It’s Over…

Guess I’ll go ahead and get it out the way lol

This was me last night after watching that crappy performance by the Heat….

 

This wasn’t a hard game to analyze. The story of the game came down to this: 16 turnovers and 20-33 from the line. That’s your ball game folks. Turnovers and missed freethrows come from a lack of focus.

In the end, I’m not going to sit here and say Dallas “wanted it more”. As I’ve stated before, I don’t believe in that. Dallas did what Miami could not do and that’s execute their game plan. This team got outplayed, this coach was out-coached, and Dallas deserved to win this one. I just wished Miami would have gone out with a fight rather than to just get thoroughly dominated on their home floor like that yesterday. You knew it was over when Dirk shot 1-14 in the 1st half and Miami was STILL down by 2.

One of the things that bothered me most, was down the stretch, when Miami needed baskets, it seemed like no one wanted to take control. The ball was moving all over the damn place except to the basket and when it did go to the basket, the wrong person (Chalmers) had it lol If its me and my season is on the line, I refuse to leave my destiny is someone else’s hands and let them make the play when I know I’m better. Maybe that’s the Kobe in me, but wouldn’t you rather see Lebron/Wade attacking the paint rather than Mario Chamlers? I’m just saying….lol

But lets keep this in perspective. Rarely does a team come together and in their 1st go around get all the way to the finals and win it. Boston did it in 2008, but that team went through 2 elimination game 7′s before getting to the Finals. That type of adversity builds confidence and cohesion. By the team Boston faced off with LA, they had played 20 playoff games and had faced some major challenges that forced them to come together. The Heat played 15 games and had never been close to being eliminated until the finals. That’s a big deal and that experience helped Boston tremendously. I think this experience, as much as it stings, will help Miami. Now they see, you gotta bring it for 48 minutes in the Finals. No one is going to quit, even if they’re down 15-20 points, they will keep fighting. this also shows the Big 3 what they need to work on in the summer time. LBJ has to get a post-up game. Bosh has to get stronger. Wade needs to clean up his decision making.

This is the process that teams go through. Heat fans should be disappointed, because you want your team to win. But when you look back at what this team accomplished in their 1st year, with this extremely flawed roster and all of the injuries to key players, you should be excited about what the future holds. Year 1 of their 6 year contracts and they’re 2 wins away from a ring. The future is bright people…

Question for everyone, was this season a failure because they didn’t win it all???

NBA Finals Game 5

“Now or Never!!”

Those were the words LBJ tweeted out this morning. With the Heat staring a huge Game 5 in the face, those words couldn’t be more accurate. Its now or never for Lebron to step up and make his presence felt in these NBA Finals.

So many people are expecting Lebron to go out and light the place up offensively. Yeah that would be nice to see, but I don’t think its necessary. Granted, he has to be more aggressive tonight, but Lebron doesn’t need to shoot 30 times or score a ton of points to do it.

Its crazy how the perception of greatness has changed. We think when a guy is mad or has something to prove, he needs to go out and score 50 to get his point across and silence his critics.

We already know Lebron can score 50, we’ve seen him do that. But tonight LBJ needs to go out there and show why he’s the Best All-Around Player in the world.

I need to see Lebron attack Dallas’ defense and create for himself and others.

I need to see Lebron get inside and mouse these dudes and grab some offensive rebounds.

I need to see Lebron active and all over the court defensively, blocking shots, getting steals.

I need to see him so tight up against Jason Terry in the 4th, that it looks like they’re extras in a reggae video…

I just need to see Lebron be Lebron. Be aggressive, be assertive, and win the damn game!!!

Go Heat!!!

The Frustration Continues

The frustration continues for us Heat fans. I can’t remember a team giving away this many games in a playoff series and winning it. When people say the regular season doesn’t matter I point to stuff like this. Miami did this all throughout the regular season. Its amazing that a team with these players, makes me nervous when they have a lead. They completely forget how to play offense and go to this dumb ass isolation stuff. I dunno if this is Spo calling this stuff but this where a few set plays will help your cause. Heat fans have been screaming for that all season and the fact that when you really need a basket, you don’t have any set plays to run is pitiful. This team makes basketball look so hard. This pattern of losing leads is getting annoying….

