The Bulls and Celtics Will Make It A Best Of Eight

Anyone want to still argue with me on how this is the best series ever?

Tonight in Chicago, the teams went to extra time for the fourth time in six games, which now means they've played seven periods of overtime, or an extra 35 minutes of basketball. After the triple overtime game 7 (what, you think it could possibly be shorter?), they'll have an extra game from just the overtime.

I have no words, really, for how absurd this series has become, how much these teams really hate each other by now, how often the rest of the NBA playoff schedule has been pre-empted by this razor dance, or many times when a team has needed to make a big shot to prolong the drama, they have.

How crazy are these teams? Ray Allen had 51 points in 59 minutes, with any number of flat-out crazy makes in the extra time. Paul Pierce was diving into the stands for loose balls with two minutes left in the third overtime. Brad Miller canned two critical free throws in the second overtime, with the weight of the memories all over him. You got 21 lead changes, 17 ties, nearly four hours of time on the clock, and I'm not even sure this was the best game of the series, because they've all started to melt together by now. The Celtics can't possibly have the legs to win this by now. The Bulls can't possibly complete the upset on the road in Game 7 with such paltry post-season experience. And there's dozens of other ways to talk about it, really. I'm giddy.

With 40 seconds left in the third overtime, Joakim Noah made a steal on Paul Pierce, made it all the way to the rack, and collected the slam with Pierce's ejection foul. The kind of play that, if this is the beginning of the end for the Celtics, will be the signature moment of fail.. but because this series is something that would get you laughed out of an office had you put it in a screenplay, Eddie House then scored for the first time in the game to tighten it right back up. It led to a block for the ages from Derrick Rose on Rajon Rondo that should have ended it, but hell no -- still a one-point game, because this series is just that way. Rose then missed what would have been clinching free throws, but Rondo misses from 40 at the buzzer, and that's your ball game. Bulls had 'em all the way.

How does Rose get that lift for the block in his 59th minute of playing time in this game? How can he then miss the free throws? What was Pierce thinking to commit his sixth foul on the Noah steal and dunk? How much is Brad Miller feeling it for going back to the line repeatedly in overtime and converting over and over again? When did John Salmons become a basketball player, could be possibly do that on the road?

And over and over and over and over, series without end. I hate both of these teams, for the most part, and I still feel like I could write a book about this series. It's been just that good.

I'm sorry for people who aren't NBA fans, when it comes to this series. As much as I love the MLB and the NFL, there just isn't anything that compares to this kind of series, just building and building on itself. Football can't get this level of knowledge of each other as teams, since you can only play the same team three times in 19 games. Baseball doesn't have this level of lather-rinse-repeat hate, since the pitchers constantly change. The closest you get to this is hockey, especially with the extra time, but since so much of that is dependent on your goaltender, and the goalies never face each other directly, even that's not the same. This series is so good, I was almost grateful that my team stopped playing tonight, because even I was having a hard time watching that series over this one, especially at the end.

People talk about how NBA players lose their legs after 1,000 games; by that standard, I'm pretty sure both of these teams are going to still be gassed from this when the 09-10 series begins next November. They also talk about how, if the Bulls somehow survive Game 7 in Boston, how they will have become the mystical Team That No One Wants To Face, because they clearly are about as much fun to face as the Spartans in a tight space.

But all of that is for another day. We're getting a Game 7 for the best series ever, the way we're supposed to, and even the fact that the rest of the NBA playoffs will be anticlimactic after it doesn't matter in the here and now. See you Saturday.

The Internets Are Going To Put A Hurt On Local Biased Announcer Guy

H/t, Deadspin. Take a listen to selected cuts from Hawks Radio covering last night's Game 5. They are, um, interesting. Yes, interesting. (And no, I don't really care who wins this series; they are just going to be Cleveland speed bumps anyway.)

I'm not saying that I want to poo-poo on the rights of local media guy to play to the home town listeners -- lord knows, if the rest of the world ever caught Merrill Reese's act, Philly Fan would be even more hated than he already is -- but the field *might* want to start checking themselves. If, for no other reason, then the fact that NBA superstars tend to have posses, and radio announcers do not...

Carmelo Anthony Now Better Than Tracy McGrady

In that his Nuggets have moved on to the second round (against Dallas in the Not Going To Win The West portion of the bracket), and congratulations to the notorious choke artist that has never had a moment of important success, provided you don't remember him punking the Kansas Jayhawks, or being on the 2008 US Olympic team. I like to remember the former, especially since site contributor The Truth is a Kansas guy, and I went to the 'Cuse. Once again, sir, Ha Ha.

I don't want to let the Nugs go without noting this lovely quote from one of the more aggravating people in the NBA, head coach George Karl. "I thought we could be a good team. But I never thought we could be this good."

Well, sure, in that you didn't realize that you were going to luck into the best energy guy in the NBA this year (the Birdman, Chris Anderson), or that you were going to face a team (New Orleans) that was going to react to the presence of James Posey as if he were Stephon Marbury.

We've also officially moved into the Coach Blood portion of Chris Paul's maturation as an NBA superstar, in that I'm not really prepared to believe that the same Chauncey Billups that got owned by a baby Daniel Gibson -- Daniel Gibson! -- could be the best point guard on the floor by a wide margin... but heck, I wasn't sure that the Nugs got the best of the deal when they sent the same broken-down Chaunce west for Allen Iverson. So let's just say that Paul isn't the only point guard to quit on the coach here.

In any event, Byron Scott is Dead Coach Walking, and I'd say more about the Bugs, but I don't want to give them any more effort than they gave me (for picking them to win this series in the first place). And since there are series with both teams trying tomorrow/tonight, we'll just move on.

A Problem With No Solution

In the halftime analysis of Rondo-Miller Gate, the TNT crew got the call from last night's game right, while the NBA didn't. "He hit a guy in the head and made him bleed," as Chuck Barkley said, and it just had the Chuckster's be-all and end-all air of simple fact.

But there's more, really. I'd also like to point out the hopelessly arbitrary nature of this, for the record, by having you imagine how the play would have been called if:

1) Miller's the guard, and Rondo's the big man.

2) Miller goes to the ground and stays there for five minutes, apparently concussed.

3) The play occurs in Boston, with the game conditions reversed (i.e., Rondo driving to tie, Miller fouling), and

4) It's an elimination game, rather than a Game 5.

(No, seriously, think what it means if this is how Game 7 goes down. Great googly moogly. I hope I didn't just call the shot.)

You see the problem; all of these changes don't really make a difference in the play, but they dramatically change the likelihood of the flagrant foul being called.

That's because, on some level, the flagrant foul call is completely arbitrary and judgmental, and yet, it has a huge impact on the game. No other sport has this kind of physical issue that impairs the judgment of the referee; if a small or big pitcher hits someone with a pitch, the batter takes first base. If a small market NFL team's cornerback gets tangled up with one from a large market on a game-changing pass interference call / no-call, the NFL doesn't lose tens of millions of dollars in lost ratings if the call goes to the non-plus market.

There is, of course, no way to "fix" this situation; it's just the nature of the beast in basketball, a non-contact sport where the best teams use contact to win. It's also going to come up only when the games are being watched the most, which is to say, close games among big market teams. Hopefully, that situation continues, because it's just a better problem to have, since it means we'll continue to have great playoffs. Anyway, moving on.

205 Drop: Top 10 Qualifications For A Flagrant Foul And/Or An Ejection

The drop contains many actual new jokes, I think, but it's late and I just made the mistake of realizing that there's at least 5,000 words of the Bad Tooth tomorrow that will somehow justify everything the Celtics do while taking a thousand-word piss on my Sixers, all while giving me just enough useful insight into the rest of the Association that I just can't ignore it.

The Lemur... it's a controlled psychological experiment designed to shorten my life! (Especially now that I know they read the site. Hi, guys!)

The Hawks Do Not Care That You Are Bored

Tonight in the early game in Atlanta, we got to see the ugly side of physical playoff basketball. On a fluke play in the open court, Dwayne Wade had his head smacked off the court, causing him to leave the game for a while. On return, there were three more plays with questionable intent, and Al Horford wound up leaving the game as well with a sprained ankle, and all of this might have mattered more if this game had been at all close. With Wade slowed before the game even started with back problems from hard fouls in previous games, and perhaps just the Hawks being a lot better in the final analysis, this was a genuinely dull game; the closest it got in the second half was 13, and in comparison with how amazing the Association has been for most of the last week, it really was strikingly meh. Eventually Wade got back to a little closer to his old self, finishing with 29, but the outcome was never in doubt, and the Hawks are now up 3-2.

And that's exactly that, really. The number of Heat and Hawks fans are pretty minuscule, really, and for those people, I'm sure this game was a source of pride and outrage, depending on your laundry preference, when the game was close and physical early. For the rest of us, it was sloppy, sluggy ball, devoid of any drama beyond wondering if there was going to be more ugliness later.

Because that's the thing about physical basketball, and why no one is nostalgic for the early days of the Association, or the way the game was before the ABA opened things up. Eventually, when there is too much, the players you want to watch stop being fun to watch. Along with everyone else.

The Hawks go for the kill shot on Friday in Miami. Odds say it goes seven with the Heat holding serve, but they've lost 2 in a row going away now, and it's not like Wade's getting any healthier here. Or, really, that anyone needs to see too much more of this series, really...

205 Drop: Top 12 things I've learned from anonymous commenters

The drop is more educational than most, but still snarky, so take a click. (A troll, for those of you who aren't versed in Web vernacular, is someone who trashes a site and/or its contributors in the comments section; basically, it's shorthand for anyone who seems to take delight in abuse.) The list is one of my better ones, if I do say so myself; go give it a look.

Rather, I want to deal with anonymity at this point. Nothing sets the teeth of an established journo to grind faster than the mostly anonymous nature of Web writing, especially when someone who isn't using their real name gets credit for breaking a story. (Or, more commonly, a black mark for running something that turns out to be wrong.)

I'm anonymous because this isn't my Real Job, and my Real Job is much more important; so the fact that I keep Eric Blair's name out of this is just a professional courtesy. Also, a matter of simple security for any future job search; I don't particularly want to spend time in some future interview talking about my 2008 record against the spread, my poker habit, the fact that I still get teary over the loss of Harry Kalas, or a million other things that have nothing to do with what I'll do to, in the words of the ex-President, put food on my family. The site does well enough in search engine traffic that this isn't paranoia on my part, and my career is something that involves consulting and networking. Besides, many people in this world fail to root for my laundry, and losing a paid gig over that would just stink on ice.

That is, I think, the right kind of anonymity. The wrong one is where trolls become trolls, I think; using the anonymity to say things that they wouldn't want attached to their actual selves. There really isn't much that goes on here on the blog that I'm not a little bit proud of, or that I wouldn't put my name to if it weren't for the career consideration. If that makes me a hack in the eyes of some troll (who, of course, doesn't see themselves as a troll)... well, whatever.

In the long run, I'm sure that I'll eventually be outed if the blog gets enough traffic, because people like puzzles and this one wouldn't take too long. If the site's getting enough traffic, maybe it's not even a professional problem, though I'm not holding out any hopes for that. This is, after all, a relentlessly unpopular sports blog. But hope springs eternal, and all, and as a Sixers / A's / Eagles fan, I'm more or less resigned to noble failures of faith.

We welcome, as always, your thoughts on trolls in the comments, or how right you are for not liking this blog and reading it anyway.

An incredible day of sports *needed* just one more thing...

Tuesday saw...

> Game Sevens in hockey (sorry for not covering those, but blame site contributor and actual hockey watcher Dirty Davey for not taking care of that)

> The end of the Spurs

> The Blazers prolonging things with the Rockets (I'd say something about that, but we need *one* of these first round series to go to seven games under the radar, don't we?)

> My own team's probable end (but hey, maybe the Association will put Dwight Howard in the hoosegaw for Game Six)

> A full slate of MLB games with a very encouraging start for Phil Hughes, who suddenly looks like the most important Yankee after the Wang Disaster, and the first Red Sox loss in weeks...

and what trails across the Lemur ticket but our old go-to. Thank heavens, I hadn't written about him in so long!

The Most Important Player Ever was released by the Jets today, which means that if -- if? -- he chooses to un-retire yet again, he'll be able to sign with anyone he chooses.

And if you think he won't entertain the possibility, or that Viking Fan won't demand the possibility later, or that Jerruh Jones won't come calling if/when Tony Romo gets hurt/ineffective and Jon Kitna is discovered to be Jon Kitna, perhaps just in time for a big Thanksgiving Day media ballwash...

Sorry, folks. I just can't help myself. And neither can he. Neither can he.

How Great Is Your Foul

If you're just reading that the Celtics survived another epic battle against the Bulls tonight, go catch some highlights; it's not to be missed. But if you have, read on.

I'm not sure what the Celtics and Bulls do at this point for an encore, really. But the idea that the fourth game in five that goes to overtime, between teams that are clearly so even that "Coin Flip" does not begin to describe the whisper of difference that they've seen to this point... it's been, um, tight really.

Tonight's game is going to get lost in the storm of whether Rajon Rondo got the foul call he should have for bloodying up Brad Miller on what might have been a tying drive in overtime, leading to Miller missing the critical free throws. The trouble is that how you see that call is tied up in what laundry you want to win; my general Masshole antipathy tells you that while I don't really care that much for the Bulls, I'm still going that way. But no one is arguing that it's a flagrant unless Miller is bleeding, which he did. Rondo could have concussed him and it would have looked better. And if you're going to take down the champions in their building, even in their weakened fever state, you have to be more than a coin flip better.

As for the rest of the fourth overtime in five games -- and just by writing that, this has gone far beyond the Are You Kidding stage...

> Um, not to take anything away from Paul Pierce and his team-carrying ways in the clutch, but especially after Ray Allen was on the bench with foul trouble, how do you let him keep shooting the same shot, from the same location, to keep beating you?

If it's my team, I've seen this movie before. I'm tripling the Truth to get anyone else to take the shot instead. Given how scared Stephon Marbury seems of The Moment now, and how genuinely cursed Tony Allen appears to be, the fact that Pierce was able to do his usual late-game magic has to be driving Bulls Fan crazy by now. At the end of this series, the critical difference between these teams might have just been Vinny del Negro at coach, which wouldn't be the biggest possible surprise.

> It was nice, as a Sixers fan who knew John Salmons when he was useless, to see that some things don't change. 17-5-3 in 49 minutes isn't exactly scintillating, and neither is 5 for 15.

> As close as the Bulls came to winning tonight, when you shoot 40% from the field and your opponent shoots 48%, that's just a losing play. Yes, the Bulls got to the line more and made more threes, but that's just too much brickwork to overcome, especially on the road.

> If you don't think this one is going to Game Seven, I've got a bridge to sell you. First off, this Celtics are slaves to the drama, as last year's Hawks and Cavs tilts show. Second is that the refs are going to wrap up Game Six with a bow after the Rondo foul. Third is that the Association is going to want to wrap up the best first round ever with the biggest Game 7 ever. Don't be surprised if the Celts just start the bench players and run the white flag in Chitown.

End of the road

Tonight in San Antonio, the Mavericks finished what international basketball and Father Time had started with a three-point aided kill shot over the Spurs. Your final score was 106-93, and while Spurs Fan can bemoan the loss of Manu Ginobili all he wants, expecting the Argentinian to actually play at this point is not exactly building your house on stone. Nor, for that matter, is trotting out the supremely old Bruce Bowen and Michael Finley, the supremely physically limited Matt Bonner and Kurt Thomas, or the supremely not ready for prime time George Hill and Roger Mason. Tim Duncan and Tony Parker just weren't enough, not for their lack of trying, especially with Dirk Nowitzki finally having a decent game.

Note, also, that this was the first time in *eleven* first-rounds that the Spurs lost with Duncan on the floor. But it's not like Dallas doesn't hold peculiar match-up wins with the Spurs -- Josh Howard, in particular, seems to relish seeing this laundry -- and when you lose 4 games to 1, with a 6-point difference per game...

Well, it's not like the Spurs are going to do something crazy, not with Duncan still pretty great and the economics of the NBA being what they are. But at least they are in better shape than most to add talent.

As for Dallas, the Nuggets await in the second round once they finally sweep aside the sad people wearing Hornet jerseys, which should happen any minute now, really. They aren't going to enjoy the step up in athleticism, or the fact that the Nugs actually have bench players who could play for other rotations in the NBA; on the other hand, getting away from Parker has got to make Jason Kidd less of a liability on the defensive side of the ball.

Oh, and this also means we get at least two more weeks of Mark Cuban. Just because the Association is great, folks, doesn't mean it doesn't come without a cost.

But we have time to talk about all of that later. For now, let's mark the end of the Spurs, a team that casual NBA fans loathed, but real NBA fans respected. They never beat themselves, they never gave anything less than complete effort, and if your own laundry behaved this way, you could not ask for anything more. But man alive, do they need some more talent. (And if you really want to be bitter about it, bring up Luis Scola to Spurs Fan. Sometimes, acquiring talent, even if it doesn't have an obvious role, is good, if only because it keeps you from looking at Drew Gooden later.)

Sixers-Magic Game Five, Second Half

Seeing how this is likely to be the last important game for my team this year, I'm going to micro-blog it for the memories. It's what I do; read or skip.

The Sixers announcing crew is convinced that Howard could get suspended for elbowing Dalembert in the ear in the first half. I'd be more hopeful about this if elbowing Sam was like elbowing a real NBA player, but who knows; maybe that's what the NBA does to ensure a Game 7.

Redick still in for Lee, hope still very much alive. The quarter begins sluggishly, with a good Miller steal not getting converted, but an Iggy running prayer goes. The half-court game is not causing much confidence. Sixers going with Ratliff right away, rather than Sam, and Iggy is doing what I've hoped for with a steal and a drive to the line. A make cuts it to four, but Rafer Alston hits a three to give them their largest lead, and it's made worse by a Howard dunk in transition. Another turnover for the black shirts, and this is that third quarter fade they did in the first two Orlando games.

Miller with a great steal from Howard, but he's called for a charge on the other end on a marginal call, and it's gutcheck time, especially after Thaddeus Young picks up his fourth foul while harassing Howard. DiLeo chooses to leave him in as Superman makes the second for their first double-digit lead. Iggy gets no zebra love on a drive, but Redick walks in transition. Green hits; he has 14 now, but it's answered by a ridiculous lob to Howard. Man, it must be nice to have a dominant big man. Young misses a bad three late in the clock, and when it looks Very Bad, Miller steals it *again* from Howard from the weak side, and Young makes the old-school three to cut it to 7. Huge play there; breaks the mood.

Alston makes a hard runner, and Miller turns it over; maybe that 3-point play wasn't so big after all. Lewis makes over Ratliff in the post, taking advantage of Green there; that can't be the right defensive sub. The lead is now 11, the game's largest.

Out of the timeout, an alley oop slam to Theo from Iggy, but again, the defensive boards don't come on the other end, and Miller is gimpy now. Two misses from Mikael Pietrus helps. Iggy draws Howard's third: useful. Iggy's makes bring it back to seven, and for as scary as this quarter has felt, that's not many. Alston misses, Lewis board and airs it, and on the drive back, Iggy scores and gets the Lewis foul call. Another make, and it's four. Wow. My Team Has Heart!

