is unparalleled - they don't even really run sets, they mostly just ask Durant, Westbrook, and Harden to individually break down their guys over and over.  Miami's a better defensive team - they made it just tough enough on those guys to win the series. 

7) To all the people who said: "This can't work - KJ and Dwyane Wade don't fit together," I say, as I have contended all along, you are ridiculous.  First of all, they were the best team last year - they already showed it can work.  They didn't lose last year because the parts didn't fit - they lost because they played poorly in the last five minutes of games for a week.  How you could watch a team get that close to a championship and conclude, "oh, see - this can't work?" I mean, that's one of the basic problems with us as humans - so many idiots.  As I've said many times before, the main similarity between Dwyane and KJ is that they both do everything well.  Which means that all you have to do is find role players who can do anything well, and Dwyane and KJ can take care of the rest.  Makes it slightly easier than the OKC model where Durant only does one thing great (score - and he is great) - that means you have to find other guys to do the things he can't do: defend, rebound, move the ball.  If anything, this series showed that the gap between KJ and KD (if KD is the next best player in the league) is wider than even reasonable people thought.  I love KD, but they had to take him off KJ because he couldn't guard him, and kept getting into foul trouble trying to.  And he didn't rebound - grabbed 11 tonight to push his average to 6 for the series (by the way, he's 7 feet tall).  KJ averaged 10 boards a game, and also 7 assists (KD 2 per game).  KJ James is better.  And all these people, these absurd so-called experts who don't make any effort to understand what is actually going on in a basketball game (Bucher, and Wilbon, and Simmons, and Barry, and blah, and blah, blah), and who analyze players by citing "the will to win," and the "fire in a player's eyes" - congratulations: you were wrong.  And you made America a little dumber for the past couple of years, which, by the way, is a pretty big accomplishment, not that easy to do.  In the end, the people who really know about basketball is a pretty short list: it's only Jeff Van Gundy, Stephen A Smith, and me.  Okay: it's just Stephen A. Smith.

8) I wrote the following post the day of Game 6 versus Boston, which I assumed we would lose, ending our season, because I always assume we will lose every playoff game we play in.  The story really happened that day, not today, and all the sentiments still hold true.  Oh, and yes, by writing this season-ending post in advance, I absolutely reverse-jinxed us into a championship, just as I reversed jinxed KJ James onto the Heat two summers ago by asserting that "he is not welcome here."  When I started this blog four seasons ago, it was really just to document the second halves of the careers of Dwyane, Udonis, and myself - we're all going out together you know, when they're done, I'm done - I didn't know I was going to cause us to win another championship...You're welcome, Heat fans - I reverse-jinxed this title for you... 

I had a meeting in downtown Boynton Beach today.  Oh, what was it about?  Basically, how to ball so hard...Anyways, after the meeting I was near one of O. and P.Minutos' favorite pizza joints, so I called Casa Minutos and told the fam I would bring home pizza, went inside, ordered, then went for a little walk in the neighborhood while waiting for the 'za.  Stopped in at a Starbucks to get some iced coffee - somehow, out of iced coffee, so they gave me a free iced Cafe Americano and a gift certificate for a free drink next time when they assumed they would have, you know, coffee.  Ch-ch-ch-ching!  So I continued walking down the street, and as I walked by a Blockbuster (one of the few remaining!) a Range Rover pulled up on the curb and a dude with a rolled down window leaned out with a DVD and was like, "Hey, could you drop this in the slot for me?"  Nothing I love more than helping other people, so I was like, "yes, I can," and I gladly took the movie. It was Safe House, starring Denzel Washington and Ryan Reynolds.  If there is anything I love more than helping other people, it's chit-chatting with strangers, so I was like, "oh, how did you like this," and the guy was like, "it was pretty good, I really enjoyed it," and I was like, "how was Ryan Reynolds," and he was like, "not as great as Ryan Gosling would have been, but still outstanding - really good actor!"  By the way, that guy in the Range Rover?  My friend Thor...Which reminds me, thanks to all the GFOBs (Great Friends of The Blog) this year.  We have the coolest readers - they read, they write in, they substitute for me when I'm on vacation (thanks Snets!), they give us ideas of topics to write about, they text during games that I'm not even watching yet since I'm dvr'ing and spoil the outcome, they even bring me to the games (thanks A.H.Minutos)!  So, so good!  In a weird, little dorky way, it is so much fun to write this blog, and then get feedback, whether positive ("made me laugh"), or negative ("you're an idiot").  Not sure if the blog will be back next year.  It has been four seasons now, and that's a lot - a lot - of writing about basketball.  The problem really isn't even the writing: it's all the watching, and then the writing.  Hours and hours and hours of time spent on the project.  By the close of the season, again, I'm toast and praying for the end.  Yet, somehow, by the start of the next season, I am always fired up to write again.  So, we'll see.  Either way: thank you all for the support!    
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No more games!!!  If you need me before the next one, I'll be doing nothing!!!  Love you all!!!  Champs!
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Heat 104 Thunder 98 Heat lead 3-1

6 Thoughts

1) Really?  Let's go.

