There may have been more interesting developments in the NBA last night, but our interest lies with Bulls-Heat, so we’re going to hit on that some more.
Chances are good the Heat may win Game 4, and everyone will immediately forget the significance of Chicago’s blowout Game 3 victory, but for now, let’s harp on Miami’s horrible defense by using words like “doom”.
Alonzo Mourning, who returned last night in limited time, wasn’t doing a whole lot of pointing to above.
“We’re still in a dogfight because those guys keep coming at you for 48 minutes,” Mourning said. “If it’s God’s will for us to get out of this series, we have to prepare for other teams whose front lines are more of a factor than the Bulls’.”
More of a factor than the Bulls’ front line? They’re not freat by any means, but Chicago’s front line outscored Zo’s 40-32 last night. Shaq had arguably the worst game of his career.
Dwyane Wade was there, and while it wasn’t the worst game of his life, “quiet” and “ineffective” would be the best way to describe his 26-4-4 line.
Back to Mr. Finger-Pointer. Here’s how you test what God wants. Next game, just come out and sit down at halfcourt. If Zeus wants you to win, then all you need to do is sit there and somehow things will work out.
While some may say TNT excessively showed MJ’s reactions to everything last night in Chicago, we’d actually be into an Jordan-cam that did just that.
Yes, Michael, his kids, his wife, and Charles Oakley were there in his private United Center suite, and his influence should never, ever, be disregarded.
Down 0-2 and arguably playing really good basketball is tough. It’s much like everything you read here – lots of effort, but there’s just nothing to show for it. That goes for both the reader and the writer.
That being the case, Bulls coach Scott Skiles isn’t taking time to listen to Ben Gordon’s complaints about the offense not giving him enough shots.
“He should know it by now,” Skiles said. “We constantly are running things for Ben. You can ask any team in the league, and they all would tell you the same thing.”
“It’s something he’s going to have to get over. He needs to face the personal responsibility of what he needs to get done. … It’s an opportunity for him to learn a good lesson at this time of year.”
What’s that lesson?
Perhaps getting benched for tonight’s Game 3, which is back in Chicago. Replacing him would be Luol Deng, who is an allegedly better defender and also more foreign, which fits in better with the werewolf Andreas Nocioni.
Either way, we don’t see the Bulls taking a game from the Heat, no matter who’s playing. There are also rumblings that Tyson Chandler could see minute number one of the game, which would balance out the fact he makes $10M per year a bit. What this really means for you is you get to read Ben Gordon’s name is roughly 1400 different trade rumors this summer, half of which involve Kevin Garnett and/or Jermaine O’Neal.
As we like to do, let’s bring it back to us. We’re six posts away from our 1000th post – seven if you count the thousandth one. That means the sixth is 999, and the next one is 1000. We can’t tell you much about what’s going to happen, but we can tell you a little.
Seriously – we know we mess around here a lot, but we’re totally dead being for real – nothing will ever be the same here again.
We all know about Tony Parker rapping. Shaq, too. Most of you probably remember Allen Iverson giving it a go, and even Kobe Bryant took a turn, although that was buried more than most for some reason.
Chris Webber apparently lays down beats on actual hip-hop albums under an alias, and that may be common knowledge, too.
However, did you know about Jason Kidd’s “What the Kidd Didd” from 1994? Can you handle lyrics about dishing to Jamaal Mashburn?
How about Gary Payton’s “Livin’ Legal and Large” of the same vintage?
Did you know Dana Barros and Cedric Ceballos once teamed up and dropped “Ya Don’t Stop”?
Brian freaking Shaw?
They’re all here, thanks to the XXL Mag blog. Click and listen. While AI is pretty bad, for our money, Kobe and Jason Kidd are by far the worst rappers ever. Not just in the NBA, either. Like, ever – out of everybody.
(Great find while doing the juice card – if you had your juvenile delinquent years in the 90s like we did, you’ll love this website.)
((Thanks to MrJones for the tip, and no, you didn’t break any rules.))
Celticsblog is keeping busy by imagining what might happen if certain players end up in Boston this summer. Today is Carlos Boozer day.
How boring is Pistons-Bucks? Need4Sheed goths out Andrew Bogut.
Tony Parker called his annoying girlfriend old.
