Cavs and Pistons: The Bloodening

All right after last night's great game 4 we officially have ourselves a serious series. Everywhere you look on the blog-o-sphere people are praising the rebirth of LeBron and saying that he's the one. You won't get any argument from me over here at suddenlystruttin either. Bron's jam over 'Sheed, the clutchosity of his fourth quarter performances the past two games and his dismissal of Rip at the foul line are all the stuff of minor NBA deities. What startles me about this series has not been LeBron, nor the fact that Detroit could've been swept all ready if not for two errant passes from Donyell and Hughes, but instead the consistent showing up of various role players coming to BronBron's aid and assistance in his times of need. "Boobie" Gibson was smooth like a classy high end bourbon last night and throughout the series Sahsa has been locking down on whomever he's supposed to guard. For my money the best story of the Cavaliers and the Eastern Conference Playoffs has been the rebirth of Zydrunas Ilgauskas, practically left for dead after his plethora of foot problems throughout the first half of his career, Z has quietly stitched together a decent second act. Now, I'm not a psychiatrist, that's not what I went to school for, but Z has had a fucking rough go of life in the NBA; aforementioned foot problems, being stuck on a shitty team in a city that occasionally makes Lithuania seem very okay and then to top it off you and your wife are cursed with still born twins! Yet, somehow Zydraunas with the plodding sensibility and knowledge of something much older battles on! His the third most productive center this Playoffs behind MemO (surprised!) and a guy named Duncan.

Draft Lotto Ruminations

Portland and Seattle, well, are they going to be around long enough for these picks to really help? From all I've read it seems as though the Sonic's bags are already packed and they're going to be mailing it in for the last season in Seattle. The Trailblazers, though, my, my, how Fortuna has smiled upon thee! I don't think Portland can go wrong drafting either Durant or Oden, I think they'll have a tough time selling Zach Randolph to anyone besides the Knicks and the Knicks don't even need him. The strange thing about this lotto is how much stronger the Western Conference is going to be. With two of the top three picks going to the Northwest Division we're looking at another decade of bigs from the West running the East out of the gym in the Finals. Which is a shame, I was really hoping to see one Conference get Durant and one get Oden. Also, is Kobe Bryant going to leave the Lake Show if the management doesn't make the right moves this offseason? If I'm Bryant I'm thinking to myself, "How do I get the big ticket outta the West and start over in the East?" Kobe as a Knick or Bobcat by 2008? Specualtive but not desirably intriguing.

Those handsome San Antonio Crocodiles...Spurs, I mean Spurs...

I'm starting this piece a few days prematurely in the hope of cursing the Spurs at least into a five or six game series with the Utah Yazz. I fear that this will have little to no effect, for you see the Spurs have the same grim countenance of a full grown reptilian predator, say a salt water crocodile or Komodo Dragon. Yes I despise the Spurs, I find Ginobili to be an irritating jackass who flops too much, Parker a whiny and overrated passer who catches aflame once a series. Duncan, however, has the visage of a calm and cool character beneath which boils an angry and focused basketball warrior. Before the playoffs started I didn't really like Duncan, I felt that he had lost a step and that he'd be knocked around by younger bigs such as Yao or Amare, yet here we are with Tim Duncan showing everybody what's up. Yes, the Spurs are single minded and ferocious like a crocodile.

