Portland Grants A Wish

Golf Clap, Portland

Today in Portland, an MLB soccer team did a solid for the Make A Wish Foundation, giving 8-year-old Atticus Lane-Dupre getting the chance to play against his favorite team. That's awesome, of course, and the Make A Wish people might be your single best reason to think well of humanity this week. But I wanted to go one step further, and put the spotlight where it belongs -- on the crowd.

Something like four to five thousand people skipped out on their lunch hour, made it over to the stadium, and cheered their blessed heads off for Lane-Dupre and his teammates. Look at the looks on the faces of these kids, all of them; it's not just being in a big pitch, or playing against players they may look up to. It's the presence of a big crowd, acting just like an ordinary game or better, that puts this over the top into unforgettable.

The Make A Wish people have done similarly great stuff in the past -- I'm a huge fan of the superhero story from Seattle three years ago, where 350 people and the city really went way over the top -- and will continue to do so in the future. But nothing beats thousands of people going in for the chance to make the dream this wildly real. Portland gets rapped for twee hipsters and overly earnest granola people, but if this is what a community filled with those folks does, bring it on. They rule.

Hack and Lose

Fear The Beard

I don't mean to overreact to this, because it's just one first round playoff game between two teams that won't likely advance past the second round, due to injuries and inexperience. There's a very real chance that no one will think very much about this later, and that I'm just dealing with the ugly visual of a Game Five loss at home, in a series that now looks like it has historic possibilities for choking.

But I can't shake the idea that tonight was the night where the Oklahoma City Thunder and Kevin Durant saw the other side of the arc, and started down, down, down. If this team spirals back to mediocrity in future years, or if Durant starts giving off more of a Dominique Wilkins or George Gervin vibe (i.e., the great scorer who doesn't get the ring)... well, this is where Scott Brooks and the Thunder stopped playing beautiful basketball, and started trying anything possible to win. And his team knew it, and lost all enthusiasm for the game.

Down in the fourth by a reasonable but not insurmountable amount, the home team started intentionally fouling Rockets center Omer Asik, a 57% shooter. Asik made 9 of 14 down the stretch to make the questionable strategy fail, as it usually does. Durant had 36, but didn't score in the fourth, picked up a technical, and deferred to guys who didn't make shots. The crowd died and the series went 3-2, Thunder, and right now the Rockets are totally playing with house money, with James Harden (7 of 8 from the arc tonight while fighting off the flu, ye gads) looking like the best player on the floor.

The problem with hacking isn't what it does to your defense. In general, a possession in basketball is worth a point, and the real edge of the hack is that it happens in seconds, and effectively 15 to 20 seconds per possession back the game. But the real issue is what it does to your offense, since you never get the ball in open court, never face the opposition's worst defense (since they can use the timeout to swap offense for defense), and usually can't overcome the karmic wound that you are inflicting on the game.

There's a reason why last minute possessions usually fail. Guys get off rhythm, over think the shot, have too much energy to make the jumper long, and just know that this is wrong. TNT showed iso footage of Durant just walking through a set with 3:40 left and down 9, and they were absolutely right to do so. When your coach doesn't think you are better, you tend to believe him.

The loss of Russell Westbrook is immense, of course, but RW should not mean that the team's interior defense should go to hell, or that the other Thunder players should all look scared as hell, especially at home. Kevin Martin was terrible on a near comedic level, and the simple fact of the matter is that when you go to intentional hacking, you are basically admitting that you have a lesser squad... and right now, it's hard to argue with that assessment.

And if Durant can't get a single win in four chances against an 8 seed, independent of any other factor... can he really be as good as we think he is?

Game 6 is Friday, in Houston, in a series that just fascinating, if not all that much fun to watch. I'd expect something big from Durant, but at this point, the Thunder might be better off if the big game came from Serge Ibaka.

If You Can't Beat 'Em, Hurt 'Em

Kosta Koufos Kontact

So the post-game discussion following the Warrior loss in Denver in Game Five of their first-round series is how the Nuggets might have cheap-shotted fragile shooting star Stephen Curry. A few quick points about this...

> Curry's ankles are such an obvious issue that I'm kind of amazed that anyone would wonder why he'd freak out on trips and hacks. He's also picked up a scratched cornea from Corey Brewer at the tail end of Game Four, and it's obvious that the Nuggets have no one that can stop him in this series. Brewer and Iguodala can stop the penetration, but can't take away the jumper. Lawson can run with him to the cup, but doesn't offer the shot-blocking that's been the Nuggets' only out for his shot. And doubling him has just led to a dunk and three fest for his teammates. Which leaves thuggery and mind games as the last refuge of the desperate, and it just might work. Game Six will be interesting.

> No one thinks the hard fouls of today are really hard fouls, because (a) older guys always think their era was more physical, and (b) the game just isn't officiated that way anyway, and won't be, ever again. If you want to see hacks and more hacks, go watch the college game in some of the major conferences. The NBA attracts the best talent in the world, and chooses to create an environment where that talent stays healthy and has the chance to impact playoff games. And amen to all of that.