Click here to play the absolute lamest online game ever, courtesy of the Miami Heat. How’s this get put online? Doesn’t someone look at it when it’s done and realize it’s not fun, slow, and stupid? Nice suit.
If you were wondering why Dwyane Wade shaved his head, it’s ’cause daddy did that to him once.
(For the record, we’re not big on players changing their iconic looks. MJ looked like MJ his whole career, minus the Wiz years. It’s why we love that AI keeps his arm sleeve even if he doesn’t need it, and why we’re against Kobe changing his number. It also makes us wonder how long LeBron keeps the headband.)
Peja is a gametime decision for the Pacers tonight.
Chris Webber joins the TNT crew tonight. Great choice – for all the questions about the guy;s legacy, he’s one of the most well-spoken, intelligent guys in the NBA.
For all you Macedonian readers, NBA Macedonia.
Looks like they’ve been around a couple of months, but we just now stumbled onto this new Mavericks blog.
(If you haven’t figured it out yet, if you link to us, we will find you.)
We don’t want to make fun of the Bucks after the Pistons’ easy Game 2 win – they’re an eight seed going against the best team in basketball – what do you expect?
It’s not like they’re doing something specifically wrong or they’re not trying. Fact is they’re just not good enough to compete in the playoffs with a team like Detroit. Detroit knows it, Milwaukee knows it, and you know it. It’s a boring series with an inevitable end.
Times like this, all we can do is yank quotes from a young foreigner and make fun of them.
“When we have lapses defensively, then we start throwing rocks at the rim,” said Bogut. “It all goes downhill at once. We don’t get stops and they score and we come down and shoot up rocks.”
Now, there’s a few different ways to go with something like this. Allow us to walk you through them.
1) You can Photoshop Andrew Bogut shooting. Take the ball and replace it with a rock. It’s steady, if completely obvious. Nobody’s going to link to that, but the regular reader looks at it and is probably satisfied.
2) Another option is to make up some outrageous story involving rocks and Andrew Bogut. Maybe something about how he really means something else, and this is his Australian-ness coming out. The you flip it back around and say that “rocks” actually mean “boulders” in Australia. It’s funny because boulders are just big rocks, so the whole paragraph was obsolete.
3) There’s the combo option. That’s when you say something like “Well, rocks are heavy, wouldn’t a stack of magazines be easier?” and you Photoshop Bogut shooting a stack of magazines.
4) Your final option is to give up and list all the ways you thought about going with this before realizing they’re all pretty mediocre and not worth pursuing. Finish by linking to another blog that you should be reading because it looks like the dude is about to snap, and we feel bad for enabling.
Last night was pretty amazing, and not just because of People Magazine explanding their list to 100 Beautiful people. (Surely we make that cut-off!)
Not only did Kobe Bryant stay within this new-style Laker gameplan, taking only 24 shots, but LA managed to win the game in convincing fashion. Kobe is all Mr. Team now, and it’s fascinating to watch.
“It’s just reading the tempo of the game,” Bryant said. “Reading the defense and attacking teams as a unit. What we did this season, everybody was … trying to learn the offense. [Coach] Phil [Jackson] and I both knew I was going to have to shoulder the scoring load. In the playoffs, everybody has a rhythm for the game. We just started attacking teams as a unit, not me going out there and trying to score 40 or 50 points.”
Who is this guy? Charley Rosen says this is all the work of Phil Jackson, and we agree to some extent. While Kobe is the one out there actually playing, someone had to convince him to be the opposite of what he’s been for his entire life. We still think the Suns take this, but it’s a whole lot more interesting now.
Lost in all the fervor over winning, is the ongoing mystery of Kobe’s new number. Dude won’t talk about it until after the season. We’ll take that as a positive, because we suspect we’ll be forced to make fun of him for it, and frankly, the whole respect thing is more fun, at least for today.
One of our favorite things to do is hear the opinions of Laker fans about almost anything – last week’s kick-ass Smallville, Tom Cruise, bacon, politics.
While Boston fans are unreasonably bitter and feel some strange sense of entitlement, Laker fans are, for the most part, quite simply passionate. It often leads to unbelievable levels of irrationality, but when it’s rooted in passion, it’s pretty readable stuff.
Take this LakersGround thread about Kobe’s number change announcement, already sitting at nine pages long as of this word-writing thing. Two things to note here – the various reasons people are attributing to the change are cute – Shaq, math, and Michael Jordan are all allegedly involved. (Some people are flat-out angry – also lots of fun.)