But lets gon ahead and tackle that big elephant in the room. WTF happened to Lebron??? He picked the wrong day to go and have the worst playoff performance of his life. This was like Cle/Bos Game 5 all over again. Dude’s head was no where near that arena last night. Not only was he extremely unaggressive offensively, but his defense was turrible too. You can tell when lebron is engaged because his defense is incredible. Last night, not one time did he really get up into Terry. But as far as the offense goes, he was killing me. When I say aggressive I don’t even mean just shooting the basketball. Lebron is at his best when he’s attacking. Not 1 time yesterday did he come off of a pick and roll and look to turn the corner. You could see he was looking pass before he even made his move. Miami CANNOT win with him playing like that. Even when he got out on some semi-fast breaks, he refused to attack, where the Lebron all season and postseason would go right at you and put pressure on the defense.

Dude, if you don’t wanna shoot, fine. But at least be aggressive and create for others. He was basically a 6’9″ 270lb darker version of Mike Bibby. He brought the ball up the court, threw it to Wade and just stood around and watched everything happen, content to be a spot up shooter. He has gained some credit with me with his previous game 4 performances against Chi and Bos, so I’m chalking this up to a bad game. Dude has played 46 minutes a game, so maybe he was tired. But this guy has to come out with some passion and a sense of desperation in game 5. You cannot come back to Miami down 3-2.

What’s encouraging and/or nerve racking is that Lebron has yet to have a signature game/moment in this series. Bosh hit the game winner in game 3. Wade has been dominant. I’m hoping Lebron’s passiveness and sorry ass game 4 performance isn’t what we remember about him in this series.

Game 5, time to man up LBJ…

Heat look to take control in Game 4

How exciting has this series been? Even with all of the ridiculous calls in Game 3, Miami was able to pull it out. D-Wade is back to being his dominant self and he is making the mavericks his b*tch once again lol I don’t see how Dallas can allow that tonight, but I’ll get into that later. Something is irking the hell outta me and I gotta say something.

Before this series all we heard was that Dallas was the most complete team Miami was going to face. Barkley and others said that Miami wouldn’t be able to play the same kind of shut down defense they played vs Chicago, because Dallas was a “complete” offensive team. When they beat the bejesus out of Los Angeles, everyone was talking about all of the weapons Dallas brings to the table.

After 3 games, other than that huge letdown in the last 7 minutes of game 2, Miami has completely shut this team down defensively. So the Heat should get credit for great defense right? Wrong!!! Now its Dirk Nowitzki who has “no help” in this series. He has no help because Jason Terry has a 6’9″ 270lb freak of nature chasing him down like a lion chasing down a gazelle. He has no help because my boy Pedro’s favorite player JJ Barea is being harassed by Chalmers up top and when he gets in the paint, he’s being met early and is surrounding by a swarm of red jerseys. Peja has been a non-factor. In the previous series he was open, Miami is closing out to him and not giving him an inch to get his shot off. They haven’t all of sudden become bad players, Miami defending the HELL outta them! I’ve heard Bruce Bowen, Tim Legler, and Steve Smith give Miami’s defense the credit it deserves. All of these games in the postseason, not one team has scored 100 points on Miami. Its ridiculous that all of these teams are great until Miami bust their asses, then out come the excuses. I’m ready to start a blog called “fuck-all-yall.com” where I hate on all these haters, let me know if you’re down to start it up.

Ok that was lengthy but I had to get that off my chest lol I’m expecting game 4 to be similar to the other games, but I want to see if Dallas traps wade early and often. If I’m Carlisle, I’m not going to allow Wade to beat me. What a decision he has to make, because if he doubles Wade you know what that means…the King gets to play 1 on 1. Its amazing how the media is trying to make it seem as if Lebron is having a terrible series. He’s averaging 20 pts 7 rebs and 7 asts shooting 51% and 44% on 3′s. Wade has the best matchups in this series, LBJ is playing great ball, but Dallas traps Wade, its time to see LBJ in beast mode this evening. He started in beast mode when he dunked on all of France in the 1st half (sorry Mahinmi lol), but the flow dictated that he be more Magic than MJ.

Funny how everyone forgets how LBJ carried Miami vs Chicago and Boston. Now he’s “shrinking” in the moment when he’s actually playing the game the way its supposed to be played.

Heat by 6 tonight, Bosh and Bron, have big nights!