Theo picks up his fourth, and both centers have four now. Where's Matt Geiger when I need him? Mareese Speights might have to play, and that's probably not good. Howard misses on a good double-team, Miller can't make, but Lewis shuffles his feet on a catch for another turnover. Long quarter. Theo sits for Reggie Evans, and Green owns Redick to cut it back to four. That doesn't last long, as Howard tips in an easy one. Green misses on a drive, and Alston goes And One in the lane to make it eight. Iggy with a three that should have also gotten a call, but the Turk goes to the line again off a drive. Iggy now has 17 on 9 attempts. Useful.

Iggy finally misses a free throw, and it's 66-60 with two possessions to go... and if the Turk wants to make threes like that, the rest of this series isn't going to be very much fun. My team fights, but it's 69-60 at the end of three, and unlike the first three games of the series, the Magic appear to have a fully functioning Turk. Dammit.

Orlando has won every quarter tonight. Not cheery. Royal Ivey misses a three, but Iggy wills the board and gets Lewis to commit his fourth. Green's three finds a lid on the rim, and Lewis scores inside as both teams have gone small. Young does the same thing on the other end. Turk misses, Gortat blows an easy one, and that helps, but the subequent Iggy miss doesn't, and neither does a goaltend on Donyell Marshall on Gortat, who has six points for his career playoff high. He is, still, a breathtakingly ugly white boy.

Howard back at 9:35 to go. Iggy makes two to cut it to 9. Lewis gets a rattle roll on a deep 3, and for the first time this series, they are making those. The lead is a dozen. Magic have a 38-27 lead on the boards right now, and the home team is 8 of 17 from the arc. This is the way the series was supposed to go.

Miller turns. Lou Williams takes a contact foul. Howard makes from in deep, and we keep saying Largest Lead; it's 14, but Miller makes one of his equinox threes. Lewis makes a runner because the defense just isn't up to it right now. Crowd is sensing the kill shot now. Young misses. Miller steals the entry pass to Howard as Magic Fan howls for a palming violation. Miller gets to the line and makes the first; he has 15, and might be the only effective defender on Howard tonight. Iggy misses a three in transition badly; it's 80-68 with 6:36 left. Lewis tips it to the backcourt, and it winds up being a shot clock violation. Running out of time for mistakes now, and that's their 15th turnover.

The Turk draws his fifth on a drive, and he can't kill you late if he's on the pine with foul trouble. Stan van Gundy goes to Redick. Another really good defensive stand by Howard and Orlando stops Howard; on the other hand, Ancient Anthony Johnson gets a goaltend. That's this game in a nustshell. Dalembert hits over Howard for points Three And Four! Wow! Thanks, Sammy! Miller gets called on a post by Lewis. It's 82-70 with 4:47 left, and if they've got a run in them, I'm not seeing it right now. But I've been wrong about this team before...

Alston misses; Miller rolls in a sweet drive. The Turk returns with four minutes left, and Alston misses a deep bad three. Iggy gets to the line for attempts 12 and 13, and that's Howard's fourth. My team was sixth in the NBA in free throw attempts. Please, next year, make more... but Iggy gets both, and it's down to 8. The Turk misses a corner three, leading to a great Miller pass to Iggy at the rim, and that's an 8-0 run to cut it to six. My team has heart. Enough to make you weep, really.

Lewis gets deep and Sammy spikes it, but it's a clear goaltend. Dammit. Miller misses on an attempt to get to the line. Redick misses a quick bad three, but Howard erases the mistake, and a Lewis miss is followed by Howard's 20th freaking rebound, and Dalembert's fifth. 2:16 left, 8 point game, and the difference is Howard, Howard, Howard.

My children need to go to bed, but NBA commercials wait for no one. Lewis crushes Young, and he's posted the Sixers silly on his way to 22 points tonight. Another Howard board on an Iggy miss, and it's bed time for all. Redick with another early bad three. Iggy turns it. The Turk misses from distance as the Magic try to pad their stats. Miller misses, Howard another board. At least the game ended fast... and Miller commits a foul for no reason, down 10 with 33 seconds left. I'm going to miss the end of this.

The Magic finally lead this series, and can close it on Thursday. I think they will, but I think it'll be hard. And next year... well, that's for another day. Magic 3, Sixers 2.

Sixers-Magic Game Five, First Half

The first quarter is, once again, a big ball of worry, as the Sixers stay close only through the good work of Willie Green. Let's just say I'm not confident that will continue. As usual, the Magic are scoring easier than the Sixers, but my team is battling, but when the Magic is giving minutes to JJ Redick, scoring should be easier. And hey, Sam Dalembert seems to care tonight! After an Iggy three for his first points of the game, it's 28-25 Magic with 8:43 left in the second.

I missed the first few minutes of the game from an emergency attendance of the Shooter Eldest's third-grade orchestra performance. This is usually the Shooter Wife's play, but with the Youngest still having Plague, I had to pinch-hit. I got their just as the band was ending (a darn shame!) and got home to catch the end of the first. I'm Clutch Today, Kids.

Dwight Howard knocked Courtney Lee out of the game on a failed block. That could be helpful later, especially if it means more minutes for Redick. If there's a worse defensive player in half court in the NBA this year, I haven't seen him. When Andre Miller converts a runner, it's a tie game with five minutes to play.

Orlando Fan has a lot of hate for the zebras here, but Howard already has 11 rebounds, and while Theo Ratliff will fight the good fight, he's still, well, Theo Ratliff. But at least this is tight, and after another Green make (Willie!) on a swooping make that I didn't think he had in him, they even lead on Howard's second foul. 35-34, Sixers.

Hedo Turkoglu slashes to the hoop and scores, and it's followed by a rare defensive breakdown for a fast break bucket. It's 45-39 in a blink, and that's what's so tough for this team; those blinks don't generally happen for them. In this half, you've got Turkoglu shooting 2 for 8, Lee hasn't returned from injury, and they are still down 6, and after a clean Marshall miss from the arc, that's the half.

The Sixers are making the Magic play a game they don't like much: very few clear looks at 3, not much in transition, lots of having to go to the line on good looks for guys that just don't shoot free throws all that well. But just like in Game 4, they just aren't shooting well enough, or keeping Howard away from the rack, to lead.

There's also this: they need a lot more from Andre Iguodala. Like, being the best player on the court. That'd be nice.

The Lemur Loves Me

Sorry I made you break up, Ms. Sage Steele. (About 40 seconds from the end, for the impatient.) And thanks so much for mentioning us on SportsCenter this morning. That's nice. Especially after all the nice things we've said about you over the years!

205 Drop: Top 11 Questions After Watching The NBA Playoffs This Weekend

Today's drop over at Editor Scrap's House Of Tits (admittedly, a less useful URL than what he uses) contains at least 30% new material from the omnibus NBA posts you've scrolled over this week, and it's short, so by all means, go and click. But I'm going to poach the #1 question here for a little more grist for the bloghole. (Oh, and longtime site readers know there's an extra Easter egg moment in the names of the photos. Today's is very nice for people who have suffered through enough Philadelphia media, and amuses me like no end when it creates site traffic for searches like Pervert Howard Eskin. But I digress.)

1) Why does Burger King want to sell kids' meals with cardboard asses?

There are, of course, reasons for this. Brand marketers want to do anything that gets them free impressions, of which both this post and the 205 drop are guilty, guilty, guilty. Whenever you can get people scolding you in public, that's almost always a plus in the long run, as it gets more young eyes thinking cool things about you. And finally and most regrettably, what they are doing with this campaign is perfectly in the wheelhouse of something that's made money in this country for my whole damn life: making us all think and buy (buy, buy, buy) like we're teenagers.

What is grafting sex on top of Spongebob, really, but a mocking teenage-style graffiti, maybe in a notebook or a school desk? What is adding tits and ass where they don't belong, but a nodding snigger to the back of the room?

I've got daughters, nine and three, and the speed in which people want my kids to grow up is astonishing, of course... but only to a certain point. If you get them to think about things to the point where they see the flim-flam show going on (and that's not a constant thing, but hopefully she's a little more aware of the con game than most), I think you're doing your job as a parent... rather than, say, keeping them totally isolated from this nonsense.

But there is, finally, this. I don't want my kids to see the ads that come on during my games (not that I really want to watch them either, but that's another matter). So on a very easy level, I don't really want my kids to watch games with me. So they don't. Despite liking Spongebob, and Burger King, and having parents that are not perfect when it comes to nutritional choices, and having a franchise within a mile of the house with a big damn Spongebob on the top of it that my youngest waves at when we drive by...

Well, we drive by. Nice brand marketing job there, asshats.

The Hawks and Heat Want Drama, Too

Just to make sure that the majority of NBA playoff series go long, it's the Heat giving up their hard-won home-court advantage with an 81-71 loss to those pesky Hawks. I'd say more about this, but the plain and simple fact of this series is that when Dwayne Wade plays well, the Heat win going away; when he doesn't, as has happened in Games 1 an 4 of the series, they lose going away. It's compelling ball just because when Wade's on, he's one of the most watcahable players on the planet, but from a strategy standpoint, it's just that simple.

Tonight, Wade was 9 of 26; the Heat lost despite getting 20 from Jermaine O'Neal and 19 from James Jones. A whopping 2 points from the 4 bench players didn't help matters, and neither did 25 from the Hawks bench... but just save yourself the trouble and check Wade's night. This series is just that simple. (And for the record, I think he has 2 out of 3 good games in the remainder of this series. Joe Johnson hates this matchup, folks.)

Top 10 Post Peak Oil MLB Changes

I was perusing the Old Gray Lady last week, as one is won't to do while it still exists, and the story was of an environmentalist movement that talks about transitioning after Peak Oil. This mostly dystopian concept holds that oil is running out, alternative fuels and technology won't be enough to compensate, and the future is going to be a lot less fun when it comes to, you know, travel and shipping and a million thins we more or less take for granted. It's all kinds of cheery, really.)

So the idea is to start working out now how we'd all manage in such a world. Sure, you can plant crops to help raise your own food, but how do you get your excess to market to trade for gingham and the like? And so on. If you are the kind of guy who likes to work out doomsday scenarios and overplan for an unsatisfying future in which you have no real control - in other words, if you are just about every Eagle Fan I've ever met, and we are really not that unique -- well, have at it, really.

So, with that in mind, the following list of ways MLB could change to lower their carbon footprint.

10. Club cars. Calling to mind the old school millionaire rail cars of a century ago, this is where traveling teams ditch their private jets for their own railroad car. Considering the delays and misery that is every airport, I suspect this is a change that many players would actively encourage, especially if more high speed rail came into play. Besides, don't you want to see those MLB+ team trains steaming past you while you wait for your own podunk regional line?

9. More day games. Whether or not it actually makes sense on an ecological scale is debatable -- after all, tens of thousands of people sharing one light has to be better than them all being in their homes, right? -- but since you can sell 'em this way, that's what you'll get.

8. Enforced divisions. Those cross-country trips to play the least meaningful games on the schedule, just so your fans have the opportunity to see every other team in the league... Well, that's what satellites are for, right? And from there, we get...

7. Separate leagues. Pacific, Atlantic, North and South, with travel miles taking priority over tradition. On the plus side, you'll have much better shot at seeing your team on the road. Take the train with them!

6. Overfishing in regional markets. It's not exactly news that if a town is big enough to support an MLB+ franchise, it's probably big enough to support two... or, in the case of New York with its huddled masses, four or five. Brooklyn and Long Island get teams first, one in each league, maybe as moves from Florida and Tampa, just to keep the air miles down. Philly adds an AL team, Boston an NL market. And so on. If you think the Lemur overcovers teams from this region now, you ain't seen nothing yet.

5. Longer homestands and road trips. Again from a pure carbon standpoint, it's very wasteful to have so many back and forth trips, when you could simply keep teams on the road longer and set up the schedule to be more conducive to lowered traveling costs. Especially for teams visiting the other coast, you could easily see a month-long trip to knock it all out at once, rather than make 3-4 trips during the year.

4. Regional drafts. If regional rivalries get more important, than so do regional players, and it makes sense to encourage such things by skewing homegrown talent to stay with teams close to where they developed. I actually think this is the better way to go on many levels, especially if you want to try to make college baseball more interesting for things other than waiting to see if someone dies from a batted ball off an aluminum bat. (And speaking of such things, let's make sure those things are made from recycled metal, of course.)

3. Fewer rain outs. This isn't to mean that there will be less rain; hell, if the environment goes to to dystopia, there will be more. But if you go to more day games, there's just more chance to get a game in, since you can wait out the weather and get it in at night. Remember as well that if the make up game, especially for teams from the other coast, are harder to achieve, there's also just more incentive to get the game done that day. (For that matter, you can also count on more partial games; as is, there are relatively few games each year called and logged in the books before the full nine is played.)

2. Less money. It's just a simple fact that we can dress up if we like, but will still be with us: there is a bubble that needs correcting here, and that bubble is the amount of money involved in the games. If everyone involved is spending less (and, sigh, probably having less), that means there have to be less money from advertising sponsorships, and ticket prices eventually falling, because the market will eventually correct itself. You will, eventually, pay less for your ticket; you also probably aren't going to be too happy about it. (Oh, and this will also really hit all of those teams that have to suddenly live with less Yankee and Red Sox games on the schedule, and higher travel costs.)

1. No more outsourcing. Short and sweet: enjoy those players from overseas, folks, especially from markets like Japan that can put up a fight for them. When the travel costs to bring them in get nasty, you'll just see less of them.

The Lakers Sure Had To Try Hard

Can a team be bored while winning a series? Yes, easily, which is what the Lakers were tonight in sending Utah to their room. The Laker crowd never seemed too into this, which, given how often they do this trick, is easily understood; the Jazz just hold no terror for this Lakers team, especially on the road. Tonight's confetti bucket moment came when Kobe Bryant tripped over referee Steve Javie on a break, then still corralled the loose ball and scored anyway. Just sad.

I don't think it says any less of me as NBA Fan that the second half of this game put me under, even as the Lakers were stretching their third quarter lead from 15 to 22 in a heartbeat while Jerry Sloan let the game play on, probably thinking that it was more important to teach his younger players to play through a run, rather than call too many timeouts.

Either that, or he wanted to get to the off-season as fast as Laker Fan wanted him to get there.

In any event, the Lake Show moved on with a 107-96 win that wasn't the complete coronation that was expected, only because the Big 3 of Bryant, Pau Gasol and Lamar Odom didn't get a fourth wheel to add more than Trevor Ariza's 12.

With the notorious NBA first round schedule slowdown, the Lakers have just bought themselves many days off, and it's probably best that they didn't sweep the Jazz, just because having this many days off at this time of the year usually leads to trouble. Hanging over the entire wildly entertaining NBA playoff schedule is the fact that the Cavs and Lakers are just much better than everyone else, and each had no problem showing it in the first round. But hope springs eternal, and injuries do happen...

Do the Hornets have to play Game Five?

After losing a 58-point squeaker at home tonight, the New Orleans Hornets have served very clear notice that they really don't like trying very hard to win playoff games while Byron Scott is coaching them. Either that, or they all have swine flu, or binding golf and fishing commitments for the weekend. How else do you get punked like that, on your home floor, in a game that could have tied your best of seven series at 2-2?

I wrote the other day that Detroit might have been the worst playoff team I've seen in some time, but after tonight's Turd Taco, I'm willing to reconsider for the Bugs. Tonight, they turned the ball over twice beyond an acceptable amount, played as little defense as you'll see outside of Phoenix, and lost by over a 2-to-1 margin in every quarter but the second.

Normally in a blowout loss, the teams trade buckets in garbage time. Not tonight. Up 88-50 after three, the Nugs kept the pace up with a 33-13 final quarter barrage, as Chis Anderson continued to have his revenge, and the Hornets showed that their bench players shared the starter's commitment to excrement.

NBA teams generally have some heart, and Paul hasn't gone down with a Kobe-esque fade-out no-care effort in an elimination game. But there's a first for everything, and if this is his, Byron Scott should't take too much time in packing up his FEMA trailer. He's lost his team, and considering how good they were just a year ago, that's a terrible thing to lose.

Bronco Fan's Year Just Keeps Getting Better

Let's just make this very clear, Bronco Fan: the 2009 season is not going to go well for you. The schedule involves the NFC East, which will roll you. The Chargers get Shawn Merriman back, which means their defense will have some bite. The Chiefs can't be that bad again, especially now that they have a coach that isn't named Herm Edwards. The Raiders... well, OK, there's still the Raiders. Your big move on defense was to bring in a high-priced safety that can't run well enough to do pass coverage anymore. Your big move on offense was to shoot yourself in the head by alienating your franchise quarterback, then to draft a running back when your system has proven that anyone with a pulse can put up numbers in that position. Your coach is responsible for the QB exile, and is way too damned young and arrogant to win at this level.

But on the plus side, you'll also be wearing this for two games next year. Yes, the consensus choice for the worst uniform in sports history, with some kind of Mutant Mustard Man with bumblebee socks. But on the plus side, the colors match what a young child will produce (I change enough diapers to know where I speak).

On some level, you have to wonder if this entire thing is meant to be a psychological stress test on new safety Brian Dawkins. I get that the man is sleeping on a bed of stupid money, and is basically a year or two from retirement, but this can't be what he signed up for, is it? A nice little 8-8 year, maybe a playoff game or two, media mouth jobs giving him the John Lynch Love-In and with Tony Gonzalez leaving KC, Antonio Gates not really being himself anymore and the Raiders being the Raiders, that's not the worst retirement in the world. But instead, he gets to wear these clown clothes. I think the man's going to hurt himself on purpose by Halloween.

But anyway, back to the matter at eye. How bad are these jerseys? The first time the team tried to use them, the players burned them. They might want to try that again this year. Just make sure McDaniels is in the gear when you fire 'em up...

I Can't Say Goodbye To This Man

I just looked in the mirror fellas and I said you know I'm 41 years of age, I've got a little cash stashed away…I'm a proud single daddy no question about that, but it's just one of those things, man, where I just reached a point where at age 41 with about 20 to 25 years left in this business me doing my speaking engagements around the country, me representing the communities specifically the African-American community throughout this country being one of the preeminent voices out there... if this is where I stop, then at age 41, I'm not growing anymore and I couldn't live with that. -- Stephen A. Smith, somehow confusing himself with a civil rights leader, or something

Thank the stones, I was beginning to fear that the man was going to have some dignity without the Mouse's hand up his back. (And really, when it comes to the SAS Puppet, do not take second-best.)



Um, Stephen A.? You know what, I was going to take you to task for being a one-trick minstrel show that made the rest of NBA fandom kind of hard, since the rest of the world just cringed every time you opened your mouth about the Association.

But... QUITE FRANKLY... I miss you! I want to hear the over-the-top outrage on things you probably didn't care less about, the way you'd support and then turn on the flashy dumb moves that Isiah Thomas made, and the way you gave each and every sports fan on the planet an Instant Comedy Go To, since all you had to do was say HOWEVAH or QUITE FRANKLY.

Besides, Obama's the President now. My people need some fools to feel good about themselves, and your people need some to know they can still compete. Come on, TNT, make our man an offer! Everything he says is important!

205 Drop: Top 10 things Yankee Fan does not want to hear right now

The 205 link today is a nice thing about being an A's Fan (yes, there are nice things) is that when the Yankees *or* the Red Sox lose, you're happy.

The down side is that happiness is somewhat tempered by the fact that the other is usually winning when that happens.

But hey, take what you can, right?