2) Shane Battier just made one of the best basketball plays I've ever seen, and no one's ever going to talk about it.  Everyone is going to talk about the play that followed, an absolute brain fart by the completely unlikable Russell Westbrook, but Battier created the situation.  With Miami clinging to a 3 point lead with about 15 seconds to go, KJ James clearly done for the night with severe leg cramps, and 5 seconds to go on the shot clock (on a reset from .8 due to a tie up), there was a jump ball at Miami's offensive free throw line.  James Harden vs Udonis Haslem.  There was a reasonable expectation that UD would win that jump ball, so Battier lined up on the far right side of the circle, trying to create a crease for UD to back-tap the ball to Dwyane Wade, who would then have only 5 seconds to create a play to put the game away, and keep OKC from getting one last chance to tie the game, send it overtime (remember: no KJ), and get even in the series.  The ball went up, Harden and UD both jumped...and almost completely whiffed on the ball, UD may have gotten a slight finger on it.  As the ball came back down, Battier, in the insanely quick kind of nerd-like calculation he is best known for, realized that if Harden got to the second tip before UD, there was only one place he was going to tap it, which was back to the left-bottom of the circle to Kevin Durant.  As the ball dropped, Battier darted across the lane, anticipated the flight of the ball, leaped, and fully-outstretched, got up over the top of the longer, more athletic Durant, and batted the ball out to Almario Vernard Chalmers on the left wing...What followed was a bit of a fiasco for OKC - Westbrook could have forced Chalmers into an extremely difficult shot, but instead had somehow lost track of the score, or the time, or the shot clock - it's probably most likely he never looked at the shot clock, only the scoreboard - and took a foul intentionally, giving Miami's best shooter two free throws.  Ballgame.  As thoroughly reprehensible a personality as he possesses, Westbrook played one of the best games ever in the Finals - he scored 43 points on 20-32 from the floor, and had 7 rebounds and 5 assists.  It was absolutely painful to see him make a boneheaded play like that to cost his team a final chance, and by "absolutely painful," I mean, of course, "I could not have been more delighted!"  Couldn't happen to a nicer guy!  And the guy who played 40 minutes, and only scored 5 points - Shane Battier - made the whole thing happen...

3) He can't run very fast.  He can't jump very high.  He isn't a good passer, nor a solid decision-maker, and he can not distinguish the difference between "a solid contest" and "careening full-speed into an off-balance jump shooter at the end of the shot clock."  But all Almario Vernard Chalmers do do is what he do.  That's all: he doesn't do anything else, other than do what he do.  And what he did tonight was win this game down the stretch.  He scored 25 points, and 12 in the fourth quarter alone.  He made two incredibly large baskets in the final two minutes: the first on a scramble-drive to the hoop when he got around Nick Collison's Bosh-esque statute contest for a spinning layup, and the second when he beat Russell Westbrook off the dribble, then finished high off the glass over the NBA's leading shot-blocker, Serge Ibaka, with 44 seconds to go to put Miami up 5.  Both were just the kind of gyroscopic forays towards the rim that often end up in disaster for Almario, but in the biggest of moments, he made them both.  Almario has always been a unconscious kid, but he's our unconscious kid.  Everyone always dumps on him, yells at him, blames him for everything that goes wrong - most of all his teammates!  But he just keeps winding his way around the court, fouling a dude here, making a three there - he's totally unfazed by past mistakes, or criticism, or everyone in South Florida's total lack of confidence in him..And tonight he won a Finals game down the stretch.  Feel so good for him.    