> Warrior coach Mark Jackson isn't a stranger to long series, and knows how gaming the refs works; he also had to know that his team isn't so much better than Denver, especially after the loss of David Lee. He kept Andrew Bogut on the bench even when the Warriors got the game down to five in the fourth quarter, and had a puncher's chance at the early closeout. That's because, for good or ill, he was hedging his bet more than a little that Game Six is his real chance to end this; he doesn't really think he was going to win three in a row here, and the last two in Denver. Especially after falling down big in the first half.

> Curry's post-game tete-a-tete with a mouthy Nugget Fan is also a little telling, as was Bogut's two hand shove on the resurgent Kenneth Faried in the second quarter that got a flagrant foul call. It showed me that (a) the Warriors know where their bread is buttered, and could easily take a few shots at Lawson in Game Six, and (b) Curry can be taken out of a game by the mind games. It makes sense; he doesn't really have playoff experience to date, and has to be touchy about injury issues. But that kind of stuff matters a lot more at road than at home.

> Seriously, if you aren't staying up late and/or DVRing these Western games, you really aren't seeing the game at its highest level. The ball movement, the finishes, the shooting, the talent... well, there's just something wrong with the idea that these games don't matter more than, say, Hawks-Pacers, Knicks-Celtics or Heat-Bucks. Half of the Association's first round series have been wild fun to watch, and 3 of those 4 have been way out West. Like, well, usual...

The Grizz Grizz

Ground and Pound

Tonight in Los Angeles, for the first time in the series, the road team won, setting up Memphis for a closeout game... but honestly, this was the closeout game. The Clippers never truly threatened, despite getting a huge amount of home court calls and a game for the ages from Chris Paul. The Grizz won without anyone really playing all *that* great, though Zach Randolph's game was pretty dominant. The Clipper crowd did all it could, the bench players that won't show up on the road gave real effort... but, well, this series has simply come down to the fact that good big men score a lot more easily and consistently than good small men, and the Clipper guards aren't so much better than the Grizz guards.

If you want to find goats here, it's the Clipper bigs. Blake Griffin wasn't holding his own due to the lack of rebuilding before he suffered a high ankle sprain; tonight, he was less effective on the floor than Lamar Odom or Ronnie Turiaf, which is to say, he was someone you could not put on a professional basketball floor.

DeAndre Jordan is being completely exposed in this series by Marc Gasol and Zach Randolph. You'd think that with his length and leaping ability, not to mention the big past shot blocking numbers, that Jordan wouldn't be such a sieve on Zebo, but that's just not the case. Randolph's just far too crafty to be stopped by sheer athleticism, and Jordan's getting so crushed by Gasol that even when he's off the floor with foul trouble, his mind is still not in the game enough to help his team. When Odom is your best idea at 5, and he's got to somehow operate against the Defensive Player of the Year at one end, and a shooter with range, post moves and passing ability on the other end... well, you're going to lose.

The Clippers still have Paul, and he's still the best player on the court... but Paul's also been very fallible in Memphis, and he just played an amazing game tonight, at home, and never got closer than two possessions in the fourth. This one's over, and if the Grizz keep playing like this, they are also going to handle the Thunder in the next round. (And might have even if Russell Westbrook was still playing.)

The Falcons Want To Vibrate Your Butt

Shaken, Not Moved

You are looking live at a proposed feature to be added to the Falcons' fever dream of a new stadium, and as very, very silly as it looks... I bet it happens, if not now, then soon. Along with speakers in the seatbacks and a touch screen in front of you to order food, complete with a swipe bar for your credit card, just like in the airplane. Or any other place where people with money are stationary and prosperous.

Because, well, how else is the NFL going to get you to pony up for seats at the game? It's pricey, after all, and as soon as any new pleasure palace has this stuff (see the Jerruhsoleum with its Great Big Tee Vee), then everyone's got to have it. Just because it only gets used for a maximum amount of 12 days out of 365 days in the year (2 preseason, 8 regular season and 2 playoffs) means nothing, dammit. The biggest swells in the world sit there! How dare you keep them locked in a 20th century world of actually being part of a crowd, living in the moment, watching the game that's in front of you... when you could be staring at a screen in a very weak recreation of what you probably have at home?

I am a fortunate man: I have watched NFL games in seven different stadiums. (Vet and Linc in Philly, Oakland, St. Louis. Chicago, Cleveland and Green Bay. Most likely in 2013, I'll add Tampa to the list.) The nicest of these places was Green Bay, and it's so not close, I don't really have a second. And the reason why is... Green Bay has history. It has community. It has weight, and heft, and a presence.

And the seats are long bleachers, like you had in your high school, in all likelihood. If you really want to be ritzy about this, you bring or rent a pad.

It's a seat, people. It gets used for about 3 hours, during a time when you really should just be watching the damn game, assuming you aren't so plush that you get bored by being there. (And if you are bored to be there, for heaven's sake, why are you there? Seriously, find something better to do with your money. It's not cheap.)

The horse left the barn decades ago, but honestly... the game's better when you stop trying to give people reasons to stop watching the game. And let them, you know, watch the game. It's a pretty good game.