Rockets-Blazers Game Four Is Yet Another Great Game

Three playoff games in one day decided by three points or less: first time that's happened since 1985. There's a reason why I watch so much hoop, folks -- and it's a simple one. It's really, really good this year.

Take this Western Conference series, for one. Despite coming on at unfortunate times for the Eastern seaboard -- and really, even I am tapped from watching the fourth game of the day here -- it's just compelling hoop, with two wildly athletic teams dueling away at each other.

Houston has lockdown defenders at several positions with Shane Battier and Ron Artest; it also has a mostly awful on the ball guy at center with Yao Ming, but he's damned useful at off-side shot blocking, and a great offensive player. Artest is fascinating by his lonesome; never has an NBA guy had bigger show muscles and less interest in rebounding, but when his jumper is falling, he's one of the forty best players in the league, and a better passer than you'd expect from a psychopath. I've discussed Luis Scola on the blog before, and he's, well, useful. (Think the Spurs would rather have him than Drew Gooden right now?)

As for Portland... you'd think that they'd find Houston to be a good matchup, since the way to beat the Blazers is to exploit the fact that they give Steve Blake starter minutes at the point, and Aaron Brooks wasn't on anyone's radar before this series. But for all of Portland's tasty athleticism and intriguing parts, they live and die by jump shots and don't do enough on defense to create easy scoring opportunities. That's why the town and team spend so much time trying to pump Greg Oden up; he's the only way they go from a 45 to 50 win team to something actually dangerous. But he's not -- what he is, unfortunately, is the second coming of Cookie Monster Stanley Roberts, at least in terms of being an Incredible Fouling Machine -- and they ain't, and I'm kicking myself for not seeing it before the playoffs started.

Tonight, both teams played great, and Portland was up four with ten minutes to play, mostly on the strength of making all of their free throws, while Houston had bricked a few. The first half was rhythm offense, while the second half was grinding half-court offense, and the road team got their lead on second chance points and a surprisingly quiet Houston crowd. It basically came down to which team had the best player -- Houston with Ming, and Portland with the criminally underrated Brandon Roy. But while Ming makes his teammates better (especially Luis Scola), mostly by commanding a constant double-team and getting them easy hoops in the half-court game, Roy does not; he's got that classic hot and cold guard game that gets him to the line and makes him look unstoppable when he's on, and like he's not getting enough help when he doesn't.

The last five minutes of this one was another great finish. Roy made huge shots; the Rockets answered with second-chance opportunities leading to Battier threes. I kept waiting for Bad Artest to show up and screw the pooch, but it didn't happen. Carl Landry made a huge jump shot and got yet another offensive board. In the final minute, it was LaMarcus Aldridge passing up the shot, Blake missing a jumper, and Joel Pryzbilla rockheading a ball into the backcourt, causing a crucial turnover. A Testy miss off a killshot corner three was pulled down by Roy. The Blazers gave it to Roy, who got blocked by Battier while committing a charge against Chuck Hayes, on the floor because Rockets' coach Rick Adelman is smart enough to switch Ming out for defense late. Brooks hit one of two, giving the Blazers another chance, but Travis Outlaw missed from forever. After another 1 for 2 free throw trip, Rudy Fernandez prolonged the suspense with a long three with 2.3 seconds left. Kyle Lowry then added even more suspense by missing the first free throw, then also the second, and Roy's full court heave was after the buzzer and short. Rockets 3, Blazers 1, and that's your first Game Four win in a playoff series for Houston since, well, forever.

I don't see the Rockets winning this in five games; Portland does have heart, and Yao was on the floor forever tonight. But I do see them closing this one out in Game Six, probably in another great game in a post-season that's been just filled with them. Just put on any game, you'll get a good one. (Oh, and ha ha, Paul Allen. I haven't forgotten our little start-up, you turd.)

Blogrolling Never Had A Problem Until He Started Blogging

Jon Pyle, who you've all known and loved (in the Biblical sense) for Pyle of Lists, has a new blog called Decleater. Check it out.

The Onion with the goods on the Jackie Robinson from the Homo League. Come to think of it, isn't Jackie kind of a...

Nick Underhill sits down with Dontrelle Willis. At this point, I'm thinking that Nick's slumming, but your mileage may vary.

YardBarker, aka the people who help keep me in pennies from their ads on this here site, asking Dirty Sanchez the question that Jets Fan really wants to know. In his secret, special place.



Finally, did you know that Milton Bradley never had a problem in his whole life until he started playing baseball? Well, um, gosh Milton... why not stop, then? Oh, right. The great gobs of money. So glad we got that cleared up.

Is there any wonder...

that so many people of my generation are genuinely disturbed, when this was deemed as suitable children's entertainment?

Good luck getting that out of your dreams. I'm off to the medicine cabinet.

Sixers-Magic Game Four

All kinds of worry here in the first half, as the Sixers have (a) shot well from three-point land, (b) gotten a large number of offensive rebounds, (c) forced Orlando turnovers and (d) haven't really scored worth a damn, as the half ends even at 36-36.

Thankfully, Dwight Howard missed some free throws, Hedo Turkoglu continues to look like he left his legs in March, and the first half was as ugly as the series was supposed to be. You'd like to see the underdog and home team have a lead here, and be the clearly better team; if you are going to pull off the upset, at some point you have to actually start to look like the better team, rather than just the even one.

During the halftime, I cook buffalo steaks on the grill and learn that Bea Arthur is dead. It's nearly as random as the play in that first half, really.

Sam Dalembert actually makes a good play early in the third quarter. I had kind of forgotten that he played for the team, really... and then he turned it over again, and all was right with the world.

Early in the third, the Sixers still can't shoot, but the Magic are beginning to heat up, and those eternal doubts that you have when you are the sixth seed start to crop up. No one can score here! The Magic will rain threes for 10 straight quarters and win in six, with blowout wins the rest of the way! And well, when a jump-shooting team is making, it's just that way. The eldest daughter sits next to me playing her Nintendo DS, and I swear, the run is all her fault.

Is it any wonder why Tiger Woods dominates the golfing world, when he gets to talk to animals and drink from magic multi-colored fountains? If I'm another guy on the PGA Tour, I'm calling foul.

We come back from commercial to learn that they make cheese steaks in Philadelphia. Thank you, TNT, I had forgotten.

As the third quarter progresses, my team starts playing with more urgency on offense, but aren't able to sustain a big run, the way they do when they are at their best. Willie Green bricks two free throws -- have I mention how little use I have for Willie Green? -- and the lead stays five as the Magic keep drawing charges. Grr... and this meat grinder continues, with Rashard Lewis causing me no end of worry by waking up for the first time in the series. After yet another Courtney Lee drive to close the quarter, it's Magic 64, Sixers 55, and this series is 12 minutes away from going back to Favorites Control. When you shoot 36% from the field, it's a wonder that you're this close, really.

The fourth starts with missed threes and offensive rebounding, and Lou Williams finally hits after a minute of clock is ran off. Orlando gets three points back easily, with Howard going to the line, blocking a shot and scoring in transition. Once again, my team has to work a lot harder to score than the opponent; this is not new to the franchise's recent history. (Oh, how I long for the team of my youth, with Julius Erving and Moses Malone and Andrew Toney and any number of other guys who could fill it up.) Howard then erases Miller on the defensive end, then follows with a putback slam. It's a 6-point game, but the home team isn't getting stops.

Theo Ratliff picks up his fifth with 7:12 left, and given how little Dalembert has given them this series, that's a big problem. Howard continues to stake his claim as game MVP everywhere but the line, and then Lou Williams makes terrible plays at both ends -- first a turnover, then a late useless foul to give Lewis a three-point play. Just brutal. 10 point game for the Magic with 6:53 left.

Iguodala to Dalembert for a slam, and the forks are kept at bay for a little while longer. The stats say that the Magic are shooting 33% from the field for the quarter, but I can't really believe it. The Shooter Eldest babbles about aliens and monkeys and I blame her, silently, for Rafer Alston hitting a jumper. Miller misses a three, like he should ever try them, and Lee answers with a layup. It's 10 again, the way it's been the entire second half, with less than five minutes left. This series is about to go south. Literally.

Williams with a make from the corner; he has 9 points today, but at least six of them are in the fourth. Lee answers, and man, I'm hating that guy. He has 15 now, all of them back-breaking. Iggy gets to the line; he's got 10 on 3 of 10, and misses from the line; he really needs to get better at that if he's going to take a step up. Williams again from the corner cuts it to 7 after a Lee turnover, and after Alston misses a three, Iggy hits one in transition, and we're suddenly at a a four point game with three minutes left. We are in Fist Pumping Mode Here in the Man Space as once again, My Team Has Heart!

Lewis misses, and Miller takes it all the way; 2 point game, but Turkoglu remembers he's a fourth quarter guy and goes all the way to the hole for a bucket. At least he misses the free throw. Dalembert's fifth foul. Iggy misses a three, which really didn't help. Lee misses, and Miller runs a break and gets to the line on Alston's fourth foul. 88 seconds left, a four point game. Andre makes both, because he's just that kind of man. Two point game.

10-2 run for the home team in the last three minutes. They unfurl their best defensive stand of the game where Dalembert pokes the entry pass away from Howard, a three attempt is blocked, and Howard misses a desperate turnaround at the buzzer.. Miller doesn't get the call and it's 81-79 still. Lewis misses, Dalembert rebounds as my family has some kind of turmoil -- don't they understand it's the end of a playoff game? -- and you're in that situational end of game madness that takes forever and grinds your teeth to sharp edges. 24 seconds left.

You really need to get something good and quick here in case you need to foul... and nothing is better than a slam dunk, which is what Dalembert does after Iggy finds him down low. Tie game, and it's on the defense to force overtime, with 14.8 seconds to go.

Historically, Turkoglu is the Magic's guy here, and.. goddamn it, he delivers. A simple step back three from 27 feet, just canning it over Young, and my hat's off to him, that was just immense. Just over a second left, and it's miracle time to prevent a tied series. Dammit, dammit, dammit. The Magic should not let a shot get off here; it's much better to make the opposition hit a free throw, miss the second and tip in the miss, but that's a hard thing to engineer, especially when with this little time on the clock, the opposition is much more likely to miss a 40 footer. Iggy is fouled while shooting his three, but it's not called and it bangs off the rim. Tie series.

Sigh. Just because I called the Magic to do exactly this -- albeit in five games, not six -- that makes it no easier to take. Off to go punt the cat; and perhaps later, catch the end of Rockets-Blazers. Dammit, dammit, dammit.

But remember, Joe Dumars is still a genius

Here's how much the Cavaliers were worried about the Pistons coming back from a 3-0 deficit to make a series of it today in Detroit... as Mo Williams was leaving the court at the end of the first half with his Cavs up 51-42 and the arena evenly split between traveling Cavs Fans and the Pistons faithful, he actually talked about catching the Hawks-Heat game, since the winner of that tilt is who the Cavs get next.

Let's just say he's not too worried about closing the deal here. Or me, for that matter, seeing how I finished up this post a long time before Game 4 was put to bed.

And, well, why should he be? This Pistons team is as bad as you are going to find in a playoff. It's best frontcourt scorer, Antonio McDyess, left his knees behind in the Clinton Administration. It has guards that can dominate, but rarely integrate. The holdovers from the championship team (Rasheed Wallace, Rip Hamilton and Tayshaun Prince) have a hard time going through airports, with the big fork action. And if you want to wonder what this team might look like with a Carmelo Anthony, a Chris Bosh, or any number of other actual basketball players from the Darko Mistake. I realize the Pistons have their ring, but they could still be contending for them had they not boned their pick in a way that makes Portland taking Sam Bowie over Michael Jordan (or, shh, Greg Oden over Kevin Durant) look excusable by comparison.

I'm not sure it would have mattered, given the Cavs' ability to turn it up on defense and get points whenever Bron Bron wills it. They'll have to try harder to get past the Hawks-Heat survivor, and they will. But at least they kept us from watching any more Pistons basketball, and for that, all NBA fans -- even, one suspects, Pistons Fan -- thank you.

Ellis and Hobbs

More wheeling and dealing at the NFL Draft, where my Eagles have moved a couple of fifth round picks to the Patriots for starting cornerback and Sheldon Brown Go Away Jersey Ellis Hobbs. Hobbs has been starting for the Pats for years now, and while he hasn't looked anything like a #1 corner despite making good money, he's probably a better option than Publicly Pouting Sheldon, and if nothing else, the team has an absurd number of return options in special teams, with DeSean Jackson and Quentin Demps coming back from last year's team to compete against first round pick Jeremy Macklin and Hobbs.

If you want to think negative about this, there's the fact that Hobbs has trouble with bigger receivers, which hasn't been a strength of the team in recent years. However, it's also something of a misnomer that, at least in the division, this is the biggest worry you'd have. Terrible Owens is in Buffalo, Plaxico Burress is unemployed, and the Redskins go at you with smurfs. The trouble comes outside of the division, where you can easily see Hobbs and Samuel struggling against a Marques Colston, an Antonio Bryant, or, um, that Fitzgerald fellow in Arizona. Not that I'm not still seeing that in my nightmares.

Finally, there's this... I get that this is a good and deep draft, and that cheap rookie talent makes the world go around, especially if the economy starts making NFL teams worry about making payroll. (Unlikely.) But there's something to be said for taking a guy that you know can play in the league over some folks that you are choosing that weren't good enough to be named in the first 100 selections. Just sayin'.

The greatest NBA playoff series ever

I want to hate this Bulls-Celtics series; honestly, I do. With Boston Fan being so damned self-involved, I don't want to watch this; I don't want to get sucked in. And yet, it's just ridiculous.

After a legitimately great Game 1 overtime win in Boston, the Bulls-Celtics series had settled down into a case of Champions Schooling Children, the way that just about every neutral observer might have guessed. Game 2 was a tight game in which Ray Allen got the better of Ben Gordon, and Game 3 was an absolute spanking by the road team.

Today in Chicago, both teams played a game for the ages, going to double overtime and more or less making Cavs-Pistons Game Four unwatched outside of its home markets. You had it all: Actual Unpleasantness between Brad Miller and Big Baby Davis (seriously, the latter has absolutely nothing on Vlade Divac; he was right up there with Soccer Player in terms of going down from minimal contact), astonishing defensive lapses from the young home team, startling clutch shots, etc., etc. Finally the home-town team outlasted the older team in double overtime, 121-118, and we've got a 2-2 series.

Let's start with what the Association's haters and Hockey Fan will notice: the fun of hearing Bulls Fan chant Bull S*it, along with Jeff van Gundy (shockingly!) going in favor of the ugliness. Kudos, also, to the game's refs, who reacted to the Davis Flop by ringing up fouls on the road team; frankly, when your team has a player that does something like that, you should get the next half-dozen calls against you on general principles. (Actual telecast transcript: "Rondo does a good job falling down." Yes, good job, there. That's what basketball should be about -- selling fouls.)

You start with the point guards. Derrick Rose and Rajon Rondo are wonderful to watch, and while Rose's game appeals to the purists more, Rondo is the better player, at least this year: when you throw down a triple double with no turnovers, you make up for your lack of a reliable mid-range jumper. Ben Gordon made an unconscionable shot to give the home team the lead with just over 30 seconds to go. Allen replied from distance with just under 10 second left, as the Bulls decided that guarding him at that point in the game might keep them from a longer off-season vacation.

I want to hate this. I'm not a fan of either team. It's not like it's the only good series in the Association this year. It's a first-round series, not a second, third or fourth. It's between two teams that have absolutely no chance of playing for the championship in six weeks. (And before you start, Celtics Fan, your team had Brian Scalabrine playing meaningful minutes today. Next.) At the end of it, I'm still convinced that we're going to have a hard-fought but absolutely predictable Celtics win, more or less how everyone saw this coming before it started.

When I'm watching Kendrick Perkins dueling Sideshow Bob Noah down low, I'm really not thinking that this is something that I'm going to telling my kids about. When I see John Salmons and Kirk Hinrich failing to stop Paul Pierce, I don't think Pierce is going to put this on his highlight reel as one of the defining highlights of his life. When I see Vinny del Negro pacing the sidelines, I don't think Lemur Classic. Sorry.

And yet...

You've got a young team beating on an old one. You've got a champion getting scared out of their jock in the first round. You've got rookies serving notice, live crowds filled with hate, and just enough scumbags on both sides that you expect to see violence before it ends. Watching Kevin Garnett in a suit makes me smile, and if you don't enjoy watching Scalabrine cry over a clear path foul call, you don't have a pulse. It's freaking great.

It's also teeth-rattlingly frustrating, because I'd really like to play the Resentment Card on this. While this is going on, my little 6 Seed That Might (your Philadelphia 76ers) is up 2-1 against the Magic. Unlike the Celtics series, every game has been competitive to the final whistle. Unlike the Celtics' series, the games have seen crazy comebacks (Philly came from 18 down in the first two games to win the first and make the second competitive, and in Game 3, the Magic rallied from down a dozen to make it a single-possession game). In my team's series, there has been two last-second game-winning shots by Andre Iguodala and Thaddeus Young. You've got the best power player in the Association (Dwight Howard), one of the best three-point shooters (Rashard Lewis), one of the best all-around guard duos (the Andres, Miller and Iguodala), and a potentially emerging second-year man in Young.

And what did the Bad Tooth say about this series? That it was the worst in the East this year, if not the worst playoff matchup in decades. That Philly Fan didn't care about his team, and hated them, because they dared to make the Elton Brand Move, which is something no team's fans could ever forgive, giving how incredibly stupid it was to overpay for a low-post scorer and rebounder for a team that desperately needed low-post scoring in its first -round playoff loss last year. Oh, and just for good measure, he also pissed all over the AI 2000 series against Milwaukee, resurrecting the hoary chestnut that the Milwaukee Bucks' kitten-soft jump-shooting team led by Furious George Karl, Glenn Robinson, Sam Cassels and Allen were robbed, robbed I say, by a team with superior team defense and the clear Most Valuable Player.

Honestly, life is annoying enough for Philly Fan; he gets to hear how wonderful New York History is, how someone else's rivalry just always matters more, how wonderful Boston Success is, and how awful he is, really, for daring to boo people who deserve it, or for caring enough about the outcome of the game to try to influence by making the visiting team's supporters and players uncomfortable.

But none of that matters when it comes to what it is in front of you, which is Celtics 2, Bulls 2... and who knows, maybe the double overtime was just enough extra minutes to finally take the starch out of the champions; the game did take over 3.5 hours, after all. We Shall See.

Things I've learned while in a diseased state

Last night after my poker game wound up (lost in the tournament on pairs versus overs, lost in the cash game late on some donkey plays), I was puttering around and playing a computer game. I then felt a stronger reaction than usual to the bad poker playing regrets, and have spent the time since dealing with illness and staring dully at NBA playoff games, NFL draft coverage, and my fantasy baseball teams, all while clutching my stomach and moaning. Good times! It's also been long enough now that I can actually sit up and type without feeling like I'm going to see that Friday Night Salsa again. Ow. Owwww. Owwwwww....

> Avery Johnson might have the most annoying voice in television history.

Actually, scratch that. Maybe just the most annoying person. Even when the guy is saying something I agree with on the Lemur's coverage, I kind of want to hit him in the face with a brick.



> When you find yourself switching off from what might be the most important day of the year for your NFL team to 2007 poker highlights... well, let's just say that when you're ill, the last people you want to spend time with are Chris Berman and Mel Kiper, Jr.