Eastern Conference Finals: Or who will be playing the Spurs

Tonight marks the beginning of the end for the Cleveland Cavaliers season. The lethargic Cleveland Cavs have stumbled through the playoffs and advanced all the way to the Finals of the Eastern Conference however, much like their dismal 50 win regular season the Cavs have shown nothing but incompetence causing them to be garnished with apathy/pity from their opponents. Perhaps this strategy of garnering so much sympathy from your rivals worked on the weak-minded Wizards and Nets but the Detroit Pistons are serious, universe slaying juggernauts of the East. I see this series being far more chippy than any other series of this whole Playoffs, excepting for maybe the Suns/Spurs of the last round. The avuncular at best Rasheed Wallace will not be in any mood for the antics of Anderson Varejao and I envision the fuzzy visage of Andy's being gouged and spurred with many a 'Sheed based 'bow or piercing, verbal blow. I'd predict that this would a raw boned but brief four game affair if it were not for the fact that one Mister LeBron James has not had an incredible "GODDAM, HE"S GOOD" kinda game all Playoffs long. I look for him to drop 40+ with a side of double digit dimes/boards in at least one game, pushing this series to five games. So call it a five game sweep, it's not gonna matter the Detroit Pistons will win.

You stay classy, Baltimore.

The Preakness was this past weekend and Curlin' won the thing in a very close race, "won by a head," is what I heard a lot of on Saturday night at a bbq. The real drama, hilarious antics and pathetic displays of depraved human behavior were, of course, occurring in the midfield. The great blog, withleather had a blurb about drunkards at the horsey race runnin atop Porta-Johns and this reminded me of a conversation I'd had yesterday with a friend of mine who llives in Baltimore and why he declined an invite to attend the race. "It's just the worst of humanity in a giant field and they're allowed to drink for nine or ten hours. Most of them can't even make it to the post time for the actual race. You can bring in your own alcohol and that's a huge part of the problem." After I stopped laughing at him and chiding him for being afraid to drink with the "Big Dogs" I thought about this and realized what a nightmare this has gotta be. Pimlico race track is really under a financial burden and The Preakness is the only race people show up for. So you've got the worst drunks you can picture graduating college with, and by "graduating college," I mean, "attended community college for a quarter before resorting to baking and selling meth for an income." In any case here's some real live video highlights of drunks, they run the spectrum, from pathetic funny to pathetic scary, it's in there.

PS: If you'd like to learn more about drunks and horse racing, go to your local library and look up "The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved." You won't regret it.

I'm asleep in an Enchanted Freakin' Forest. King LeBron, well he don't give a fuck.

After the past 36 hours of NBA politikin' I was really looking forward to some good old fashioned Bball, and instead found a a pile of poo in the Q. Yes, thanks to the Nets throwing the ball around "all willy-nilly" and eventually finding the bottom of the basket on enough occasions to score more than the Cleveland Floating Turdaliers I discovered not a basketball game and, in lieu, a more shit-tacular game than even the previous in this series of dubious regard/honor. For the team that wins this series, I wish you the best, you're going to need it and your predicament reminds me of a hooker fucking the football team to become the prom queen. Have fun with what the Pistons are going to do, you can tell yourselves you've already felt it, but you'll still be shocked. Meanwhile, in the night cap to this awful eve of pro ball, The Suns overcame nothing and now face the ugly prospect of having to win for a SECOND time in SA after flubbing things up in the fourth quarter. Honestly, Amare/Boris aren't even to blame, the Sols did not show up in clutch time. They had to face the reality of NO giant offensive and dynamic presence and could not swallow that. somewhere, I know, Gregg Pop is getting rubbed down and jacked off by a call girl of ill repute...Welcome to San Antonio vs. Utah Yazz. The East, as if we should fucking care, is still a cluster fuck. Have fun.

Why hast the Eastern Conference Forsaken Me?