Shaq calls it quits

This shouldn’t come as a surprise, but Shaquille O’Neal announced that he’s going to retire after 19 seasons in the NBA. Looking back at dude’s career, he is definitely one of the best centers in the history of basketball, but then I got to thinking. Where does he rank among the all-time greats? Is Shaq one of the biggest underachievers of all time?

As great he was, dude wasn’t the hardest working guy on the team…ever. I think that’s one of the things that led to the demise of the Shaq/Kobe dynasty. Kobe got tired of dude not taking the games as serious as he did. Shaq is one of the main reasons why today’s players chill during the regular season. They saw that Shaq would coast through the season and then turn it on in the playoffs and win a ring. If Shaq had a great work ethic and cared about the regular season, how many MVP’s and rings do you think he’d have now?

As for the all-time centers list, he will always be behind Kareem, Wilt Chamberlain, and Bill Russell to me. The debate is do you put him ahead of Olajuwon or not. Hakeem won his rings during the MJ hiatus, but one of those rings came in a dominant performance against a young Shaq.

However you feel about him, the Diesel aka The Big Aristotle aka Wilt Chamberneezy aka the Real Superman (stop biting D-Howard) will be missed.

Curious to get opinions on this, should Miami, Orlando, and/or Los Angeles retire Shaq’s number?

Heat go down to the Celtics…AGAIN!!!

As a Heat fan, today I’m disappointed in my team.

I’m listening to talk radio and what not and everybody is missing the point here about yesterdays game. Heat got OUT hustled, OUT toughed and OUT coached. A lot of people have been criticizing Bosh all season, but Bosh has balled out vs Boston. LBJ has balled out vs Boston and shut Pierce down. Only person who has yet to do anything vs Boston is D-Damn-Wade.

When LBJ went out in the 2nd qtr and the offense was run by Wade, dude had a ton of just really bad turnovers. Unforced, undisciplined, just really careless turnovers. He couldn’t even get the team into an offense. 6-17 from the field and all of those turnovers, those look like Mo Williams numbers vs the Celtics. I’m sure Lebron didn’t sign up to play with a $100 million version of Mo Williams. The Heat CANNOT beat Boston without the Big 3 all playing well.

Yeah the refs sucked but that’s how it goes in Boston. It’s always going to be a more physical style of ball in Boston. If the Heat can’t handle that then they’re soft and don’t deserve to win. But that’s why u play hard in the regular season so you can get homecourt advantage in the playoffs.

Now there were 2 non-calls on LBJ that were 2 of the worst I’ve ever seen. The KG one and then on an offensive rebound Pierce just straight up grabbed LBJ with two hands. Unreal how there wasn’t a foul called on either play but Big Baby was getting calls like he was Patrick Ewing in the post, get da f*ck outta here lol but this is the style you gotta play to beat them in Boston. LA has done it and the Heat need to figure out how to do it.

As for coaching, Boston starts pressuring LBJ with Rondo full court. If I’m coaching, I say to Doc Rivers: You put Rondo on LBJ, we make you pay. Why let them dictate the pace of the game by allowing rondo to pressure the ball? If u see him on LBJ let Mike Miller handle, Eddie House, anybody and you throw LBJ into the post and punish that little bastard.

Also, I know Miami fans love the Warden but his offensive game is in solitary confinement. He should not be on the floor in late game offensive situations. KG basically let that dude run free. If you don’t go with Big Z at center then go small and have Bosh at Center and LBJ at pf because Joel Anthony is no threat offensively. Wasn’t like he was stopping anybody anyway, Perkins had a great game and Big Baby came off the bench and punked the Heat too.

At the end of the day, James missed a ft, Miller missed a wide open 3, but I’m looking at D-Wade for this.

When is he going to step up and stop letting Boston punk him???

BTW shout out to Big Baby for giving me some type of comic relief during an otherwise crappy Heat performance

“Tiger Woods, you suck!”

Those are Tiger’s words from the Masters, not mine. But I watched the Bridgestone last week and I can’t remember seeing Tiger Woods look that bad on a golf course. And while he went under par yesterday for the 1st time in a long time, he still isn’t “Tiger” and the haters and critics are still out for blood.