> HDTV is doing Nancy Lieberman no favors. And the Lemur knows it to near comical levels, as they have her turn halfway around and step out of the shot during interviews, and cut away as fast as possible on her little quotes. It's almost endearing, really.

> When Tony Parker, Dwayne Wade and Kobe Bryant want to score, they do. And yet the Spurs have so little else -- basically the last dregs of Tim Duncan and a superb coaching job to make guys like Matt Bonner, Bruce Bowen and Drew Gooden appear to be part of a playoff rotation -- that the Mavs are winning this series, going away.

> The ugliest fan in the NBA is Utah Fan, and on some level, I really enjoy the annual show of Bryant sticking it to them hard. You live in Utah, your beloved dead owner was a homophobic turd, and watching your bitter old man coach lose is always serious fun. But by all means, tell me how Deron Williams is better than Chris Paul some more, and how much you respect Matt Harpring. That's always fun. (At least Sloan admits that they have no answer for him.)

> If Lamar Odom got to play against the Jazz every game, he'd be an All-Star. Carlos Boozer is the guy with the paycheck and the statistics, but Odom just eats him, and every other forward the Jazz throw at him, alive.

> New Orleans did everything possible in the last minutes against Denver to end the series by going down 3-0, but Carmelo Anthony and Chauncey Billups couldn't seal the comebacking deal. Normally, you'd still give the edge to the Nuggets to close it out, because the Hornets keep giving minutes and shots to Peja Stojakavoic, and he's utterly terrible right now. But it's not as if the Nugs don't have their own chuckleheads on the roster, or any kind of playoff track record of success (Melo has never been out of the first round).

> Rooting for the Raiders must be like caring for an aged relative that refuses to, well, accept their limitations. Today, they spent their first round pick on a WR with the best time in the 40 yard dash (rather than, say, the best WR), and their second round pick on a guy that even the Lemur had no film of. His name is Michael Moore, and I was able to find a picture of him on the Internets, which is posted above.

Seriously, at what point can the NFL take this team over and make Al Davis go to the home? (Oh, and thanks once again to them for allowing the Eagles to have a playoff run last year. Good on ya.)

> Speaking of my Eagles, I'm a little puzzled as to why you take a WR in the first round when you (a) have reasonable depth at the position, (b) probably need a running back and tight end more, and (c) might have a glaring problem at cornerback if Sheldon Brown is going into Operation Shutdown Mode. But, well, they know more than I do about such things, and when your draft doesn't make the Lemur heads assume the position (ooh, Mark Sanchez, your leadership skills and intangibles make me weak in the knees!), you are probably doing something right.

> Not sports and all, but is there anything that shows the utter irrelevance and navel-gazing ways of the Meedja than the relentless Obama's First 100 Days coverage? I'm on board with the guy, and even I don't give what passed out of me this morning. But by thunder, there's nothing that's going to stop this wanking, so grab it with both hands and go, you utter... well, moving on.

205 Drop: Top 10 reasons to envy the old

Today's link is another in a series of happy moments where I stare down the barrel of mortality and tell all of you punks how it's all going to hell in a handbasket. Good times!

Clue. Less.

"They're off to a very good attendance start. One team is averaging 44,000 -- the Yankees are at 44 -- and the Metsies are averaging 37,000. So it would be hard if I went to Pittsburgh or somewhere today and tell them, gee, you know, those two New York clubs are really struggling."

Bud, let me explain this slowly, using small words.

New stadiums in MLB+ markets should not, under any circumstance, have issues in filling any part of the stadium in the first *year* of operations.

The fact that both of the NY franchises are not getting those seats sold right now, when they are flush with curiosity for the new yards, is not good. Especially with both teams showing sizable flaws that could take them out of a pennant race (which would be, for a NY hater like myself, just fantastic). By the way, those flaws would be the starting pitching rotation for both teams.

And who said the recession was no fun?

205 drop: Top 11 things I've learned from watching the NBA Playoffs on TNT

Sorry for the lateness of the link, but it was Take Your Daughter To Work Day, which quickly became Figure Out Just What The Hell To Get Your Vomiting Daughter To Home Day. All kinds of happiness, really. It's a good list, if only for the fact that the word "minstrel show" is used.

The series the NBA wanted you to watch begins

Tonight in Atlanta, the Eastern series that everyone wanted to see went to Game Two after such a terrible Game One, many had lost enthusism for the whole thing. But instead of showing up and performing like they had little if any idea of how to play this game of basketball, the visitors from South Beach rained down threes en route to a big and consistent lead, and played a dramatically better game in tying the series up.

(Why the bird photo? It's the Hawks mascot, which went off script and delayed the game. Feel free to drawn your own parallels here, really.)

Atlanta is fed by the best-kept secret in the NBA -- i.e.., the only sports fans in Atlanta that are worth anything -- to stay in it, and heaven knows this Heat team isn't bright enough to put the hammer down. When your team loses track of the 24-second clock, that's bad. When they do it out of a timeout, that's telling. A lot. But when you shoot nearly 60% from the arc, you should win, and will. It was 108-93, but a hell of a lot more entertaining than that.

Beyond a great number of made long shots, why was Miami a semblance of a basketball team tonight? Credit will go to Dwayne Wade for his 33-4-4, including a ridiculously lucky banked three (Wade in the post-game interview: "I had to pull something out my butt") with one second on the clock. But he battled foul trouble and wasn't on the floor for some of the biggest moments of the fourth quarter.

You also have to give credit to Jermaine O'Neal. The almost universally disdained starting center for Miami gave them 19 and 5 with 4 blocks, one of them an immense stuff on a fast break for Flip Murray that would have torn the roof off the building during a Hawk run.

You can also throw some love to Daequan Cook, who made 20 points and 6 of the Heat's 15 three-pointers to give the visitors a huge edge in bench scoring (37 to 20). Udonis Haslem also made two huge buckets to keep them afloat during the Heat run, had his own monster block on Murray, and picked up a couple of big boards to kill clock. Wade was great, but tonight, he also had teammates.

For the Hawks, until the last three minutes when they more or less went on auto-pilot and let the final score creep, they just didn't seem like the worse team tonight; just one that wasn't very bright. The knucklehead plays -- dumb fouls, missed free throws, careless turnovers and wide-open shooters -- just overwhelmed their crowd and athleticism. But land o'goshen, they are just absurdly athletic, and their crowd is crazy into it. There is no way this series isn't going deep, because Miami can't shoot like that every night, and Atlanta can't make that many mistakes.

And maybe this series really isn't all that meaningful in the long run, seeing as how Cleveland lurks in the background to just out trump either of these squads... but this Wade guy? You should watch him. He's good. Same with Joe Johnson, and Josh Smith when his brain is in his head, and a load of other players who are dynamite in the open court. There's a reason everyone wanted to watch this one; it's amazing, even if flawed.

How You Lose

Tonight in Orlando, the Sixers missed a chance to put a hammerlock on their series with Orlando, and the home-court Magic knotted the series at 1-1.

If you want to be positive about it for the road team, there is this.

> They came back again from 18 down to make a run, this time cutting it to 6;

> Dwight Howard didn't eviscerate them this time around, limiting to him to 11 and 10 and 30 fouled-out minutes

> Andre Miller, who has to dominate his matchup over the course of the series if the Sixers will steal it, took down a 30-7-3 line

> Thaddeus Young looked as good as he has since getting hurt, with 20 on 9 of 15 shooting

> Andre Iguodala continued to come up big with a 21-8-7 line, shooting 50% from the floor with 3 steals

If you want to feel less happy, there's this.

> Howard fouled out with 3 minutes left and the game in the balance, and the teams more or less traded buckets after that

> Hedo Turkoglu, the Magic's most important player in tight games due to their reliance on him in the fourth quarter, went 16-6-3 and also looked the best he has since injury

> They haven't had an answer for Courtney Lee in two games, and Lee's young enough that he might not know that he shouldn't show up on the road

> The Magic only shot 6 of 23 from three point land and still won by 9, thanks to a 22 to 12 advantage in made free throws

> They got out-rebounded despite Howard being in foul trouble, and continue to get next to nothing from Sam Dalembert

> The bench, after a huge Game 1 led by Donyell Marshall's fourth quarter heroics, had 12 points on 5 for 20 shooting from six players, none of whom had a good night, and finally

> It's the playoffs. You lose the game, you don't get to feel happy.

Game Three is in Philadelphia on Friday, and with Flyer Fever at low ebb, maybe they get a crowd. I'm not sure they've done enough to get over the skepticism. But in any event, if they lose that game, they'll lose the series. (And if you're noticing certain parallels to last year's Doom With Honor first round exit against Detroit, shh. We're trying to stay positive here.)

Get a foul ball for just a few thousand dollars

You are looking at Not Very Much Attended Premium Seating at the new Yankee Stadium, which didn't take long to thin down a mite, especially in the pricey seats, for non-Opening Day crowds. The gent in the foreground in pinstripes is on the freaking field. One generally assumes that, you know, great swaths of empty seats should not be the thing closest to him, no?

Shockingly, New York Fan, even New York Corporate Fan Guy, hasn't been too interested in ponying up for the $2500 seats this year. I wonder why? Oh, right, because we're in a freaking recession that's making people reconsider, perhaps permanently (fingers crossed), the wisdom of such things.

Oh, and there's also this. NY Baseball Fan, for all of his flaws, is actually there to see the game, and not the freaking building, you unconscionable rubes. Enjoy your sparkling new albatrosses. (And no, according to the NYT, there are no plans afoot to price 'em down. In the immortal words of Nelson Muntz, "I *said* Ha, Ha...")

And Now, A Word From Our Content Provider

To keep me in gumball money, I've added another ad provider to the mix here at the site, because I just haven't been exploiting you people enough. ('m not going down the pop-up and screen takeover path, mostly because no one's made me an... um, because I feel it would be a bad user experience. Yeah, that's it.

Now, go click on some ads, buy some T-shirts and just plain give me your money via the Paypal button, because if you don't, I'm going to hold my breath for a really long time, then blog about it. And you'd rather see me blog about sports, right?

205 Drop: Top 10 songs for your funeral

Today's link is inspired by a story out of Britain, where ACDC is making more appearances at people's last gigs, and also by past entrance music discussions. My list won't match yours, of course (if nothing else, it's lacking "Enter Sandman", which I suspect will be played at way too many Yankee Fan funerals, or "Sweet Caroline" for the Sawx faithful), but it's well worth your click. I don't ask for much.

Oh, who am I kidding? You come to see me become fertilizer, you're sitting through this as an entire playlist, along with some overbearing prerecorded audio track explaining my choices. Also, a reading from my relentlessly unpopular novels. And why yes, the Upcoming Birthday *does* keep creeping into my conscious thought. Thanks for noticing.

Now, go rock this joint.

Adam Eaton Heals Me

In my single very bad year of Little League baseball, I was on the league champion team. The first baseman was the coach's son and the best player (and biggest asshat) in the league; he could rake. We had a half dozen or so great players, and we generally rolled the league. I had a few good games early through sheer luck, but then more or less fell apart, especially on defense. (It turns out that my eyes don't work together, so my depth perception is pretty much non-existent. Not an asset on pop ups, really.)

When the team won the championship, I wasn't all that excited; hitting 12th and playing for one inning in deep right will tend to take the joy out of things, really. I knew I wasn't going to ever do this again, and that it wasn't that much of a story. I took no share of the glory.

This puts me considerably on front of Adam Eaton.

"A lot of things went wrong, but a lot of things went right, too. I helped them get to the playoffs two years in a row, and obviously we won the World Series last year."

Adam's ERA in 2007: 6.29.

Adam's ERA in 2008: 5.80.

Now, to be fair, maybe I'm not getting the whole story here. Perhaps Adam was a great asset in the clubhouse. Or a mentor to Cole Hamels and Brad Lidge. Maybe his statistics don't show his, um, true worth.

And maybe my Little League team needed my googly-eyed ballast to keep them all focused on the prize.

Yes, that must be it.

So I'd like to be the very first person in the greater Philadelphia region to say these words:

Thank you, Adam Eaton.

Through your considerable example and incredible linking skills, that's one more source of childhood shame erased. I was the MVP, baby!

No Stars, Just Great

I don't watch all that many movies or television shows, folks. Between the three sports, filling the bloghole, doing the day job, playing poker, doing the household stuff and being the Shooter Dad and Husband, the day runs out of hours pretty fast. No complaints.

But I do, eventually, work through my Netflix queue, and after reading enough about the show to know that I was going to geek out on it, I took the plunge and started plowing through "The Wire", the critically acclaimed HBO series that's set on the mean streets of Baltimore. I know this seems a fair way from sports, but wait for it, I'll circle back.

Part of the reason why the show works so well is that it has no known star actors; the cast is just freaking huge, to the point where, just like real life, you are not always certain which character is which, and what exactly is going on. The lead actor is a guy (Dominic West) from Britain who I've only ever seen in one other movie ("300"), where he's the nasty dude that rapes the Queen and gets garroted in public. Thank heavens I saw that flick before "300", or I'd have been completely discombobulated during his scenes.

Since it was an HBO show, it avoided the committee meetings and network notes that water down the product to draw a bigger audience. It's also relentlessly adult, smart as can be, and filled with larger meanings that sit with you for a long time after you watch the episodes. I can't recommend it enough, and someone really needs to smack Joss Whedon upside the head until he goes and works for HBO, and stops wasting his time having shows die with Fox. Thank you.

Now, one of the reasons why this relates at all to sports is that in the past month on the NBA telecasts, the movies "Obsessed" and "Next Day Air" have both been pimped. In the former, you get a romantic triangle with Idris Elba as the meat in an Ali Larter / Beyonce Knowles triangle, which is to say, you get the tough as nails #2 guy in the drug organization being inconvenienced by a predatory temp. It's unsettling, really. In the later, you get what seems to be a slackerish guy taking stuff of a truck in a comedy about missing goods, or the #1 guy in the drug organization slumming. (That'd be the equally great actor Wood Harris.)

But the second and bigger point is that if you are a fan of "The Wire", you're *huge* into it; it's not a casual thing. I'm thrilled to see Elba and Harris getting work, to the point that I might actually go rent these other probable turds that they are getting paid for now, just because I want them to do well from being involved in this show. Just the same way that I'll always have a soft spot for Marco Scutaro, the one-time Magical Man Elf of Oakland who is now improbably holding down the leadoff spot for the equally improbable first-place Blue Jays. Or the eternally lovable Chad Bradford, another ex "Moneyball" star who has bounced around the majors providing good side-armed relief innings for a decade now. He's in Tampa now, rehabbing from an injury. Go, Chad Bradford, go.

MLB+ fans who just geek on the stars (A-Rod! Jeter! Manny! Big Papi! Other Small Corporations!) are missing out on the best stories, the small ones that you root for harder, and more personally. They also look down on the nerdy love that we give these life-sized heroes, because "The Wire" didn't have a huge audience, and these guys generally don't show up on All-Star teams or with rings on their fingers.

Except, of course, when the little guy is on *their* team, at which point he becomes Scott Brosius. Or Paul O'Neill. Or Dave Roberts. Or Jon Lester. Or the other, truly loved, truly human, players.

Anyway, go rent season one of "The Wire", or give me a ton of grief for only knowing about it 8 years after the fact. (And please, no spoilers. I've only just finished Season 2.)

205 Drop: Top 12 signs you are whipped

The drop today goes back to a non-sports one, and is inspired by all of the guys that tell me they want to play poker, but can't because of various spousal issues. The Shooter Wife has many advantages, folks. Not the least of which is the fact that when she sees images like this one on the computer, she either shrugs or cracks a joke. I feel bad for the rest of y'all, I do.

And in further site news, given today's drop image, I'd like to welcome the Porn Seekers from Other Lands to this here site. Please click on all of the ads to get more porn!

Evening Up

We'll lead off with a mostly irrelevant video that fills my heart with blood. Enjoy.



Tonight in the NBA Playoffs, the old men of the Association (Boston and San Antonio) got back to even in their series against Chicago and Dallas, respectively. But there was a world of difference in how they did it.

In Boston, it was a gunfight between Ray Allen and Ben Gordon, with Allen making the last shot to save the home town team. After 96 minutes of basketball, it's clear that the Bulls have, for perhaps the first time ever in the playoffs (and that includes their Jordan teams), a real edge in the front-court, and that was with the C's getting great games out of Kendrick Perkins and Big Baby Davis.

If Perk and Baby give the Celts that game on the road... well, we should all feel better about stem cell research finding a cure for cancer, since everything will now be officially on the table. The Celts will be tight and probably steal back home-court behind a Paul Pierce uprising, but Celtic Fan isn't suffering from overconfidence anymore, and if Rajon Rondo stiffens up from that scary fall he took in this one, it could be over quickly. Derrick Rose ain't no punk, y'all.

(What will happen? Vinny del Negro will somehow blow a game at home, the C's will ride some highly dubious officiating, and the favorites will advance. But lo, they will sweat hard over it.)

In San Antonio, it was the Tony Parker Show, as the quicksilver point ended this Jo Jo Barea nonsense with 38 points and 10 assists in a going-away win for the home team. It's easy to imagine that Dallas, having gotten Game One, just weren't all that interested in putting forth the full energy in trying to get the 2-0 hammerlock, but after watching what Parker did to them tonight, I'm off the ledge from my Spurs pick for the series.

In the NBA playoffs, it's usually Team With The Best Player Wins, and no one was better than Tony Parker tonight. Ever since the We'll Regret It For A Decade deal with New Jersey to send Devin Harris east for the final years of Jason Kidd, the Mavs have absolutely no one who can keep Parker in front of him. They'll certainly be closer when Dirk Nowitzki gives them more than a 3-for-14 effort, but it's not like the Spurs have seen a vintage Tim Duncan game yet, and I'm just not in the chorus of people thinking that he's done. I also just think that the second-tier Spurs scorers (Finley, Gooden, Bonner) are going to step up and win them a road game.

See you tomorrow night, as the Finalists show up to remind us all why none of this matters...

The High Cost Of Respect

And the week had been going so well for Eagle Fan. We got to delight in what seems like the exceptionally reasonable purchase of one of the best offensive tackles in the game, as the team picked up Jason Peters from the Bills. And then, what do my forehead-smacked eyes do discover, but #2 CB Sheldon Brown giving voice to his considerable lack of respect for the team not being too interested in renegotiating his deal, which has four years left on it at what might be below current market value.

A few points here.

1) I'm almost *always* in favor of the player making more money. He's the guy who, you know, has to hit people for a living, and if he's not happy and plays badly, my football season is ruined. The Eagles have also been under the cap since there was a cap, really, so it's not like I'm even going to dork out and worry about their contract situation. From a macroeconomic view, the player having the money is better; they employ more people buying more fool things.

And even I don't want to see Brown get paid a lot more.

You have two choices as an NFL player when you are young and the team values your services. The first is to take the lock low pot and sign the extension. The second is to roll the dice and wait until you are a free agent. Every player gets this decision, assuming they are good. Brown took the first route, and now he wants this second.

The Eagles, sensibly, haven't shown a whole lot of interest in changing the terms of the deal, seeing how Brown is under contract until the Obama '12 campaign. Brown calls this "a total lack of respect."

Um, no, not really, Sheldon. It's the house having made the right call, and the cards falling the way they thought they would. Your role is to play well for the length of that deal, then get wildly overpaid by some dumb-ass AFC team for the last big payday of your life, when you are 34 and wind up playing for about half of the deal (but all of the signing bonus) before flushing out of the league. This is how it goes here. After the Brian Dawkins Experience, this should seem obvious to anyone, really.