4) Hard to believe you get down to #4 and you haven't even really talked about KJ James' night yet.  I don't know that it is possible to quantify how good he was in the second and third quarters.  Miami came out and clearly were in "KJ and Dwyane are going to try to pace themselves through the first half, stay close, and then turn it up a gear or two in the second half" mode.  They've used that technique effectively quite often in these playoffs.  Problem: OKC was in "absolute desperation" mode, and blew Miami off the court from the jump, getting ahead by as many as 17.  That when KJ went to Plan B:  Ball. So. Hard.  He went down to the block, and he went the freak to work.  It wasn't the scoring as much as it was the passing.  He backed in Sefalosha, he backed in Harden, he backed in Durant the few times KD guarded him (they took Durant off KJ to keep KD out of foul trouble - had him guard Chalmers), made a second, and sometimes third, defender come to help, and then found open shooters.  Norris Cole banged in two quick triples to start the comeback, then KJ found Playoff James Jones for another triple.  By the time Dwyane Wade stepped into a triple and drilled it off the dribble, Miami had erased the entire 17 point lead in just under four minutes.  At half KJ had 10 points, 6 rebounds, and 8 assists - that's a lot of assists in one half for a guy playing on the block.  He continued pouring it on in the third quarter, including one beastly back-down-and-spin-over-the-left-shoulder-for-the-jump-hook-off-the-window over Harden.  For two quarters, I really thought that was about as well as he could play.  By the start of the fourth quarter, with Miami pushing out to a 7 point lead, you could see he was running out of gas - he stopped going to the rim, and settled for jumpers.  Finally, with 5:30 to go, he literally just collapsed on a drive, totally cramped up (although he somehow managed to get up and make a short floater on the ensuing possession).  He sat out about a minute, then came back in limping like Mike Mil-lar.  Unable to move at all, with the game tied, the shot clock running down, and about 3 minutes to go, he rose up and stuck a triple to give the Heat the lead they wouldn't relinquish.  Big-time: 26 points, 9 rebounds, and 12 assists for KJ - all with maximum effort.  He literally played himself to exhaustion.  Ball so, so hard.  Sooo hard.  He came out after that, crouched in agony on the sideline, and watched Chalmers bring him home.  Just a performance you don't see every night (in a game filled with them).

5) Say what you will about Dwyane Wade: he's inefficient, he's hobbled, he's arguing too much, he's taking bad shots, he's making too many live ball turnovers - he was huge down the stretch.  First, subtly, with KJ out of the game, and OKC trapping him down the stretch, he did what he almost never does in situations like that: he got off the ball, moving it to Bosh for one key layup, and allowing Chalmers opportunities to get to the rim (Chalmers' forays were successful in large part because of the attention Dwyane demanded).  Even more importantly, with Miami up 3 and a minute to play, OKC ran a pick-and-roll and forced Wade to pinch in hard to cut off the path to the rim.  The pass by the driver - I think it was Westbrook - went to a wide-open Thabo Sefalosha, spotting up in the corner for a three-pointer.  Look, Sefalosha's not a great shooter, and maybe you just live with that shot, even up 3, especially since Westbrook had gotten to the rim over and over and over.  Except Dwyane didn't live with that shot.  He turned, jetted out towards the corner, and coerced one epic Dwyane Wade-type leap out of that ailing body, sailing towards the lanky Sefalosha, and getting just enough of the ball to steer it out of harm's way.  Best shot-blocking guard ever, by any measure.  Shane Battier grabbed the rebound, setting the scene for Chalmers' final big hoop.  At times he was inefficient, he is hobbled, he did argue, he took some bad shots, and he made some bad live-ball turnovers...But he also scored 25 points, had 5 rebounds, 3 assists, a couple of steals, a couple blocks, two big triples, and he made the most important defensive play of the game.  If Miami gets one of these next three games, his career resume is going to look pretty good.

6) Dallas tomorrow night at 9 o'clock.  Don't you dare even think about DVR'ing - you sit there and watch it live-action, jerky...   
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Well, Miami has three shots to get this done.  Man, I hope KJ is good to go on Thursday - there's only one night off, and he was cramping really, really badly.  I've cramped hard, and it can be sore for a couple of days.  It would be a good idea to try to get this done on Thursday, because going back to OKC for the last two games, even up 3-2, is a little bit daunting.  And the reality is, Miami needs KJ to grind on the block to win these games - we'll have to see how capable of that KJ is on Thursday.  If you need me before then, I'll be in the oil business!  Yee-haw!
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Heat 91 Thunder 85 Heat lead 2-1

6 Thoughts

1) Thanks to Couper Moorhead, who works for the Heat, for this stat: Miami shot 16% outside of the painted area tonight - 16%.  How many teams do you think won a game this entire season when they shot 16% outside of the painted area?  One.  One team, one time (Denver).  And I'm guessing they weren't playing high-powered, fast-running, explosive jumping, offensive juggernaut Oklahoma City. So how did Miami win?  Well,  KJ James and Dwyane Wade weren't overly efficient, but both made plays at the rim; Kevin Durant got in foul trouble again; back-to-back fouls on triples; and Chris Bosh's ferocious fourth quarter defense.  Wait- what?  Chris Bosh's ferocious fourth quarter defense?  Yes!  CHRIS BOSH'S FEROCIOUS FOURTH QUARTER DEFENSE!  NO ONE HAS EVER BELIEVED IN THE FEROCITY OF ANYTHING MORE THAN I BELIEVE IN THE FEROCITY OF CHRIS BOSH'S FOURTH QUARTER DEFENSE!!! LET'S GOOOOO!!!