I've been trying to be as patient as possible with the way the Eastern Conference Playoffs have played out thus far. However, after watching last night's turd-o-rama in the Meadowlands; I can no longer turn a blind eye to this pathetic season of dismal returns. Did I not sacrifice relationships with family and friends to watch games in November? Did I not stay up later than I should have to watch late night snooze fests such as Sonics vs. Blazers? And this is my reward? The only series that's given me any pleasure from the East thus far was Raps/Nets where Kidd horrified the Torontosaurus Rexes into a team-wide coma with his patented combo of Triple Doubles and Roundhouse Kicks. Bosh showed a little bit of his grown man in the deciding game six and other than that this ECPoffs has been a huge letdown. If only Stern had the authority or creativity to have piecemealed a squad of Eastern Conference all stars between the Wizards and Heat and then had them play the real and not damaged teams from this side of the Continent. It's been a down decade for all teams east of the Mississippi (excluding Detroit and what, I don't know, Chicago? Cleveland? I'm not counting Miami) and I pray that this season is the nadir. Sadly, I doubt this is the case.
Watching the Cavaliers has been a frustrating exercise in futility, reminds me of a teenaged Tony Ritz trying to remove a buxom brunette's bra to be honest. The Cavs are the NBA's equivalent to the Isle of Misfit Toys (don't even try to sell me on the concept of the Warriors as this metaphor.) With the Cavs you've got a morose prince(LeBron) who has already outgrown his empire and is waiting for the King (Mike Brown) to die, following that you've got a rogue's gallery of straight up Goofus's. "Did you hear, Eric Snow was the fucking hero last night!" "No shit!" "Yeah, he locked down Vince, who's been struggling with depression after his pinky finger died." So yeah, we're all in for a shit-tacular Eastern Conference Finals involving the Detroit Uber Korbball Spielers against LeBron and his set of Zydraunus, Drew Gooden and Sasha. Actually watching Sasha get the minutes and skilled up playing has also been radical, so that and Kidd are the highlights of these early round bouts of fussiness. Time for the whole Eastern Conference to stop being so fucking colicky, I pray for this.
The problem hasn't been only that da ChCago Buuls (attempt at spelling how many Chicagoans pronounce the name,) and the Toronto Raptors are the only fun teams to watch play. They both, in different styles, play a refreshing approach to the game. The Bulls with their stiff D and abillity to run uptempo or play half-court ball actually remind me of a lesser version of this year's Utah Yazz team. Granted Detroit is showing the Bulls how far they've still to come and why you shouldn't bring a knife to a gun fight; but with the Bulls you get the impression that they're going somewhere in the right direction and that Skiles and Paxson have more than half a brain twixt the two of them. With the Raps I'm not sure what to think. I've been in love with Bosh since he was a frosh at GT in 02-03 and watching him develop in Air Canada is a pleasure. I think Colangelo is a great GM and that he's going to do something else insane this off season, ala Villanueva for Ford last year. Whether the move will be an improvement for next year remains to be seen. But Bargnani, Bosh, Ford and Jorge will be able to confuse, flabbergast anybody for at least a season to come (fingers crossed!)

The Jungle be evolvin'!

After the NBApocalypse that was GS over the Mavs in round one, we're now all witnessing the power and might of a Boozer who's developed into the crane and wrecking ball of "the best l'il team that could" since those upstarts from Duke beat UNLV a generation ago. After Boozer and co. had finished off Houston (the team where my NBA soul lies) I was pissed off about T-Mac getting culled from the herd ofsuperstars and sacrificed to the hyenas of the media; who, to their credit, were more interested in making a human interest story than another choke job rag out of the fallen angel. But at the same time I couldn't deny the fact that Boozer was the best player on the court the last four games of that series and that JVG was outcoached like nobody's business by Yerry Sloan and his Yazz assistants. And now we have the prospect of a Utah Yazz team that has grown up hard and grown up quick and are on the hunt for Western Conference scalps. The scary/enjoyable thing about this Yazz team, unlike your father's Jazz of the 1990s is that they can run a bit and still play J. Sloan's "lock down, fuck a motha up for looking at you wrong" style of Defense---> with a capital "D!" And although both The Golden State Baron's and the Arizona Sols have chances to turn things around, I'm a pessimist at my heart, and am expecting the Spurs and Yazz to close these shops down for another year. Heck, Nash and Boom Diddy may even retire and spend the rest of their lives swimming in pools and drying off with hundred dollar bills. In any case, all I'm trying to say is that I'm willing to accept and do expect a SA vs The Beehive State and want to see Boozer make Duncan look bad and for Ginobili to trip all over himself.