2) If you are going to pule for big money, you really need to make more big plays.

Last year, Brown had one bad game. You might remember it; it was the NFC Championship Game. Until Larry Fitzgerald tore him a career-defining hole, Brown had been damn near pristine for 2008... and yet, as an Eagles Fan, I never *really* knew, emotionally, that he was having a great year.

Why? Because the man has gut-wrenchingly bad hands. And at age 30, that isn't going to change.

Coverage? He's also there. Tackling? Sure, solid, doesn't go for stupid kill shots, and did give Reggie Bush the ride of his life in that playoff loss a few years ago. Run support? Yes, he's not a Deion Sanders-esque coward.

But when it comes to making the couple of plays a year that help to clear the psychic slate of what a cornerback is -- i.e., a damage control manager in a zero-fail, no-win situation -- you have to get a couple back. Maybe you don't have to go all Ed Reed-ish and score more than you give up, but a touchdown or two every few years, especially when it comes in a big spot against a hated opponent (see the Lito Sheppard resume against Dallas, for instance) means a lot. If nothing else, you need to get a runback every once in a while.

In 112 career games, Brown has 14 interceptions, with 2 touchdowns. The last of those came in 2006. In the past two years, he's had four picks for 26 yards in returns, with only one of those picks coming last year. So he doesn't get a lot of picks, and when he does get them, he goes to ground.

Asante Samuel, by comparison, has 10 picks and two scores in the past two years. And that's with being the #1 CB, which is to say, getting much fewer opportunities for picks. And that's why Samuel makes ferocious bank, and no Eagle Fan has any kind of problem with that.

There's a reason for this, and that is...

3) Sheldon Brown has tragically awful hands.

Not to the point where he can't be a very good starting corner -- he is. Not to the point where he can't get paid -- he has, and could be again.

But to the point where a team is not, and should not, break the rules and the bank to make him happy.

However, and this is really crappy part of it...

4) Once a football player has gone public about being unhappy, especially in Philadelphia, he's more or less done. Especially when the team takes the time to smack him down in public, as the Eagles PR department did today.

In the current NFL, you need at least three very good corners to match up. When the Eagles signed Samuel a year ago, there was no reason why Sheppard had to go, but he was unhappy, and soon was supplanted by Joselio Hanson, who no one ever thought had more talent. But motivation is a powerful thing, and Sheppard is now a Jet. (Speaking of which, I bet Lito bounces back this year. He's young enough, has the pedigree, and will be in the clear #2 slot opposite Darrelle Revis. Jet Fan will need him to if they are going to have any chance to slow down the Patriots. But I digress.)

By popping off in public, Brown has probably forced the Eagles hand, and has in all likelihood made the team push a corner decision into their high pick consideration. Which they were probably going to do anyway, seeing how Brown is 30, but how the team also really needs a running back and a top-drawer wideout and a two-way tight end and a half dozen other things, really...

Well, no one needed this, really. Oh, and one final thing... given the state of the economy and the relative replaceability of what Brown does -- stop big plays, not make them -- there's no real guarantee that he'd get his big payday somewhere else, either.

Seeing as he's now, you know, something of a character risk, given that he took one deal, but now wants another...

A quick question to my East Coast homies

Does it ever not suck to live here, weather wise?

I realize that I've become a complete candy-ass from six years in the oh so comfy womb that is Northern California, but I'm fairly sure that by the time the calendar gets to April 20, you should have had more than five days in the whole freaking year where the weather didn't want to make you burn your Least Coast House to the ground and go live under some California bridge.

We now return you to your usual, mostly sports-related, timewaste.

This Didn't Go Well

Boy, Yankee Fan sure knows how to chant and feel humiliated, don't they? Here's what happens when a giveaway goes wrong. Fun branding moment... and that was *before* the 10-2 pounding they took from the Indians.

In other news, RC Cola tried to give out tickets to a Natinals game, but despite having no soda or tickets, no chants. There's a philosophy joke here, which just goes to show you, no one likes philosophy jokes.

Expos Is Shorter

Courtesy of DC Sports Blog, proof that your 1-10 NL East punching bag loses beyond the diamond. Can we just have them go back to the Expos unis and look, since that had, you know, fewer letters?

205 Drop: Top 10 fantasy sports killing managers

Today's drop over at 205 is pretty sports-related, just to keep giving different looks over there. Who will take down the title of most hated man in the world of gambling nerds? Oh, come on, like you couldn't guess from the image. Seriously.

Chris Webber needs to switch to decaf

Not arguing with the merits of what the man was saying here.... but seriously, dude does know that he never won an NBA Championship, mostly because his teams followed his lead in being kitten-soft in the clutch, right?

Oh, who am I kidding? I'm just glad to have C-Webb to kick around once more. It brings me back to the starting days of the blog...

Our rough week continues

First Harry, and now this. Terminated from employment over at the Lemur, Blogfrica's favorite punch line, Stephen A. Smith.

Somewhere, a man with a sock on his hand weeps.

And we all weep with him, really...

Your lead video on the Lemur this evening

My baby, all grown up. (dabs eyes)

The Poker Parent

More or less a transcript of a talk that I had with the eldest about boys (she's young enough to still talk to me about such things, thank heavens)...

"Well, it's like this. Should you stay in a hand if you've been dealt 2-7 off-suit?"

She looks at me. "Well, I do sometimes..."

I look at her. "But if you did that all the time, you'd lose, right?"

"Sure."

"It's the same thing in dating. If you fall in love with someone who you have nothing in common with, it's like playing 2-7 off-suit. It might work out for you; you could flop trip 2's or trip 7's, and you've got a great hand. But most of the time, that's not going to happen, and you're going to lose if the hand goes to the river."

She nods. My feeling of being a complete gambling degenerate is nicely balanced by the fact that she seems to be getting the concept.

"But if you fall in love with someone who you have a lot in common with, and for more than just because you think they are cute, it's like playing a pair of aces. It still might not work out, but you are just giving yourself more chances."

She nods, then gets distracted by something her younger sister does. I almost feel sorry for her future boyfriends, really. "I'm sorry, but now that I've gotten to know you better, I think you're King-8 suited, and I'm only dating really premium hands..."

Just When You Think You Know A League

In the first game of the NBA playoffs, we've seen:

> The #7 seed in the East, with a rookie point guard, a coach that was Dead Man Walking and a frontcourt rotation that includes people who look like they've flunked out of Clown College, win on the road against the defending NBA champions (that'd be Chicago over Boston)

> The #5 seed in the East, with the league consensus second choice for MVP, getting absolutely crushed by the #4 (that'd be Atlanta over Miami)

> The #6 seed come from 18 down in the third quarter to steal Game 1 (Philly over Orlando)

> Oh, and the road teams winning in San Antonio (Dallas) and Portland (Houston)

Just what in the name of Predictable Playoffs is going on here?

Well, a large number of teams that decided to play Game One of the playoffs unlike the way they've played in the regular season, really.

In Orlando, the Sixers overcame the big deficit and Andre Iguodala's two missed free throws with a minute left to steal home court advantage. It's the kind of game the Sixers usually lost in the regular season (they were 6-9 in games decided by four points or less then), and while I'm thrilled to see them get the game, an awfully large number of things broke well for them here. When you get Donyell Marshall erupting for 11 points in 11 minutes, all of them in the fourth quarter, that's found money. It's also stretching things to imagine that Hedo Turkoglu and Rashard Lewis will combine to go 7-for-19 with one three pointer again.

Gold stars go to Marshall, Iguodala, Lou Williams (18 points in 30 minutes for my pick for sixth man of the year), and I'm even going to give it up for the ghost of Theo Ratliff, who was certainly a lot more interested in fighting off Superman Howard than the starter, Sam Dalembert. If the Magic make a habit of shooting 5 for 18 from the arc, that would also help. Oh, and the final small point here: gents, would it kill you to hit some free throws? 11 for 20 isn't helping anyone.

In Atlanta, the Hawks held serve with ridiculous authority, holding the Heat to their playoff low with 64 points. Only two Heat players were in double figures, and this game was well into confetti buckets with Mike Bibby throwing degree-of-difficulty alley oops to Josh Smith. Of all of the first round picks that didn't go right for me in Game 1 (and lo, there were many), this one looks the shakiest, just because this Heat team looked like Dwayne Wade and 11 guys from the D-League. But the loss counts the same in the standings when it's by 1 or 26, and it's not as if NBA teams don't bounce back from time to time.

Though, of course, maybe I should also be feeling very shaky about that Blazer pick, what with a 27-point loss at home. Yao Ming's next miss from the field will be his first, and the Blazers just looked downright bad on defense, which was going to trip them up at some point in the playoffs, but jeez, so soon? Houston Fan, if you would have known this would been this easy as soon as T-Mac was gone, how would you have taken him out? Oh, and if Steve Blake wants to lose his matchup by 22 points to Aaron Brooks (and what a comeback for him, from historic failure as an NFL QB -- what, it's not the same guy?), this series won't go long at all.

At least we can count on one thing -- the Cavs-Lakers finals still dead-solid locked, with both of those teams more or less rolling in Game One, and looking much better than anyone else. At least that much has stayed, well, predictable.

A small note to Jason Peters

Welcome to the newest Eagle, who people who know a hell of a lot more than I do about line play are all kinds of excited about. He's young, good, and came at a very tolerable price, especially since the Eagles almost always blow their first round picks (rounds 2 through 4 are when they make their money).

But anyway, back to the new guy. Sir, if you want to sell a lot of jerseys -- and lets' face it, those Jon Runyon gamers aren't looking terribly stylish in Philly Fan's closet right now -- say the following magic words at your upcoming press conference in Philadelphia.

"The last thing that made me want to get the hell out of Buffalo was when they signed Terrell Owens. No way in hell was I going to play on the same team as that piece of crap."

You'll be getting the local car dealer phone calls before the presser is over...

NBA Playoff Pick A Palooza

As we've always down here at the blog, I'll pick the playoffs against site contributor The Truth; loser has to write something really, really painful. (Past examples: Cub and WNBA Love. Shudder.) Feel free to add yours in the comments; if enough people do this, I'll throw them a site T-shirt, guaranteed to get you exceptional nooky, provided that you have loose definitions of exceptional. And nooky.

This won't be as detailed as I normally go, just because life intruded over the past couple of days. Besides, there just isn't as much intrigue for me since all of the interesting matchups are out West, and I'm still really bitter over punting third-place money in my roto league over 10 freaking points. (Both teams scored, um, over 12,000 points this year, so 10 really doesn't matter.) I know, you're shocked to find me bitter.

Cleveland (1) vs. Detroit (8)

If any of these games is within 10 points, I'll be surprised, But remember, Joe Dumars is a genius and that Darko pick is going to start bearing fruit any day now. By the way, if Cleveland wins this series, it will come with the tainted asterisk because Allen Iverson is hurt. I keed, I keed, Cavs Fan. I mean, who could possibly say crap about asterisks without, you know, making themselves out to be a complete asshat?

Cavaliers in four

Boston (2) vs. Chicago (7)

Man alive, did I want to take the Bulls here; the Celtics look like they can be taken with Garnett on the shelf. They also have to be distracted by the news this morning about GM Danny Ainge having heart trouble. But they aren't ready to win in Boston, and the C's have home court. Besides, I still can't quite get behind the idea that Vinny del Negro can go from Guy Avoiding The GM to a Final 8 coach in two months.

Celtics in seven

Orlando (3) vs. Philadelpha (6)

Philly will make the Magic sweat, but you just can't win games against good teams consistently when you don't shoot threes or free throws well. Please, Sixers Management, make me write something new about you next year, ok?

Magic in five

Atlanta (4) vs. Miami (5)

Get ready for the return of the D-Wade Referee Love Tour. The over-under on Atlanta technical fouls in this series is thirteen. Take the over.

Heat in six

Los Angeles (1) vs. Utah (8)

On talent, the Jazz's inability to show up on the road, and overall health, this should the mirror of Cleveland's first round walk in the East. The reason it won't be is because the Lake Show will fail to show up for a game. But not more than one.

Lakers in five

Denver (2) vs. New Orleans (7)

New Orleans has disappointed this year to be in the seven slot, but they aren't *bad*; they won 49 games, for heaven's sakes, and they still have that Chris Paul fellow, who is awfully good. This Nuggets team seems to me to still be filled with rockheads who will fail in big situations, and with Chauncey Billups getting the full-on media mouth job for their surprisingly good year, the ball won't go to Carmelo Anthony late, and he's actually really good there.

For the Hornets, I think you see David West have a big series and for Paul to get just enough help when he needs it. And no, this upset loss won't be enough to get George Karl run off, because nothing will. He's like Don Nelson, in that he's just bulletproof from actual results.

Hornets in six

San Antonio (3) vs. Dallas (6)

The second of three wildly entertaining Western Conference playoff series that won't matter later on. The Spurs have home court, the coaching edge and the experience. The Mavs have more healthy talent and scoring punch. But you bet against Tim Duncan, even in his presumed twilight, at your peril. Either team is Dead Man Walking in the next round.

Spurs in seven

Portland (4) vs. Houston (5)

A fascinating series. Portland has athletes for miles and home court. Houston has ridiculously good defense and a nominal experience edge. Both teams are overrated by the cognoscenti for their international talent and cutting-edge front offices.

And while I'd love to take the Rockets because rooting for anything connected with Paul Allen makes me want to wear a hair shirt, it's just hard for me to pick a team with Ron Artest at crunch time, even if they have banished Tracy McGrady. BTW, Greg Oden might be the most overrated player in the NBA right now, in that Portland's not better with him on the floor than the immortal Joel Pryzbilla, but that's not an issue in this round.

Either way, this one is going long... but with a bit of a twist ending. Keep an eye out for Rudy Fernandez here.

Blazers in six

The KG Asterick, Or Reason #8,234 Why The World Loves Boston Injuries

Oh, the things I do for you, dear reader. It's taking years off my life, this exposure to such unabashed and unblinking douche- baggery. It's also speaks to the workday's length and my interest in cultivating a low level of rage to help me get through it.

Which is all a roundabout way of getting to the point of yet another Bill "Bad Tooth" Simmons podcast on the World Wide Lemur page, in which we learn that if Kevin Garnett can't play in this playoff, as head coach Doc Rivers has indicated, it means that the eventual non-Celtic champion will own a tainted title.

You know, with an asterisk.

First, let's go into the nature of the Asterisk in the first place. There is, really, no defense for it on the Jerk Meter. If you go here, you're a jerk, plain and simple; you have to ruin someone else's happiness to have your own. Not to put to fine a point on it, but you make decent people spit. (And yes, that goes for the father of the Asterisk Title, the wildly overrated Phil Jackson. But that's a whole other kettle of hate.)

Let's move beyond the odiousness of the tactic and talk about the actual merits of how wildly sad, unfortunate and unexpected it was to lose a big man with over 1,000 NBA games on his odometer. The simple fact of the matter is that the devil's bargain that the Celtics made for last year's title has already paid off, and isn't likely to be paid again. When you build a team around three ticking time bombs of high mileage second banana superstars, this is what you get. Comfort yourself in your championship, knowing that most teams that make this dice roll come up craps on every pass.

In your best possible year, the injuries are timed to stagger out in the regular season and allow you to make a deep run, a la the Spurs going every-other year (prior to this year's Manu-ectomy, of course). When the stars don't align, you lose. Please, at the very least, have the self-respect that the Allmighty gave to a leech and accept this about yourselves, OK?

But wait, there's more. And I won't even get into the massive turd that Simmy Boy dropped in another sock-ruining podcast as to why the A's are the worst team to ever win 2 out of 3 at home against his Red Sox, or how awful A's Fan is to not come out to support their team in an old stadium in bad weather, with the knowledge that the person in the seat next to them is very likely to be Red Sox Fan. Anyhoo...

You see, we also get to learn from the master that Good Cleveland Fan *hates* that Garnett won't be able to go this time around. Only Bad Cleveland Fan is happy to have ducked the bigger baby. (What, I'm just giving props to Glen "Big Baby" Davis. Shame on you for seeing more into that, Celtics Fan.)

By the way, I'm still pretty much expecting Garnett to arise from Paul Pierce's Wheelchair of Miracles and throw down double-doubles while the Bad Tooth pleasures himself for a few thousand words. Meanwhile, my Sixers will lose in five against a Magic team that will get swept in the second round, with three of those games being tossed away in the last minute. In other news, I've just learned that in a past life I was one of those camp guards that enjoyed their work in eastern Europe in the low '40s. I'd feel bad about that, but I'm holding out hope that in Simmy Boy's past life, he was in my care, which would make all of this even. Moving on.

You see, Good Cleveland Fan doesn't want to have their possible championship cheapened by the Asterisk That Only Boston Fan Can See. Good Cleveland Fan wants to earn their first professional championship since the pre-Super Bowl Browns the *right* way, which is to say, while giving Boston Fan and his half dozen or so parades in this decade every possible chance. Good Cleveland Fan has simply shrugged off the close calls that the Jose Mesa Indians, Bernie Kosar Browns, LeBron's own Finals sweep moment, and the 40-plus years of being one of America's most tortured sports cities to think about how bad Boston Fan must be feeling about KG. Only Bad Cleveland Fan sees this news and thinks, happily, that the Lord may be finally setting up the breaks their way.

No, I'm not making this up. I don't even think the Bad Tooth was doing this as one of his periodic tired wrestling heel bits, either. It's just the way they are -- utterly freaking clueless as to how anyone on the other side of a sports argument might see things, or how his Boston Uber Alles apologies and hopes makes him an all-day tool.

Here's a small clue from the rest of the nation, on the off chance that any Boston Fan has gotten this far into the post... when Tom Brady got hurt last year, it was the best day of the NFL season for a large percentage of the NFL fan base, because it made you that sad. And the rest of us only enjoys your presence when you are that sad.

When Brett Favre cemented his legacy as the worst Last Season In The Wrong Laundry Guy Ever by keeping your Pats out of the dance, that was also just what we wanted for Christmas, preferably with one of those stocking-stuffer online petitions from you people to try to get the rules changed after the fact. Celtic Elimination Day, assuming that it arrives, will be one of the happiest days in the NBA calendar for everyone who doesn't root for your team. And there are more of us than there are of you.

So, to sum up:

You are hated.

Not envied.

Hated.

Not special.

Hated.

Not unique.

Hated.

I'm saying this in really short sentences so that you understand it.

Even if all of your teams go into the tank at once for the rest of my lifetime, with the Celtics being the best candidate to circle the drain given how likely it is that Ray Allen will soon succumb to the brittleness that kills off every aging jump shooter, no one will ever feel sorry for you again.

In any matchup with even the most odious of opponents (i.e., the Yankees), the rest of the world will see you as equally distasteful. Especially for people who have, you know, paid attention to baseball in the last decade or so. (This, by the way, is my explanation for why Oriole Fan and site contributor Dirty Davey still has his reflexive Anyone But The Yankees thing going on.)

Which, of course, you will completely ignore, given that your heads are so far up your Asterisks, it's a wonder that you can watch the games at all.

Oh, and if you want to go down the path of how Simmy Boy doesn't speak for you? Um, no.

Own him, like all of the other mewling celebrities in your fan base.