2) KJ, man, we're going to cover his headiest play down in #4.  But, in general, he was really, really good again tonight.  He rim-attacked so hard early, setting the correct tone for the team.  He got Durant in foul trouble again with some aggressive plays on both ends.  In the second half, with Miami unable to knock down any jumpers, OKC shrunk the lane and made it very difficult for KJ or Dwyane Wade to get middle.  The offensive numbers weren't off the charts (for KJ): 11-23, 6-8 from the line (if he gets officiated like a normal player, that's 18 free throws, not 8), for 29 points.  And there were a couple of stagnant late possessions.  But there was a triple at the end of third quarter to put Miami up 2, completing a comeback from down 10.  There was a huge drive-and-finish over Kendrick Perkins for one bucket, and a beautiful little touch pass to Chris Bosh for two free throws up 1 with a minute to go.  He limited Durant to 4 fourth quarter points.  He grabbed 14 more rebounds.  He was the best player on the court, as he needs to be for Miami to have any chance to win these games...Dwyane was aggressive all night, but was, at times, a frenzy of bad shots, and had another mind-bogglingly bad turnover down the stretch that, for the second straight game, made Miami have to finish twice.  Still, he tried to live in the paint whenever possible - he shot only 8-22, but was 9-11 from the line, and had 7 boards and 7 dimes, and his drive-Euro-step-and-one finish over Kendrick Perkins to put Miami up 4 with 4 minutes to go propelled them towards the finish .  He doesn't have to be the best player on the court for Miami to win - that's KJ's job - he just has to help make enough plays, on both ends, to allow KJ to do what he do.  That's the proper dynamic now...

3) Chris Bosh was only 3-12 from the floor, and two of the hoops were easy first quarter dunks on screen-and-rolls that OKC didn't cover properly.  He did make 2 free throws under a minute to go with Miami clinging to a 1 point lead.  But his fourth quarter defense probably won the game.  For the better part of two seasons, he has spent the vast majority of his defensive energy on seeing how high and how straight he can stretch his arms into the air while offensive players weave around him and lay the ball into the basket.  But tonight he unveiled a whole new game plan: see where the offensive player is coming from, try to figure out where he's going, then get to that spot, jump, and try to hit the ball!  You know - like an NBA big man would do!  He was fabulous - he got credit for only two blocked shots, but I know for a fact he blocked three: a Westbrook layup, a Perkins layup from behind, and a Durant runner.  Also had a huge alter on Durant late, with just over a minute to go and Miami up three: Durant caught the ball at the short right wing, and KJ bodied him up, determined not to let Durant shoot that little jumper, which is automatic from that spot.  Durant made a good counter by ripping his arms through to his right hand, put the ball down for one dribble, and elevated for a little bank shot as KJ tried to ride his body a little bit...except here came Chris Bosh swooping in from the help side, elevating (sort of), and getting a fully outstretched contest, which forced Durant to shoot a 10 footer clear over to the wrong side of the backboard, where a hustling KJ, of all people, reeled it in.  it was the last shot Durant would take in the game as Miami held on, and it was just one of numerous contests Chris made in the fourth quarter.  If he's been saving all this defensive energy, he picked a great time to spring it on someone.  Chris Bosh: please keep this up.  However, if it's all the same with you, I'm going to try not to get my hopes up too much...

