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...