Own him, like your Nixonian football coach and your riverdancing closer, your roll out the ball commuting basketball coach and your increasingly lily-white baseball team and fan base.

Own him, along with the simple and persistent fact that PEOPLE HATE YOU BECAUSE THEY SHOULD.

And in other Site News, this is Post #2,000.

Apropos, don't you think?

205 Drop: Top 12 Trim Tricks

I know you've been waiting to hear all of my poon-catching tips, children, and here they are... fresh from the realization that with my upcoming Halfway Or More Towards Death Notice, that it's time to start thinking about my legacy and all. A legacy that involves more tail than a man of my height, income level, intellect and looks (OK, especially the last one) should have achieved.

Anyway, go click, get queasy, maybe learn something, even if that something is that when you write five lists a week for a titty site, the only lists that people might pay attention to won't involve sports at all. Hard to believe, Harry.

205 Drop: Top 10 upcoming Guitar Hero releases

The drop over at 205 today isn't a sports piece at all; it's a make with the funny moment in regards to the new Guitar Hero edition put out by Metallica. If you think this game will sell big units, you might want to go pick up the Aerosmith version that came out about a year ago at your local video game store. If it's not in the racks, check under the tables, as it makes for a fine leveling device.

The simple fact is that band-specific releases of the game (and I suspect, a similar moment next year when a rap-only game comes out) will always perform badly in the market, because for every Metallica fan out there, there are at least 5 people shrugging, and four others actively avoiding the damn thing.

Count me in the latter camp, by the way. Despite any number of people telling me how much I need to like these guys over the years, they just do nothing for me.

I realize that this makes me a gigantic eunuch in the eyes of the Metalli-faithful, who are still busying telling me that UFC is a promotion, and not a sport, because if I knew that, then I'd like human cockfighting.

In other news, they get the Internet in trailer parks now.

Anyway, the 205 drops are going to start verging beyond sports, especially later in the week, because that site's mission statement is beyond our usual playpen. So feel free to click, or not.

Blogrolling Gets Furry

Cold Hard Football Facts with an in-depth examination of what the old AFL was really like, and the answer may surprise you. That assumes, of course, that you are freaking old and/or interested in pro football history, both of which have their advantages, really.

A Russian man takes the not so easy way out from a nagging spouse. Seriously, don't miss this one. Oh, liquor, is there anything that you can't do?

Isiah Thomas knows what it's like not to eat. Of course, he's also still making $12 million a year from the Knicks for all that he's done for them. Anyway, enjoy him, Florida International!

Sixers beat the non-LeBron Cavs, and the Bulls lose to the closing strong Raptors, which means my home town team gets the potentially crippled Magic (Hedo Turkoglu, their fourth quarter man, ain't right), rather than the so not necessary defending champion Celtics. I'm camping much more happily, even if I'm still not seeing an upset... even though I just saw Avery Johnson say it on the tee vee. Woo!

MLJ makes the very good point that no one should want to go to an MLB All-Star Game in July. That also assumes that anyone would ever want to go to Arizona at any time. Seriously, it's like all of the really regrettable old white people from Florida emigrated at once.

And isn't this nice -- an alleged rapist, philanderer and anal enthusiast gets to be on Sesame Street. Elmo wants Kobe to stop touching him there!

205 Drop: Top 12 ways to improve the NBA Playoffs

Today's list over on 205 welcomes the return of the NBA playoffs, that 40-day crucible of entertainment where the expected happens, and yet demands viewing anyway. Beyond the snark on the site, I'm genuinely excited, if for no other reason than to see if anyone in the Association actually has the stones to stand up to the James Train.

What normally happens in the NBA Playoffs is that the team with the best player wins, mostly because hoops at the highest level involves getting lifelong alpha dogs (which is to say, every player on an NBA roster) to subvert their ego and do the grunt work. That includes giving up your own stats to devote all of your energy to stop the other team's key offensive player, run through or set picks against the same guys you've been running into for the better part of a week, take charges and get on the ground for loose balls and all of the other things that don't show up in a box score.

The way for the team with the lesser star to win is be less selfish about, well, everything. That also includes giving up your good reputation to thug it up (what, you think Bruce Bowen enjoys being hated?), if need be. But the problem with thugging James is similar to thugging Shaq in his prime; the man's just (much) more physical than the people trying to bring the wood. He's also been such a good teammate that when you try it, you better have teammates that have your back, because the Cleveland bigs are just waiting to prevent your crime.

That's why the Cavs are the presumed champion; they just don't give you much of an opening to overcome their advantages. But they aren't the champion (yet), and if the Celtics can get healthy in the long and easy opening round, they could take four out of seven using the same system they did last year -- having stars (especially Paul Pierce, but also Kevin Garnett) that are willing to play as role players. When the Celtics had to take Game 7 last year against James, it wasn't with Tony Allen, Leon Powe or the departed James Posey taking the train on; it was Pierce. My guess is that he'll try to do it again.

In the West, you get feel-good regular season stories like the Nuggets and Blazers against time-tested teams like the Spurs and Jazz, which should provide rooting interests for casual fans who are tired of the same-old same-old. It all seems like a sideshow to the Kobe Koronation, especially if the Lakers can work Andrew Bynum into effective minutes. There's also the possibility that a dark horse team (my favorite: the Hornets, though some people will get fooled into the eternal tease that is the Rockets) could go deeper than they should and make people forget that Kobe just has the horses this year.

But that's what the NBA Playoffs are: a relentless grind that almost always winds up with the best player holding the trophy. You watch to confirm what you know... and part of what you know is that the best basketball in the world is worth watching, no matter how predictable the outcome.

Awards Time

With the next to last night of NBA action happening tonight, and my Sixers looking like the worst team in the post-season with their sixth straight loss (a 100-98 effort to a Celtics team that didn't have Kevin Garnett or much of a reason to play hard)... well, it's as good a time as any to rattle off my picks for the major awards. Let's get right to it, so I can get the stink of that game out of my mind.

Most Valuable Player -- LeBron James, Cleveland Cavaliers

People have been trying to make this into a competitive race for months now, and the general public, for one, isn't fooled. James is simply the best player in the Association on the team with the best record. The year he's had hasn't been matched statistically since Jordan's glory days.

Which isn't to denigrate the year that Dwayne Wade had. He's the clear number two choice, will most likely survive the first round against the Hawks, and will scare the living hell out of whatever luckless high East seed has to deal with him. He's just not as good as James. There's no shame in that.

As for Kobe, I'm not feeling it. In the future history of this year, he might be remembered for a championship, and he might be remembered as the year that he finally trusted his non-Shaq teammates.

But this is the year in which the most talented player in the league -- James -- became one of the hardest workers, too. Getting back on defense to make a saving and spectacular block just seemed to be a nightly occurrence. The pregame hijinks showed that, in a very real way, he was embracing a leadership role. The way he incorporated and raised Mo Williams, and how the team didn't miss a beat even as personnel shifted, just speaks volumes. And the 39-1 and counting home record just served notice that this was his year.

It's his year. And we're going to keep saying that for the next decade. Get used to it.

Rookie of the Year - Derrick Rose, Chicago Bulls

Chicago is a playoff team, and Rose is their best player. That makes him the choice over Memphis's OJ Mayo, and New Jersey's Brook Lopez. Either of those guys might have actually been better players this year, but point guards just matter more, and it's not as if the Bulls were awash in talent this year, especially with Luol Deng hurt for much of the year. Rose needs to get better, and he will, but for this award, he's more than good enough.

Coach - Rick Adelman, Houston Rockets

There's a lot of thinking that this needs to go to Mike Brown of the Cavaliers, or the criminally under-regarded Jerry Sloan, who has somehow not won this thing for his entire damn career. You could also think about San Antonio's Gregg Popovich, who could get it every year, or the Lakers' Phil Jackson, who really did a fantastic job of making sure that his talent meshed. But for my money, I'm giving it to Houston's Rick Adelman, who survived Ron Artest, the auto-ejection of Tracy McGrady, a near-fatality to big man Carl Landry, a midseason trade of his starting point guard to Orlando, and his best player (Yao Ming) being a defensive sieve despite being 7'-5". I still don't like this team's playoff chances, just because Artest is far too crazy to survive national attention and pressure, but give Adelman his due. This could have been a train wreck, and instead, they are highly competitive.

Most Improved Player - Paul Milsap, Utah Jazz

Most folks go for the easy choice of guys who are scoring more points thanks to an opportunity (the Nets' Devin Harris), a second-year player just finding his range (the Thunder's Kevin Durant), or the slow rising action of an improving veteran (Indy's Danny Granger). I just can't get enough of Milsap's game, a guy who just came from nowhere to be a critical part of a potentially dangerous playoff team, and a guy who more or less Wally Pipped Carlos Boozer in Salt Lake. To me, the MIP is about rewarding this kind of player, not adding to the trophy closet of players who will find themselves getting honored enough.

Sixth man - Lou Williams, Philadelphia 76ers

Everyone takes Jason Terry on this one, but Terry's really not a sixth man; he's just a guy who, for some reason that no one outside of Dallas can really tell me, doesn't start. Williams, on the other hand, is a true bench guy; he doesn't start because he's not better than Andre Miller, Andre Iguodala or Thaddeus Young. But when he comes into the game, he is a real difference maker, having scored an ungodly number of points from that position without being, unlike Terry, a defensive matador. He's a big reason why the Sixers get to the line so much, have a cohesive second unit despite erratic talent, and simply deserves more play than he gets nationally, in that I'm pretty sure no one outside of Philadelphia knows about him at all. Give him the award.

Defensive Player of the Year - Dwight Howard, Orlando Magic

This one's not even close. Howard lead the Association in boards and blocks, the first time that's been done in forever, and he's the only reason why Orlando's situation (i.e., a bunch of guys who can shoot threes, none of whom are known for their defense) works. If he were hurt, you'd be looking at a .500 at best team, because their defense would look Phoenix-esque. I don't think they are a Final Four team, because I don't like their guard play that much, and when your best fourth quarter player is Hedo Turkoglu, that doesn't smell like a championship to me. But that's not what we're dealing with for Defensive Player of the Year. It's Howard, who is good on the ball, off the ball, and in every other way.

The Voice

In the last few months, I tried to get in touch with Harry Kalas. My keeper league was about to have its second annual draft, and I wanted to get him to record the order of the draft to play before we started, like our collection of geeks was a batting order.

If nothing else, I wanted to hear him say all of our team names with that dry chuckle in his voice, the one that was always present when he said names like "Neee-No Ess-Pah-No-Sa." (A flammable pitcher of my youth, but a name that Harry just loved, by all accounts.)

But more than anything, I just wanted to hear Harry Kalas say my name.

You know, like when I was a kid, and Harry was the play by play guy when we were playing pick up games, and I was the star second baseman for my home town team.

The Phillies never followed up, and I didn't mention it to the entire league, because, well, I wanted to get it done for the next year. And so it goes.

Kalas was, after the passing of his equally beloved color partner Richie "Whitey" Ashburn a decade ago, the most loved man in the greater Philadelphia region. He certainly was the most impersonated. At the same league draft, one of my owners spent much of the draft saying off-color things in his reasonably good Harry voice. Even after hours of this, no one told him to stop.

It also never struck me as all that impossible to happen, because, well, Kalas just seemed so incredibly approachable. He voiced the Puppy Bowl and Campbell's Soup commercials, all kinds of other voiceovers, and even did quick one-offs for people's weddings in the Philadelphia area. He knew that he was, like Jack Buck in St. Louis, Vin Scully in Los Angeles, Bill King in Oakland and a few dozen other people who people all over the country can easily volunteer, someone who belonged to the town where he lived and worked.

More importantly, he was comfortable in that. You know, kind of like the team, or at least, how the team should be.

People remember the boyish joy of Kalas's "Outta here!" home run calls, but there was so much more to him than that. He consistently gave you the pitch type, location and speed if he was on the radio, but not on television. He almost never lost track of the outs or count. When the game was close, nothing on this earth could have made him start talking about some other game, personality or topic of debate that didn't have a clear and obvious relationship to the game that was in front of you. He also had that clean and clear virtue of appreciating great plays and performances, regardless of the laundry of the wearer.

Which isn't to say that you couldn't tell when the Phils lost, or played badly, or irritated him. There was always this small note of defeat in his voice, like a 14-year-old boy trying to be magnanimous but failing, when the Phils would blow a game. Players come and players go, but you never got the feeling that winning wasn't great and losing didn't suck from Harry. He wasn't cool, or post-modern, or snarky, or beholden to a catch phrase. When he disagreed with an umpire, it never got over-the-top or grating; he was just, well, too good of a man to go to those places. He was the best kind of fan, and in an age when we multi-task and watch the time commitment on a million things, there was just something timeless and easy about listening to him call a game.

Baseball is, of course, unique in the regard that a dedicated fan will spend hundreds of hours of years and thousands of hours in a lifetime with a long-tenured play by play man. It's possible, of course, to be a completely different person than what you appear to be on radio and television, but Kalas was with us all for just short of 40 years, with his son following him into his profession. (A small note to the Phillies: Hire Todd Kalas away from the Rays. Today. It'll help.) It's very possible that longtime Phillies fans have heard Kalas more than any other person in their life.

And then there was, of course, that voice, lush and warm and consistent, a simple pleasure even when you heard it attached to something that was wildly *not* baseball. My ex-wife wasn't a sports or baseball fan, and she loved his voice. How could you not?

Here is the awful, awful truth about the relationship that you have with the beloved baseball play by play man that you listened to in your formative years. You never really get over his passing. Millions of people are now feeling this way, and for those of us who are of a certain age, we all just got about ten to twenty years older. Which isn't fair, because it remembers his life in sadness rather than in joy, but it also probably can't be helped. It's tough to be positive about loss.

He died today in the pre-game in Washington, a game that the Phillies would win. One of his favorite players, Jamie Moyer, got the win. The last game he called was in Colorado, where last year's NLCS hero, Matt Stairs, hit a game-winning pinch hit home run. His last season, of course, ended with the Phillies' second championship ever, and the audio file of that inning will be on my computer for the rest of my life.

And while it might have been more poetic had he passed on in the off-season, with his last public words being tied to a championship, I'm sure that he's happier having seen a few games more. That, and making sure that the moment that gave the team's fans such happiness wouldn't be lessened by his passing.

A final point: I'm not a Phillies fan, at least not much of one.

But a Harry Kalas fan?

Yes, yes, a million times, yes.

205 Drop: Top 10 signs your NFL team isn't going to do well in the draft

Today's snarky drop, just to prove to you that the site's mission will continue despite the current solemnity, is chock-full of NFL hate. I'm proud of the continuing denigration of my race, and the phrases "dying nerdlings" and "coked-up greaseball." Those should be good for some quality search engine traffic.

Some things, the Lemur does well

Millions mourn, and Jayson Stark does a nice turn.

Harry

WASHINGTON -- Long-time Phillies broadcaster Harry Kalas passed away Monday afternoon after collapsing in the broadcast booth prior to Philadelphia's game at Washington. He was 73.

Kalas, the 2002 Ford C. Frick Award winner, was found by Phillies director of broadcasting Rob Brooks and was immediately taken to George Washington Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. He had been broadcasting Phillies game since 1971. Before that, he was an original member of the Houston Astros' broadcast team from 1965-70.

More on this later. Terrible, terrible, terrible loss.

Today's Uplifing Quote

Then when this kindly world all round the man has been blackened out like a lie; when friends fade into ghosts, and the foundations of the world fail; then when the man, believing in nothing and in no man, is alone in his own nightmare, then the great individualistic motto shall be written over him in avenging irony. The stars will be only dots in the blackness of his own brain; his mother's face will be only a sketch from his own insane pencil on the walls of his cell. But over his cell shall be written, with dreadful truth, "He believes in himself." - G.K. Chesterton

Add whatever political or religious overtones ya like. I just liked the quote.

Five Takeaways From MLB Week One

1) The Dodgers are loaded. When your #7 hitter is a borderline All-Star outfielder (Matt Kemp), that speaks to two points. First, that your manager should have his head examined; Joe Torre's love of Orlando Hudson in the #2 slot seems a little silly to me. Second, that you've got just a sick offense. But we knew that about the Dodge Show as soon as Man Ram signed, seeing how the NL is still where AL stars go to stud. What we didn't know is that the rest of the team was going to have good moments, too.

Jonathan Broxton looks like, well, one of the few reliable closers in the National League. Chad Billingsley looks good to go after off-season surgery and a playoff meltdown. Clayton Kershaw might not be quite ready to lock down your roto championship with occasional control issues, but in the real world, he's just intimidating. Randy Wolf seems like a tolerable filler. They got fairly good starts out of rookies Eric Stults and James MacDonald, which is to say, they got the very real hope that rotation fill-ins won't be a major roadblock. I believe in the set-up men. And this is with opening day starter Hiroki Kuroda hitting the disabled list for what shouldn't be very long.

Finally there's also this: with an upcoming financial tsunami hitting MLB, the Dodgers should be able to clean up in mid-season refueling, especially since the farm system looks like it still has assets. Right now, LA looks like a mid 90 win team to me in a weak division; add a top-line starter, and I'm seeing a team that clinches its division by mid-September.

2) Cleveland is in trouble. In the Tribe's first week, Travis Hafner actually hit like a baseball player. Kerry Wood didn't get hurt, and neither did Carl Pavano. Victor Martinez slugged .600 in his comeback year after the 2008 nightmare. No one blew a save. They played Texas and Toronto, which is to say, they played two teams that shouldn't add up to 160 wins between them.

And they went 1-5, with staff ace Cliff Lee getting lit up for a 9.90 ERA in the bargain. The rest of the rotation wasn't much better, with Anthony Reyes "leading" things (6.00 ERA), Scott Lewis not fooling anyone (8.31 ERA), Fausto Carmoba continuing to not look like 2007 (10.80 ERA) and Pavano really stinking up the joint (81.00 ERA).

Now, they will get better than that in the long run, simply because no rotation is ever that bad, and Lee made too big of a leap in 2008 with his control to completely revert to a non-MLB pitcher. But it's cold, and it's April, when the pitchers are supposed to be ahead of the hitters and the relievers are fresh enough to throw tolerable long innings. If this is what the rotation is doing now, Tribe Fan is not looking forward to the dog days.

3) You might start believing in the Florida Marlins. The team with the best record in MLB for the first week of the year (at 5-1 with Atlanta) may not continue to get All-Star production from new third baseman Emilio Bonifacio, but they will get quality starting pitching all year, and this Hanley Ramirez fellow is pretty good, too. Even the bullpen looks better than advertised, with old Oakland stalwart Kiko Calero looking hale and healthy, and Matt Lindstrom shaking off his scary WBC injury. (That's a joke, folks: the WBC had no scary injuries, mostly because everyone was scared poo-less by the spectre of a WBC injury.) The division is still murderous, and the Fish have no pockets to speak of, but when Josh Johnson is just another arm in your rotation, you are freaking loaded.

4) San Diego is a mirage. The division leader at 5-2 started the season at home against weak teams (and yes, San Francisco still counts as one), with no breakout offensive players that I'm buying from last year's punchless wonders. Heath Bell certainly looks fine at the end of games, and Chris Young and Jake Peavy are more than acceptable, especially at Petco, but what you have with the Padres is basically a pitching park version of the historic Rockies franchise -- a team that is singularly incapable of winning enough games on the road to be a factor in any race. They are still going to be under .500 well in advance of a mid-season sell-off, and Peavy is still on his last go-around in SOCal.