4) Great conversation with GFOB Plumber the other day about KJ James.  His theory: KJ doesn't play basketball with joy, he's a bit humorless out there.  It's a good observation, I've thought that as well, at times, that he can be a bit of an automaton.  Off the court, he seems to smile a lot, he's polite in interviews, every player says he is the biggest practical joker in the locker room, and players around the league all seem to like him, unlike Russell Westbrook, who is detested even by his own teammates (I would imagine).  But maybe he enjoys being in the NBA more than playing the games, if that makes any sense.  Or, maybe the pressure of trying to live up to an incredibly high standard wears on him.  Or, maybe he's just a serious dude out there.  I tend to think the latter is mostly true (with elements of the others sprinkled in).  If you watch KJ every night, one thing you learn about him is that he is a student of the game in a way that a lot of players (Dwyane, for one) is not.  KJ can wax rhapsodic about past greats, and also seems to know how every player in the league is playing at any given time - in Dwyane's case, sometimes it feels like he has such an arrogant belief in himself that he doesn't even pay attention to which players are on what other teams (which is fine - works for him).  Another thing you learn is that KJ is both the off-court and on-court leader of the team.  All the players will tell you he is the most vocal leader in the locker room (which has never been Dwyane's thing according to everyone associated with the team), and on the court as well.  He has a lot of responsibility.  So maybe what Plumber and I take as "humorless" is more "serious."  Not sure there's anything wrong with that - different guys have different personalities. I mean, Michael Jordan seemed to love basketball only in comparison to everything and everyone else on the planet, which he absolutely despised (except for making money)...No matter where the truth lies, on a key play tonight, KJ showed what a student of the game he is.  With Miami leading by 4 and 16 seconds to go, OKC had one last shot out of a timeout, ball at midcourt on the side.  Thabo Sefalosha was the inbounder, guarded by Udonis Haslem.  KJ's man, Durant, lined up on the block nearest the ball, and Russell Westbrook lined up with Wade guarding him at the elbow.  Before the ball was inbounded, KJ went over to Wade and told him to switch men, to go down and cover Durant, while KJ took Westbrook - he had sniffed out that Westbrook was going to screen down for Durant to pop up to the top to receive the ball.  Instead of potentially getting caught on the screen, and having the smaller Wade stuck on Durant, KJ just told Wade to switch the screen - when Westbrook screened down, KJ would stay in place and wait for Durant.  Moreover, he went over to Haslem and moved his positioning on the court, telling him to pinch the sideline to make it difficult for Sefalosha to throw it down to the corner.  When the ball was handed to Sefalosha, Westbrook ran down and screened, but Wade and KJ held their places - as Durant popped to the top, Sefalosha looked to inbound it to him, but KJ stayed right in the line of the entry, making it impossible to get it to KD.  Sefalosha then looked down to the corner to Westbrook, but UD was pinching the sideline so closely (thanks to KJ), that it looked like a very difficult pass.  It wasn't a great play drawn up by OKC - they expected they were going to inbounds it to Durant easily, and once KJ blew that up, there weren't a lot of other options.  Westbrook was in the corner with Wade - at the same moment Westbrook decided that that he had to try to run back up top to change the angle of the pass, Sefalosha decided he had to throw it down to the corner.  Westbrook vacated, and the ball went right to a very surprised Dwyane Wade.  Ballgame!  Score one for the very attentive KJ James!

5) Biggest stretch of the game: halfway through the third quarter, with OKC up 6, Durant got his fourth foul on a pretty weak call defending a Dwyane Wade drive (though I've always said: Dwyane puts refs in bad spots - you keep going in there aggressively, at some point someone's going to give you a call, even if it's a bad one).  Miami had a chance to cut it to three, but an Almario Vernard Chalmers triple went halfway down and popped out, and then, obviously, he immediately fouled Derrick Fisher on the other end as Fisher dropped a three, putting OKC up ten, and putting Miami on the brink.  But with four minutes to go, Shane Battier and James Jones were fouled shooting triples on back-to-back possessions (by Ibaka and Fisher), and made all 6 free throws to cut the lead to four, and stabilizing the Heat, who would end up leading by 2 after three.  Do.  Not.  Foul.  Jump.  Shooters.  Especially on triples.  Side note: if Derrick Fisher didn't get special treatment from referees because he is "tough" and "a winner" he'd foul out in four minutes in every game in which he played.  He is the biggest hatchet act I've ever seen in this league.  I'm not even complaining or hating - it is what it is.  I'm just saying if you watched some kind of isolation on him for a game ("Fish Doing Work"), it would be an absolute joke.  He literally fouls, somehow, every possession on both ends of the court.

Bonus) This kid is spot on: 

6) This is no joke: you know what I thought when I was taking a shower this morning?  I thought: "When does Dallas come on again?"  And it wasn't like an innocent query, either, it was more of a heartfelt lament because it feels like a decade, or more, since I watched the two-hour premier last week.  Have I mentioned that I love this show?
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Mannn, we haven't been up 2-1 in the Finals since, well, last season, I guess.  That didn't end up so well.  Next game is Tuesday.  Not looking forward to it, because I never look forward to any playoff game.  Too stressful!  If you need me before then, I'll be busy making the wallpaper on every computer I own this kid's Jon Barry Sucks sign!  See you on Tuesday Heat fans (and Jon Barry)!
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