As a Tiger/golf fan, this has been a rough year. I’ve always enjoyed watching this guy take people’s hearts out there on the golf course. This year though, dude is just a shell of himself. He’ll have a few good shots here and there to remind you of the talent he has, but for the most part he just…well…he just sucks.

I was trying to find a similar situation in sports where someone’s game has fallen off so bad. I keep thinking about when MJ came back from baseball rocking the 45 jersey. Dude was still good but he wasn’t MJ. The image I keep seeing is when Jordan turned the ball over in the late stages of a playoff game vs the Orlando Magic in 1995. Nick Anderson stealing the ball, MJ falling on the floor looking mortal. Horace Grant celebrating on the United Center floor…

I was in high school when this shit happen. It was like seeing Superman die or something. Dude even switched back to the 23 jersey for a couple of games, didn’t matter, the Magic got in that ass.

The articles that came out after this were amazing. People were saying MJ was done, he would never dominate the NBA again, Bulls dynasty over…

The similarities are really similar in my eyes. Tiger is rocking the 45 jersey right now and the criticism of his golf game has been over the top to say the least. No matter what he does, I think this year is a lost year for him. Even if he wins the PGA this week, its akin to MJ busting a double-nickel in the Garden. A flash of brilliance, but that wasn’t MJ and this isn’t Tiger.

What I’m curious to see is if Tiger has the mental toughness MJ had. MJ came back in the 95-96 season with a point to prove. The Bulls won 72 games, Mike won MVP, and they swept the Orlando Magic on their way to the NBA title.

Can Tiger get his life and game back on track? Will this be a bump in the road to all-time greatness or has Tiger’s game permanently fallen over the cliff? I’m thinking he uses this year as motivation for 2011. I think we see a rejuvenated, motivated TW next year.

So get your shots in now haters, kick the man while he’s down, TW will be back in his rightful place as world’s best golfer.

3rd Posterization of the Preseason

Welcome to another edition of “You Got Bammed On!”

I know its the preseason but anytime you get dunked on people are going to talk about it. Well today’s victim is former All-Star Jermaine O’Neal. The Raptors brought him in to help provide an inside presence and help Chris Bosh down low.

Jermaine’s been oft injured lately, so I’m sure his timing and everything is all off. Knicks 2nd year forward Wilson Chandler decided to help O’Neal get back on track…

That was nice! All in Jermaine’s grill.  think the Raptors can be a player in the east if O’Neal can be anything near his all-star form. But today, he’s just another dude that got bammed on.

Bonus Euro Edition: Browsing around youtube and came upon a Josh Childress highlight, check it out: If knew how to say DAAAAMMMNN!!! in Greek I’d say it right now. That was pretty nasty!

BC

2nd Posterization of the NBA Preseason

I guess D-Wade saw what Bill Walker did and wanted a piece of the action. Playing against the New Jersey Nets over in London, Wade showed the international fans how he got the nickname “Flash”…

I don’t know about you, but my reaction to that dunk went a little something like this…

But lets talk about the victim here. Young Yi Jian Lian, who was a top 10 pick in last year’s NBA draft, is still getting abused. Let’s take a trip down memory lane and look back at what happened to young Yi in his 1st NBA action last summer

Somebody need to tell young Yi to get up out the way and stop getting bammed on. Its not a good look my friend.

BC

1st Posterization of the NBA Preseason

If you follow high school hoops, the name Bill Walker isn’t new to you. You already know that he’s boys with O.J. Mayo and the duo spent their high school years terrorizing and dunking on little kids. Damn!!!

Walker eventually took his high wire act to Kansas State. After sitting out a year because a torn ACL, he teamed up with Michael Beasley last year and tookK-State to the NCAA’s where they upset his boy Mayo and the USC Trojans.

I thought Walker was a 1st round talent, but questions about his knee dropped his stock. Walker was drafted in the 2nd round by the Boston Celtics and if you had any questions about his knee, I think he answers those here on this highlight Goodness Gracious!!! That shit was off of a drop step!!!

The best part of this highlight is the bench’s reaction lol they knew it was coming. Half of them jumped with Walker as he rose high above the square to throw it down. Its pretty obvious Mr. Walker has served up a couple of dudes in practice. The squad is just glad he’s dunking on someone else for a change. 

Couple more angles for you

I doubt he gets much playing time for the defending champs, but I’ll hit you all up with my Top 5 rookies to watch this year a little later.

BC