5) The Yankees still aren't built for October. In the first week of the year, Robinson Cano has shed his career-long pattern of stinking it up in April. Joba Chamberlain didn't get hurt. Neither did Johnny Damon or Hideki Matsui, and at this point in their careers, that's news. Jorge Posada looked like the old-time Jorge Posada, which is a huge difference over the 2008 model, and not to be expected from a mid-30s catcher with a lot of wear and tear. (Remember, as well, that Posada has an extra year or more on the books from all of the post-season play.) The bullpen has been, more or less, what it always is.

And when they lose a game, as they did yesterday to the Royals, it all comes back with a vengeance. Xavier Nady may not be mortally terrified of the wall the way that Bobby Abreu was, but that doesn't mean he's actually, you know, good defensively. Brett Gardiner in center field might have wheels, but man alive, he's got an arm like a wet Johnny Damon; when the Yanks start both of them, Jeter's going to need to run halfway to the warning track to take the cut-off throw. Jeter, of course, hasn't been a good defensive shortstop for so long that even Yankee Fan is starting to concede the point. Cody Ransom might be the worst player in MLB right now with a starting job, which just goes to show how thin the organization is, and has been for years, behind the brittle older stars.

The rotation looks much improved, and the offense, especially if Cano and Posada's first week can be believed, looks dramatically better than last year's quiet Achilles heel. They'll be in it all year, especially if Boston or Tampa suffer injuries (especially the former; Tampa still looks to me to be the pick of baseball's best division).

But tell me, Yankee Fan -- which of your teams was good in October? Right, the ones with a killer set-up man that caught the ball at every position, with useful spare parts on the bench. Now, does that describe this team... or the 2005-2007 one-and-done teams?

205 Drop: Top 12 old-time MLB traditions that didn't last

Today's link stars longtime blog obsession Carl Mays, pictured here in the middle of his windup. I want you to imagine being an MLB hitter. Now, take away the helmet. Next, play the game without the benefit of artificial lights, with games frequently extending into the twilight hours. The next move is to exchange your clean new regulation baseball for the same ball being used for the entire game; if it goes foul, fans throw it back in. Step four is to have the infielders and players on both teams mark and scuff the ball to their heart's delight, for the benefit of their pitcher, especially if they get an early lead.

Finally, put it in the hands of a monster like Mays here, who was one of the hardest throwers in the game. He'd come at you underhanded, and was a thoroughly unpleasant son of a bitch, in that he frequently led the league in hit batsmen.

Oh, and add this little bit of knowledge to the table: in 1919, Mays *killed* a guy on the field, Cleveland's star shortstop, Ray Chapman. He also got to stay in the game, still pitching like that, for most of a decade. He won championships for the Red Sox and Yankees, and was a teammate of Babe Ruth.

I guess what I'm saying here is that when your grandfather tells you that you punks have it too soft, believe him.

Oh, and click the link for some of my finest race-based humor in many a moon. I was feeling ornery, children. Special points to anyone that can successfully point out the real ones amidst the Kom O 'Dee...

Wear an ugly jacket

A quick list of why golf can actually be fun to watch, if only when spring is in the air and we haven't seen so much of this as to be bored (yet)...

1) A former caddy who doesn't speak English wins after scrambling from a place where people like me hit the ball

2) An old white man faltered, breaking the hearts of all of the other old white men who had to be happy once that uppity Tiger Woods failed

3) We didn't have to watch the Augusta club officials have to fit that ugly thing around Phil Mickelson and his man boobs

4) Watching the reaction shot from the families of the players that failed, knowing that Dad's just had a life-defining failure

5) Getting to watch the Lemur and others talk about how wonderful the tournament was, knowing that no one remembers the ones that Tiger doesn't win

You Play To Win The Games Of Yesteryear

Word out of Kansas City that the Chiefs, fresh off bringing in Mike Vrabel in Scott Pioli's severance pay package with Matt Cassel, is now adding Zach Thomas, because the 34-year-old had such a fine year last year in... Dallas?

Between this move, the Brian Dawkins signing in Denver, and the Jeff Garcia signing in Oakland, and it's clear that the AFC West sees the road back to respectability as coming from the judicious addition of quasi coach-players from the East.

So, Chargers, who will you take to make sure that you keep pace with the other terrible, terrible teams in your division? I'm thinking Jason Taylor to come in as Shawne Merriman insurance, assuming that you can just don't impinge on his off-season dancing and male modeling...

One More Moment From Boston's Sunday

Classy, Ray Allen, classy. Note also how Anderson Vareajo, who will flop in the face of a strong breeze, goes nowhere under the sharp elbow to the nethers. I'd rather leave it to the reader as to why that is, but my own personal theories are that Sideshow Anderson *liked* it... or that Allen just has such form on his groin elbow that you just have to admire it, really.

I am shocked, shocked...

to discover the Red Sox getting into it with a baseball team in mourning, and for Josh Beckett to be in the middle of it all.



I'm not saying that Bobby Abreu is never at fault, but that was more than a little questionable. Oh, and major ups to Mike Scoscia for also continuing to be a heavy flow of a man, and to the NESN announcing crew for having no idea why anyone would be mad at someone like Beckett...

Golf Tee Times Now Being Taken

Tonight in Toronto, the playoff-bound Sixers dropped their fifth in a row, this one to the going nowhere Raptors. Toronto led for most of this one, despite playing people like Quincy Douby (he wasn't good enough to stay with Sacramento), Patrick O'Bryant (wasn't good enough for the, um, Warriors) Joey Graham and Anthony Parker. And it's not like the Sixers had nothing to play for, either, as the entire second tier of the Eastern Conference has been stumbling to the finish, and more than giving everyone repeated opportunities to avoid the Big Three of Cleveland, Orlando and Boston in the first round. The loss cements the 5 spot for the Heat, who will enjoy the Hawks like nobody's business.

I get that teams get tired in April, and that guys on 10-day contracts (like, well, Douby) can seem like world beaters. However, this Sixers team is a flat-out terrible matchup for the Cavs, don't fare much better against the Magic, and won't show up on the road in Boston, either. Their best and only chance to get to the Final 8, which matters on some level, just because plane crashes do happen, was to draw the Hawks in Round 1, and have Andre Miller wear Mike Bibby like a cheap suit.

Instead, Miller threw enough bricks to open a warehouse (he started 2 for 14), the team continued to look like it had no clue what to do without Thaddeus Young on the floor, and the age-old bugaboos -- three point shooting and from the line -- overwhelmed one of those periodic Samuel Dalembert Cares games. I love Lou Williams, and he might be the best bench guard in the league this year, but when he's your best guard, it's not going to end well. For a team that gets to the free throw line with strong penetration, you just wish they'd, well, make more of them. They made a late run, as they almost always do because they do have heart, to cut a 14-point fourth quarter lead to 4, but didn't make the plays in the last two minutes to avoid their fifth straight loss.

I'm not really all that bent out of shape, though. Without Elton Brand doing much of anything this year, and after a coach firing, the home town team will still make the playoffs and presumably care enough to make someone break a sweat. With Young back next year, and Marrese Speights a year older, they should be better again. Coach Tom DiLeo might be more effective with a training camp. Of the principals, only Miller appears to be in any danger of being on the downside of his career.

And yet, well, there's just no excuse for losing to a kitten-soft team like the Raps, even on the road, when you need the game and they don't. When they find themselves losing in the first round when this could have easily been the year when they made a small step forward... well, it matters. If, for no other reason, than what it says about their prospects in 2010 and beyond. Losing five in a row to equal your worst stretch of the season in April... well, don't give Philly Fan much grief for not selling out the building in Game Three of their playoff series, OK?

Respect His Authority

Today in Cleveland, you wouldn't give the visiting Celtics much of a chance. They were facing the Cavs, who were a mere 38-1 at home this year. They were without their best player, Kevin Garnett. And they were facing LeBron James on a nationally televised game.

On the other hand, being down 31-9 at the end of the first quarter is a bit much.

The Cavs wound up running layup drills with confetti buckets in this one, winning 107-76 in a game were James didn't have to play most of his 30 minutes.

What does it mean, really, for the upcoming playoffs? Probably not much, although one wonders if Garnett's return is going to matter very much if Paul Pierce is going to unfurl more 4 for 17 games. You just have the feeling this year, after watching James more or less put both hands around the MVP award and crush it like an anaconda, that the playoffs could just be a coronation until we get to the finals.

He even has a bench now, since Darnell Jackson gives good minutes, Joe Smith can defend, Wally Szczerbiak can shoot and Ben Wallace now sits. With Delonte West and Mo Williams providing very good support from the back court, and Anderson Varejao finally getting the starter minutes he deserves (welcome to the conscious world, Mike Brown!), it's hard to see how Boston or Orlando really touching them in a seven game series.

And as for the Finals, it's clear that the Lakers have an open path now that the Spurs have lost Manu Ginobili for the year. Honestly, it's really hard to see how that the Rockets are supposed to win playoff games while relying on Ron Artest, the Blazers before they have any real experience, the Nuggets without any real defensive talent, or the Jazz with the same old half-court offensive issues and road ineptitude as previous years.

So, well, it's up to the Celtics to detail the LeBron Train, and who knows, maybe they can summon up last year's memories to get there. But, well... Garnett's good and all, but is he really that much better, to make up 22 points in a quarter and keep the game without reach?

Why You Don't Pay For Saves

Every year in every fantasy league, some guy overpays for saves, and almost always winds up losing his league over it. Fantasy analysts say it, but especially in keeper leagues, it's hard to get away from it: don't pay for saves. And yet, since you have to have them in all likelihood to win your league, you wind up, well, paying for saves.

While all of the selected numbers presented below are just for the first week of course, they're still fairly educational. The following eight closers were all reasonably well regarded before the draft as owning their jobs, in decent situations, and in home parks that weren't bandboxes. You wouldn't want to stake your life on any of them being absolute lockdown options, but if you had them for not so much, you'd feel OK about your team.

Or, well, not.

Brandon Morrow -- 2 saves, 10.13 ERA, 1.88 WHIP.

Brian Fuentes -- 2 saves, 12.00 ERA, 2.40 WHIP.

Kevin Gregg -- 1 save, 13.50 ERA, 3.50 WHIP.

B.J Ryan - 0 saves, 21.60 ERA, 4.20 WHIP.

Troy Percival - 1 save, 9.00 ERA, 2.00 WHIP.

Kerry Wood -- 0 saves, 9.00 ERA, 3.00 WHIP.

Jason Motte - 0 saves, 15.43 WHIP, 3.00 WHIP.

Oh, and I own(ed) over half of this list in various leagues, which explains why I'm noticing this with, well, some enhanced interest.

The lesson, as always: I'm an idiot.

For no reason

Nick Adenhart was a 22-year-old starting pitcher for the Los Angeles Angels. He never appeared in a police blotter, didn't say anything dumb in front of a microphone, had no public persona of being a drinker or a cheat or anything else but a reasonably talented prospect. The Angels gave him the ball for their second game of the year against Oakland, and he worked six shutout innings despite struggling with his career. The Angels wound up losing the game.

The next day, Adenhart was killed in a traffic accident.

When someone dies at such a young age, especially a person of means like a professional athlete, the brain searches for answers. He must have been involved with something that brought him down. The perils of not distancing yourself from bad associates. Personal demons that we want to romanticize on some level, because evil is always romantic in the abstract (and ugly and dull in reality).

Adenhart didn't have any of that. He just got killed by someone operating a car, with a history of drunk driving who seems to have been drunk at the time, who then fled the scene. The suspect is being tried It could have happened to anyone. It just happened to hit someone working a famous job.

And it serves as a bit of a reminder, really, that there are no guarantees in this world, and those decades that we all think we have in front of us are just illusions. We all know this intellectually, of course, but having the emotional kick added to things is what makes it all so unsettling.

And so it goes.

205 Drop: Top 10 sports complaints that make you sound old

Today's link helps you be a tiresome crank that's filled with youthful piss and vinegar. Later on, it'll just be vinegar.

Oh, and just because my brain always plays this routine when we're close to the holiday, and I clearly need to double-dip on the sacrilegious when I seem to be one of the 50% of people actually going to work today, albeit on the slowest train of the month... here's the more than occasional word of wisdom from site hero Bill Hicks. Happy holiday!

Rabbit talk

From the frequently great Web comic "Medium Large." Worthy of a bookmark, and your continued patronage, especially if it keeps your wife away from late nights at the book club. (And yes, if you click on the images, the pictures get big enough to actually read. Kind of.)

Access

I was reading something about the death of the American Newspaper as it relates to sports the other day, and seeing how this is the kind of thing that we can spend too much thought on, let's have it, shall we?

Frankly, this blog exists on some level because I didn't continue sports journalism as a career 15+ years ago. The money just wasn't there, and by the money, I mean any money: starting salaries of $18K a year when you have college bills to pay would have had me sleeping in a car and not eating very often. Add minority hiring considerations (no complaints: the field should be as diverse as the participants), my own bad timing (the Bush I Recession) and my choice to spend my '20s chasing the music dream, and it's clear to me that the road not taken was correct. I get the same kick of creation from the day job (I'm in online advertising) without the same worries of Justify Your Economic Existence that journos are now overwhelmed by.

But, well, still. There's a reason why newspapers refer to the sports desk as the Toy Department, and that's because it really is possible to love your work, all the while knowing that you aren't going to, say, see the victims of violence and disaster as part of your 9 to 5.

Independent of the jealousy that some people might feel over making a living from writing about games, there is a strong and growing disconnect from the public to the people in the press box. As athletes get better and better at saying very little (seriously, the next person that overhears Tiger Woods saying something interesting might be the first), and the technology improves to the point where the television feed is showing you more than what the people at the stadium are seeing, the value of the hack working his or her sources and being in the locker room every day fades.

Plus, there's also this. As a 21st century sports fan (also known as someone with more of a mercenary interest than a pure fan one, thanks to the existence of casual gambling via fantasy leagues), I'm really only interested in the personal stuff if it gives me an edge in the real world.

Take, for instance, the case of Brian Dawkins, clearly the most beloved defensive football player in Philadelphia for his generation.

I know, thanks to locker room scribes, how much Dawk cared about being a team leader, and his relation to the fans. We know the origins of his spasmodic pre-game dance routine, and why he occasionally leaped around the field like he was trying out for the Wolverine role in a blaxploitation superhero movie. We know how he'd speak in tongues without resorting to profanity, and how this was a manifestation of his religious faith.

But I do not, at least not definitively, whether or not he was very good at his job anymore, or whether or not the Broncos made the right move in signing him at age 35.

My eyes tell me that he's not as effective as he used to be, and the Eagles problems in covering the tight end are also a very strong hint that they had to move on. And since I've never met Dawkins and don't have to worry about him or his teammates freezing me out if I trashed him, the only retribution I might face for my ungratefulness for his decade of outstanding service is from a nasty commenter.

The people who covered Dawkins on a day-in, day-out basis had a lot more on the table. And they were more or less quiet on the subject, just as they are on most matters of personnel assessment. I heard about Dhani Jones writing poetry and William James changing his name; what I didn't hear was that they were horrible at being football players, at least while they wore my team's laundry. And so on, and so on.

Why? Because, well, they are too close. If it makes me hurt to rip Dawk, and I've never set foot in the Eagles locker room or had more access to him than anyone else with a remote control, how much would it suck to have to write that sort of thing when you consider him something of a friend? Or that you might need him to comment on something else the week after you write your glue factory piece?

Journos are an ornery lot; if you tell them that they are compromised or complicit, they read that as corrupt and go into full shock and awe response mode (assuming they decide to give the criticism any thought at all). They are also frequently uncovering things that are of real value, if only for the fact that 90% of life is showing up, and they show up.

But to answer the questions that people like me (and if you are reading this, that also includes you) want answered, you may be better off with an obsessive geek that isn't so knee-deep in the underbrush that he can't see the forest for the trees.

And, well, as much fun as it was to learn about Dawk's quirks... well, I care more about his performance. And always will.

So how much value does that access have, anyway? (Oh, and if you want to extend this to our regrettable political coverage, please go review the entire sordid Judith Miller incarceration. This kind of thing isn't limited just to sports...)

205 Drop: Top 10 sports I will never care about

Today's list is chock full of hate and derision, and with luck, I'll get seething comments of outrage from Lacrosse Guy, because that's just my kind of fun. Seriously, is there any sports fan or player more irritating than Lacrosse Guy? You can just smell the entitlement and self-righteousness coming, can't you? I'm like a kid at Christmas over this, and that doesn't even count the hope that Rugby Fan or Women's Basketball Creature will get into the fun. (Not much hope for arousing the ire of Nascar Fan, though -- they are all too busy making sure the bunker is stocked now that Obama's in charge.)

Tiger's missing rivals

For fifteen years now, Tiger Woods has been going to Augusta, GA and mostly treating the course and field as if it were his own personal bank. Given that his knee seems fine now (hey, there was something about him that wasn't perfect after all!), the only bet before this tournament is Robo Beast against the Field, and as usual, you're better off with the beast.

Now, the actually interesting thing about this is that we've had more than enough time and money to actually develop some actual competition for him by now. At this point, you'd think that some other golfer (or, well, many other golfers) would have picked up the pace and actually hit some weights, since part of the advantage of being Tiger is that he's actually very athletic, at least in comparison with the usual collection of bloated sacs that make up a tourney field. You'd also think that, given that The Feline One has made enough money to fund his own Buick Bailout, that some other elite athletes would have taken up the sport, in say, high school and college, and started to bubble their way up from the Q-School.

But what has happened instead is that Tiger has competed against the same old tired hands of his generation, with no clear rival stepping up to the plate, or young gun making him sweat it out by outdriving him by a couple of clubs, the way he used to do to people when he was just coming up.

What are left with is the following.

1) Woods is just that singular and unique a talent, that like Jordan before him, his very presence and competitive intimidation just makes the existence of rivals laughable.

2) Woods hasn't really inspired new people to play golf, so much as to just watch it.

Personally, I'd go for option 3, which is to say some of both. Besides, even if you are inspired to take up the game to be more like Tiger, you still need clubs and a place to play. But your mileage may vary...

She's gonna be my...

NSFW/K potty mouth that amuses me muchly today, and by heaven, if you're going to make cock rock, have more than a little bit of self-consciousness about it. Get down with your bad self.

205 Drop: Top 12 signs that you really haven't been following baseball

The drop today is for you, provided your head is swimming with the numbness of trying to get caught up in the upcoming MLB season. Especially since the brave new world of MLB involves the Phillies being terrible, and baseball being played during snow.

Yes, it's snowing outside as I write this. I can't tell you how much I miss California...

Your Annual Women's Basketball Post

So, um, UConn won every game this year and it wasn't close. (Oh, and nice move to call them the Lady Huskies, rather than the Husky Bitches. That would just be wrong.)

Which leaves us, really, with just one question.

Can we have them play against the UNC men now, seeing how that game would be at least entertaining for a minute or two, unlike the championship games?

How You Get To Be The Bengals

Step 1: Compile a roster of talented malcontents.

Step 2: Watch as said malcontents self-destruct, mostly because they can't stay outside of police cars.

Step 3: Lose a ferocious amount of games while more or less quitting.

Step 4: Hire Cedric Benson to show that you have not learned your lesson.

Step 5: Sign Tank Johnson, who on top of not being sane, also isn't very good.