The other notation to make – apparently a longtime poster known as “da ocho” knew about this last week, and created a thread about it. It was quickly dismissed as nonsense and deleted. Well, he’s back in the new thread (one of four, btw) to drop completely unimportant yet totally awesome tidbits, as are a few others who are allegedly in the know.
pjiddy wrote:
If it’s just for jersey sales (which I’m sure it is), that’s kind of sad. C’mon, Kobe. You’re better than that.
da ocho wrote:
there are other reasons but that is one of them.
it should also be noted that the league is NOT happy about this.
msb212
It is not about Jersey sales. Kobe has a deeper, more personal reason. You will respect his decsion and reasoning…I was told Kobe chose 24 to remind himself to get the most out of every minute, 24 hours a day. Every time he looks down, or looks around the arena at everyone wearing the number 24, it will remind him to give everything he has to that moment.
If that’s what it is, we implore you stop now, Kobe. You’re not on an episode of American Idol. If you actually come out and say these words or anything 70% close to them, we’re not going to be able to control ourselves any longer. All the 81-love we’ve built up after years of hate will crumble away in a mess of Photoshopping madness.
There’s also a very, very vague reference to this possibly being about he and Vanessa losing a baby, in which case we’ll feel like an ass, but that’s nothing new, so blah-blah-bleh-blah.
Hopefully he talks about it tonight before the game, which will allow us to get right to work.
In preparation for tomorrow’s Game 3 in Chicago, the media in Miami are dancing around star guard Dwyane Wade’s weird leg cramps.
The team is saying he needs to be more closely examined, which for some reason hasn’t happened. Are there no hospitals in Miami? We know there are some in Chicago, so maybe they can have someone look at his cramps there. Are they really afraid this is actually related to a muscle tear?
To get serious for a sec, Detroit Bad Boys brings up an interesting point – just like “fast” or “explosive”, “not the pinnacle of health” just might be a facet of Dwyane’s game, also.
If/when Wade limps into a re-match with the Pistons this year, I hope the national media doesn’t once again act surprised that he couldn’t make it through a seven-game series. I don’t want to sound delusional (I’ll be the first to admit that Wade is a scary-good player when healthy), but it just seems that the public at large has developed a glaring blindspot to an obvious deficiency in his game, which is rare for a player with as much exposure as his.
We’re not ready to go as far as calling Wade a potential Penny/McGrady – we’re actually not even ready to call McGrady a Penny yet – but this is something that bears watching.
As for the many of you who are apparently waiting for the inevitable Caron Butler “Tough Juice” Flexing Juice Card…we’ll see.
Yeah, the guy’s real nickname is “Tough Juice”, and double-yeah, he mocked LeBron after the Wiz won last night, but the fact of the matter is we don’t feel like it.
You can’t make us, short of hijacking us and the site. The chances of that are really super low, ’cause only like three of you know where we live, plus we own big fancy machine guns. So stick that in your juicer and [note: Put a joke here later when you can think of something. Never forget how handsome you are. Also, remember to vandalize that hippy's car later. You left the spray paint in the garage, by the gardening equip. Also, Alias is on tonight. Set the Tivo.]
Nuggets sometime starting power forward Kenyon Martin has been given the boot by the team until further notice for conduct detrimental to everyone else.
That means he’s being a pouty baby, doing stuff like refusing to play in the second half of Game 2 against the Clippers. Nuggets coach George Karl quite obviously hates the dude, also.
“As I’ve said before, it’s hard for me to visualize him actually playing 20 minutes of basketball a game because he doesn’t participate in practice very often and he just wants to play in the game,” Karl said. “That philosophically doesn’t make any sense to me.”
It not our job to be critical or to give our personal opinion on things, but if we were a citizen of Denver, we’d be really excited about Southwest Airlines tripling their flights in and out of the city.
If you’ve never flown Southwest, not only do they let you pick your own seats, but they also crack jokes the whole time, saying things like “Okay, now get off the damn plane!” when you land.
So, if you live in Denver, you’re on steroids, and you’re indifferent about Kenyon Martin’s suspension like the rest of the team seems to be, fly Southwest. Even if you have nowhere to go, you can at least say you did it. Plus, you get to come here and converse with us about it.