Seriously, people of Porkopolis, do you still watch this team, or are you just waiting for the owner to die first?

Yoko Romo gets his eight miles of fame

Just to prove that he knows how to make the money, here's Eminem's latest, which is tangentially acceptable to the blog for his backhanded swipe at Tony Romo. It's just a darn shame that in three years, we'll have to be explaining to people who Romo was. (Also, sadly, probably Em.)

Oh, and Em? Thanks for leaving Donovan out of it. He ain't got no beef with you.

The A's Open Without Steam

When I was in that scorched earth middle ground before becoming a college graduate, it really wasn't a good time. College for me was like a prison work-release program, because I was paying my own way with multiple jobs and escalating debt at a school (Syracuse) that kept raising the tuition rates to the point of scandal (up over 30% in my three years there).

A good chunk of the school are composed of very wealthy kids, as it's kind of the upstate party school for NYC and Long Island swells. I lived alone, didn't date (no time, no money, no car, no hope), and basically gritted my teeth through 33 months and 2 degrees. I'm not in touch with anyone from those days, and I wound up getting a newspaper journalism degree just in time for the Bush The Elder Recession. Probably for the best, given what's happened to newspapers since then.

Don't worry, this is all going somewhere sports-related.

The Shooter Mom goes all out for holidays. Halloweens get elaborate themed decorations. Christmas was always a big deal, even if the year was thin. And when her kids got old enough, she'd ask them what they wanted a couple of months before the event, just long enough so that you more or less forgot about what you asked for, and were thrilled when you got it. She's great at this.

One year during this time frame, she asked me what I wanted for Christmas. Seized with a dull work ethic and no better ideas, I asked for interviewing clothes. Ties, Suits. A briefcase. An iron and ironing board. While hoping, in the back of my heart and not nearly out loud enough, for a guitar, because I was deep enough into music to want to try my hand at it.

Come Christmas morning, I dutifully unwrapped my presents and realized what a colossal mistake I had made, to have drained the fun out of Christmas along with every other day of the year. Everything was exactly what I had asked for, and I still own the briefcase, 20+ years later. And peaking out at the back of the presents, there to possibly save me from the unrelenting decades of Not Fun that were to come, was a big present. A suspiciously large, rectangular but also mildly triangle-shaped box... the guitar! YES!

It was, of course, the ironing board. (The Shooter Brother, for the record, got me a Les Paul the next year.)

Which is more or less how I felt last night as I watched my all-new re-tooled now with actual offensive players Oakland A's look like the same old weak swingers as the past few years, in an Opening Day loss to the Angels and the ever-dominant Joe Saunders. If your fantasy baseball team is hurting for pitching, just start streaming against the A's now, and thank me later.

You got the sensible shoes of Jason Giambi not being able to catch up to anything fast. The briefcase of Matt Holiday looking more or less out of place with the other pieces. The ironing board of Nomar Garciaparra not catching the ball at first base, which is to say, not being able to man a defensive position that his bat couldn't carry five years ago, when he had a pulse. And the nice enough ties of starting pitching of Dallas Braden giving up a laser bomb to Howie Kendrick, who might escape the label of Failed Prospect if he only got to play Oakland enough.

So, um, woo, baseball's back. Yay. Maybe my fantasy teams won't stink, because land a'goshen, it really looks like my real one will. Again. And even if it doesn't, the ownership will pull the chutes in June and send out anyone of worth.

Now, if you don't mind, I've got some laundry to do. And maybe these ties can hold my body weight...

205 Drop: Top 10 reasons why the NBA should let division winners pick their opponents

Today's list touches on a recent D-League innovation, where the division winner gets to pick their first round opponent, rather than simply taking the lowest draw. I can't advocate this highly enough for every league, particularly if it somehow leads to a #1 that really hates the #2 calling them out in the first round.

The list is snarkier than that, but really, this is a fantastic idea.

One Step Away

With the signing of nomad QB Jeff Garcia, the Raiders continue their 21st-century tradition of sucking up the wretched remains of Niner Nation. It's Garcia's fifth team (phew!) since leaving the Bay Area (Cleveland, Detroit, Philly, Tampa), and while he's 39 and only signed for a year, it's not like you can't imagine him not getting the job away from JaMarcus Russell.

Seeing how it's the Raiders, it doesn't really matter, because it's not like they are in the NFL...

But it does open up the possibility of something we're all hoping for here in Blogfrica, which is Terrell Owens eventually circling the drain (what, you really think that Buffalo will be his final stop?) and winding up reunited with him in Silver and Black.

If and when that happens, expect more tickets to be sold to the press conference than the games...

Not Quite The Outcome They Expected

Today in Baltimore, the Orioles managed to tag the Yankees with a thoroughly satisfying 10-5 Opening Day loss. It had the following highlights:

> CC Sabathia getting pounded when he threw the ball in the zone, and not being in the zone often enough, including a bases-loaded breaking ball walk to a lefty (woof!)

> Cody Ransom, the cut-rate third base replacement for Alex Rodriguez, booting a ball and going 0-for-3 as part of the team's strong tradition of much worse than replacement level players for their brittle and aging stars

> Caesar Izturis getting a fan-aided home run (not quite making up for Jeffrey Maier, but hey, still fun)

> Damaso Marte not getting the left-handed out that they desperately needed, which means that we'll get another week of stories of how the Yankees need another starting pitcher so that they can move Joba Chamberlain back to the bullpen for set-up work... because the richest team in baseball can't find anyone to get outs who isn't famous

> Mark Teixeira getting booed like he was a local who spurned the Orioles for more money, which is well, what he did (and frankly, given that Peter Angelos still owns the Orioles, I can't really blame him)

Now, as much as I enjoy delighting in Yankee Freakout, it's just one game. Sabathia has never been a fast starter for the year. They might get Rodriguez back by late April, and while he won't be the same guy he's been, he won't be Cody Ransom, either. Hideki Matsui went yard today, and that's an extremely useful thing. Robinson Cano had a hit and two walks today, which means he's already had his hottest April ever. The bullpen probably isn't this bad.

But if they somehow lose to Koji Uehera tomorrow? Muhahahee.

Congratu...... zzzzzz..........

Congratulations to North Carolina, who won their ninety-fifth national championship in mens basketball tonight, making the city of Detroit even sadder than usual. Which, considering the employment situation in this state, is really saying something. They were so hoping for a win tonight, so they could tip over some cars that would have to be replaced.

UNC had the most first half points (55) in finals history, and the game was so very exciting that fourteen people who didn't live in Carolina, Michigan, or have money on the game watched. Seven of them stayed awake until the end!

Oh, and just for my right-wing friends... Obama had the winner all along. Not the rest of the final four, but the winner.

Now, I have just one more thing to say to college hoop and all of the people that watch it: go away, and don't bother the rest of us for another 10.5 months. Especially when your tournament was about as exciting as watching paint dry. (I'm sure that our man in Chapel Hill, Dirty Davey, will have something to say about all of this, provided that, as a Carolina fan, he even notices when his team wins this thing.)

Blogrolling Is Unsportsmanlike And Hilarious

Researchers in Brooklyn have recently given a single dose of an experimental drug delivered to areas of the brain critical for holding specific types of memory, like emotional associations, spatial knowledge or motor skills.

The drug blocks the activity of a substance that the brain apparently needs to retain much of its learned information. And if enhanced, the substance could help ward off dementias and other memory problems.

As soon as they can market this stuff to rid me of, say, the end of the Eagles-Patriots Super Bowl, or the Jeter Play in Oakland, I'm there. With a credit card, cash, or my vital organs. I'm easy that way.

Here's my early choice for Sports Blogosphere Story of the Year: a soccer team was punished for unsportsmanlike behavior when one of its players passed wind during a penalty kick. No, I'm not making this up. And the only follow-up question that I have... was the penalty for the sound, the odor, or the fact that the player probably thought it was, in the words of the team traveling secretary, "Freaking hilarious"?

It’s been more than 8,000 years since humans first domesticated cows. But it wasn’t until last month that somebody noticed a defining feature of cattle at rest: Like the needle on a compass, they tend to point north.

German scientists analyzed 308 herds that had been photographed by Google Earth. According to the researchers, nearly two thirds had a north-south orientation, which strongly suggests that livestock are sensitive to magnetic fields.

Today's fun but almost completely useless fact does, at the very least, explain why Cub Fan sets up his tailgate the way he does...

MLJ with a fun list of notable names that didn't make an MLB roster this spring. I'm sure the A's will wind up giving Chad Gaudin a job again, and that he'll be better than a lot of guys in the bigs.

Nick at IWS has the fearless idea that Matt Holliday won't do well outside of Colorado. Seriously, if you didn't write this during the spring, you weren't allowed in Blogfrica. I'd say more about this, but my A's are getting shut out by Joe Freaking Saunders, so clearly I'm doomed.

And This Is Why I Gamble

News out of San Antonio tonight that the Spurs' Manu Ginobili, who I've been waiting patiently on for most of the year to try to get the boost that I need for my fantasy team, is done for the year with a stress fracture in his leg.

It's a weekly moves league, so I'm looking at zeroes now from Manu's spot during the most important week of the year. I was hoping to hold unto my third place standing, and not lose money from being in the league.

This, after the out of the blue injury earlier in the year to Amare Stoudemire, which more or less killed my chance of winning the freaking league.

I have no point here, other than taking very little solace in the fact that the Spurs are as dead as my fake team...

Oh, this will work out well

In Miami today, the utter geniuses who run the Nationals have decided to take what might be their most talented hitter, and clearly their most unhinged, and put him on the bench. That would be Elijah Dukes, whose past history includes a trade away from the team that drafted him (Tampa), mostly because of, well, the assault and battery.

But hey, they must have a really good reason to make this fine fellow ride pine, right? Well, sure. I mean, it's not everyday that you get the chance to play Austin Kearns. Oh, wait, actually, you do, because this is what Austin Kearns has done in the past three years of use in MLB.

2006 -- .830 OPS on 537 ABs, .265, 24 HRs and 86 RBIs

2007 -- .765 OPS on 587 ABs, .266, 16 HRs and 74 RBIs

2008 -- .627 OPS on 313 ABs, .217, 7 HRs and 32 RBIs

Let's put it this way; he's held in such regard by the baseball fans of the world, he's owned in 1% of the fantasy baseball leagues in Yahoo. That number hasn't gone up appreciably since it was announced that he has the starting job.

Oh, and he's 28 already. In short, Kearns is lucky to be in the major leagues, assuming that Washington qualifies, let alone have a starting job. I think we all know that when you have diminishing returns in three straight years, and now hit like a backup catcher despite playing a corner outfield position... well, you shouldn't be in a starting position. Ever.

Here's Dukes, by comparison.

2007 - .709 OPS on 184 ABs, .190, 10 HRs and 21 RBIs

2008 -- .864 OPS on 276 ABs, .264, 13 HRs and 44 RBIs (oh, and also 13 steals, which is half of Kearns' lifetime total)

Dukes is also 5 years younger than Kearns. Now, why did the Nats go this way?

Well, Kearns outplayed Dukes in spring training.

No, I'm not kidding.

Um, since when does a few weeks of at bats trump many, many years of non-production, let alone the vast difference in potential that being four years younger and in the major leagues involves?

Not to put too fine a point on it, but Dukes is actually talented. He'd have to be to make up for his past history and other fine moments of Mensa membership. Kearns? Maybe five years and many, many injuries ago, you make this move. Today, it starts as dumb and, if the Nats are very, very lucky and Dukes has somehow added some composure to his makeup, goes no further.

And in other news, the Nattys got the stuffing pounded out of them by the Marlins, with Kearns going 1 for 4 with an RBI, and Dukes registering a pinch-hit strikeout in ninth inning of what wound up being a 12-6 Natty loss.

I put the over/under on some kind of Incident at, oh, three days...

205 Drop: Top 12 signs your favorite MLB team isn't serious about winning

The list today at 205 will make you wonder why Opening Day matters, or maybe just make you think of "Boom Boom" Tommy Hume.

OK, maybe that's just me. (And damn, Hume was better than I remembered.)

Don't Do Drugs, Or Listen To Music Made On Drugs

Two minutes of why taking heroic amounts of acid isn't a good idea, from your old pal Syd Barrett. (Who's Syd Barrett? Why, he's the original frontman of Pink Floyd. Who's Pink Floyd? Ahh, shaddup, ya lousy punks.)

Get Used To This

Last night in Philly, the defending champions lost to the restocked Braves, as Derek Lowe was sharp and Brett Myers continued his unfortunate first-inning home run pattern by giving up three shots that were so vicious, they might have been directed at his spouse. (It's funny because it refers to actual real life abuse!)

These things happen, even on national television and on a night that was so nice, it hardly seemed possible that it was early April, and I've got no further point about that. But let's look at the ninth inning, where Bobby Cox brought in Mike Gonzales to protect a 4-run lead.

- E. Bruntlett doubled to deep left
- J. Rollins flied out to deep right, E. Bruntlett to third
- J. Werth singled to left, E. Bruntlett scored
- C. Utley walked, J. Werth to second

At this point, three out of four men have reached base, about as good a start to an inning as you could hope for, especially when Eric Bruntlett and his career .315 OBA leads off with a double.

But then, well, this happens.

- R. Howard struck out looking
- R. Ibanez struck out swinging

Because, well, Ryan Howard has a career .314 OBA against left handers (compared to .412 against right-handers) and strikes out (gulp) over 40% of the time he sees them. Ibanez has a .323 OBA, but at least puts the ball in play, albeit without power (.734 OPS to .849 for right handers). And that's your ball game.

On Saturday in an exhibition game, the Rays beat the Phillies when a right-handed power hitting outfielder, some guy by the name of Pat Burrell, went yard. Mr. Burrell, who oddly enough seems to have a highly involved history of playing for the Phillies, has a career OPS of .950 against left-handers, and really would have been a better fit in the lineup last night, rather than have, well, three lefties in a row.

Perhaps new Phillies GM Ruben Amaro can give manager Charlie Manuel another right-handed bat to help balance this situation. Because, well, it really looks like in the current lineup, you'd have to be a complete idiot to not throw every lefty you have against the Fightin's. Especially in the late innings. I mean, I'm just the guy who writes for a remarkably unpopular sports blog, and I can see how really stupid it is to have that much of a platoon shift...

The True Champion... Revealed!

The NCAA claims that the basketball "champion" will be the winner of tomorrow night's match-up between Michigan State and North Carolina... but that seems to leave some folks out.

After all, the Terrapins of the University of Maryland are the only team to have played BOTH the Spartans and the Tar Heels this season... and the Terps WON BOTH GAMES.

Now--I'm not saying that Gary Williams has a claim on the title. Of course, that would be crazy. After all, Maryland lost a few games of its own... including to one team which played neither UNC nor Michigan State, but who would logically seem to deserve the crown more than Terps, Spartans, OR Tar Heels.

The TRUE college basketball champion of the year is none other than... the Morgan State Bears.

Gutless

Today while I'm banging out the week's list work for 205th (yes, those will now be coming on an every weekday basis; check back for the links as they go live), I had the Suns-Mavericks game on. Phoenix is three games behind for the 8th spot, which Dallas holds, with six games left to play. So you're expecting a desperate Suns team, ready to give their best effort and get the win that will prolong their season.

Instead, um, they did this on "defense": 81 points on 30 of 47 shooting, with Jason Kidd having a season high in assists (16) *in the first half*.

Keep this in mind, please, when you hear anything about how good Shaquille O'Neal is, or how wonderful Steve Nash is as a player. Dallas didn't do anything terribly special in the first half, other than just run an ordinary offense and make their wide-open shots. Nash was never very good defensively, but now that he's in his dotage, he might be the worst on the ball defender in the league. Jason Richardson used to give an effort on defense; not anymore. Grant Hill might be their best defender, in that I actually saw him take a charge in this game. He's also, of course, ancient and frail. I think the Suns miss Amare Stoudemire on defense, and he's terrible at that as well.

Dallas will be a kitten-soft out for the Lakers in round 1, despite their recent competence at home. Phoenix would be as well, but if you were to tell me that any team in the Association, with their playoff hopes on the line, would be giving up uncontested layups and getting beaten down the floor by people like Erick Dampier...

Well, it does remind one how often Shaq's teams have gone out in meek sweeps. When the big man quits, he quits with a vengeance. Enjoy the links, gentlemen.

Hanson-Esque

Folks, I confess, Sean Avery is going to make me start caring about hockey again. But only if I get me some more of this.



Seriously, it's clearly the goalie's fault for being there. That, and being a goalie. Who doesn't want to hit those guys in the head with a stick, really? It's like going to a theme park and not setting a mascot on fire.

Countdown to Clowntime

This note from the Philly Daily News (yes, it is still in operation, you miserable people -- would it kill you to buy a copy?)... ex-Eagle, current Bronco and perpetually conflicted safety Brian Dawkins wants to make his most famous fan happy by giving him his comped tickets when the Broncos play the Eagles next year in Philadelphia.

Now, several questions arise from this.

1) Will the axed fan wear one of those super-stupid split jerseys, to show that he just loves everyone?

2) Given that Dawkins' team will be starting, in all likelihood, Kyle Orton on the road with no running back and a defense whose best player might be a broken-down but very wealthy safety, will said fan change the jersey in mid-game?

3) Can Dawkins give so many interviews the week of the game that Philly Fan winds up booing him not out of disloyalty, but simple fatigue?

4) What mostly innocent utterance from Donovan McNabb will be twisted out of proportion to cause a media circus and sports radio ratings boon?, and

5) When will we know the date of the game, so we can determine whether or not the Broncos will have fired Coach / Soooper Gene Yuss Josh "Cutler Killer" McDaniels?

Hell Hath No Fury Like A College Basketball Coach Scorned

"Those kind of things, that's why Dean Smith told me at 67 he got out. It wasn't basketball. It was the other things. I love the kids, love the game. I don't plan to go anyplace. But I'm going to give a lot of reflection, maybe more reflection than normal, because of that." - UConn men's basketball coach Jim Calhoun

And just a reminder, this was Calhoun less than six weeks ago.



I don't claim to know squat about college hoop, but I do enjoy me some rich old self-righteous white man comeuppance, especially when it makes greater New England Fan all unhappy. Karma's a bitch, isn't it, Jimbo?

Something that needs to be said to UNC Fan

I'm a Syracuse graduate, so I have no love lost for Villanova, despite also having grown up in Philadelphia. So when I watched tonight's UNC-Villanova Final Four game, the only thing I was rooting for was a little drama, and learning whether or not Ty Lawson will be a good pro in the Association. (The answer to that is, well, no -- he's quick but not that quick.)

UNC was clearly the better team in a downright dull game -- seriously, it was obvious for just about every second of action in this one that 'Nova just couldn't compete -- and given that they beat Michigan State by what Spartan coach Tom Izzo referred to as 100 points in the halftime chat, it looks like they're going to win another championship next week.

But, um, there is one small point that UNC Fan needs to be told...

Um, that Tyler Hansbrough kid you've got? I've watched enough of Duke basketball to recognize the type, and he's a Dookie. I've never watched him play basketball before, and I found myself hoping he'd get his nose broken. Any team in the Association that takes him is going to find themselves on a lot of posters. Just saying.

(Oh, and kudos to CBS for recognizing that Horror in 2009 means dragging a woman off screen by her ankles, as they did in their promos for "Harper's Island." First director to do this with a man is going to be a freaking trend setter.)