missing like the fucking o'bannons

this playoff bullshit with all my teams getting knocked out in the first two rounds by some serious madvillainy that i was simply unprepared for. but if you thought for one solitary second that there wouldn't drop some shit on the lottery you were sadly mistaken. or happily depending on the perspective.

seriously i love the lottery; nowhere else in sports do the powers that be take such a serious piss on what happened in the year before. and what is more american than saying "fuck all that past bull; we're looking towards the future. CITY ON A HILL BITCHES."? nothing that's what.

when portland get's the top spot and seattle get's #2 that makes me excited because shit who woulda thunk oden and durant would land themselves in the midst of some crunchy hippy starbux sipping mofuckas? honestly i was so into the possibility that STATlanta would be obligated to draft k durant because he's still there that i borderline giggled with glee at their potential future lineups.

the thing is that these picks should be in the other order. portland is blessed with 2 excellent post players with lamarcus aldridge and zach randolph and seatac has athletic swingmen coming out its damn ears should it resign 'shard. which they should and they should have oden too because that would push them towards perfection.

also, portland would take one small step for mankind toward contention if they added a premier wing scorer like say kevin "spiderman" durant. sure they already have brandon roy kind of filling shit up from the perimiter but if you can add future tmac you take that damn chance because shit--you're going to do some shit.

your playoffs stink

my nba fandom is seriously in the at-risk category. if my fandom were a species it would be: endangered.

the warriors getting bounced was bad enough, although i can kind of rest easier at night knowing that they were done in by a team captained by the kind of hard-nosed visionary that deserves to have won more than zero championships in his career. i'm even willing to look the other way as every single replay showed carlos boozer shoving warriors in the back as he went for rebounds.

THAT'S OK BY ME.

as long as the players themselves are deciding the series, shit i can tolerate the disney-movie-villainy that the jazz call playoff basketball. the warriors WERE like an all-black disney movie, with matt barnes being the prodigy that nellie must save from himself. etc. i'm pretty disappointed in myself that i never saw the parallel sooner but c'est la vie.

on the other hand, the suns were done in by stupidity in the league office. yes, i'm aware that leaving the bench mandates a one-game suspension but jesus h: it's the playoffs. if anything, suspend them for the first game of the regular season or fine the shit out of them but don't take amare stoudemire out of the biggest series of the playoffs. STAT could have saved us from this hellish fate: four teams we can't help but rooting against battling it out for eventual supremacy.

i guess i have to root for the jazz and cavs, but in all probability we're looking at detroit and san antonio taking turns hosting the nba finals. just shoot me.

you think i got all these rings by smiling?

i'm here to say one thing and one thing only: y'all got it all wrong.

in all of our pants-creaming excitement about the basketball devolution, we forgot some shit. what we forgot, and i include myself in this "we" catergory, is that a team full of real hard dudes can shut down some flashy shit just by looking at people wrong. take the second round (no really, i insist).

a couple of really genuinely fun teams to watch, well 1.5 if you're like me and you only enjoy the suns because you always have and it feels wrong to root against them, are getting manhandled but two teams that are full of the type of people that PLAYOFF BASKETBALL are made out of. the warriors and the suns may have captured some of the essence of those showtime lakers, and the warriors even have a black point guard, but neither one of those teams has the balls to duplicate the success of those bygone years.

actually i should retract my statement: the warriors are crazy enough to do whatever they want on the basketball court (except shoot free throws. my theory is that they're bored at the line because they can't dunk it so they miss on purpose to piss off david stern.) but the suns are seriously some snitchin bitches.

note to the suns: this is fucking playoff basketball. you can't be bitching and moaning every time bowen throws an elbow. i never thought i would be defending the spurs, but the suns better just man up and lay the smack down if they even hope to get by these guys. the spurs have some serious old man muscles along with a ton of playoff acumen, and what that translates to so far is a willingness to do WHATEVER it takes to win. if whatever it takes is kneeing nash in the groin, so be it, they'll do it. even though nash has somewhat toughened his image, i just don't see anyone on the suns but raja bell willing to honestly kill someone just to get at a loose ball. and even in raja, that happens only rarely. maybe that lack of intensity helps them get through the regular season, but to win in the playoffs you need to be kind of mentally unbalanced.

nash keeps it too regular for them to be taken seriously.

no fun league

seriously it's time to change the abbreviated name of the nba to the nfl. (no fun league get it? i'm so clever.)

these playoffs, with the noted and notable exception of the warriors--who i fear may be going down in flames after this latest near miss against utah-- are boooooooooring. even the normally exciting suns seem to have a going through the paces feel to them. maybe it's the new "intense" steve nash, but there just isn't the same positive energy around the suns that there used to be. banning diaw to the bench probably affected their feng shui in more ways then d'antoni could have ever suspected, but their pick and roll game is just not doing it for me.

i do have some excuse; they played my favorite team in the league during the first round and are playing a spurs team that is incredibly adept at shifting gears into whatever they feel like. honestly the suns are like a nervous student driver and the spurs have their own gas and brake pedal. this is ridiculous. suns: get out and run for chrissakes before i ball up socks and start chucking them at the tv at random intervals.

the entire point of the suns before this season was that they didn't obsess over execution on offense. they flowed freely and enabled nash to make some insanely lucid and acrobatic decisions passing the ball, which in turn allowed STAT+matrix+et. al. to finish shit at the rim HARD. now, we see them running picks and rolls and the spurs defend them by the book and nash gets his jumpers and there isn't any more thunder. keep in mind as i'm writing this that EVERYTHING I'M SAYING COULD BE A CREDIT TO THE SPURS.

seriously, maybe i'm missing them ole suns just because the spurs have them tied up in the trunk of the car and are going over speed bumps. as i mentioned above the spurs are adept at making people play by their style, so this is perhaps all about that. i sure hope so, and i hope the suns and warriors both advance so we can have the most entertaining nba finals ever. (yeah, the east sucks so i'm pretending it doesn't exist until lebron has at least 1 more awesome game.)

you warriors don't show me nothin'

let the air out of me like a deflated tire. i have to admit that these warriors have turned me into a slavering fanboy like i'm dressing up to see george takei speak.

baron's bullet fedora, nellie coming to a press conference beer in hand, matt barnes' copious tatoos, i love pretty much everything about the warriors. and now, they teeter on the brink of collapse.

in every series, and i said this last time, there is a turning point. it happened last year when the lakers could have closed out the suns, but didn't. now the warriors need need need to seal the deal when it gets back to oaktown or shit could get ugly. but the warriors have the best fans in the game, and draw the most people ever to basketball games. there's strength in numbers like CAN YOU COUNT, SUCKAS? and it seems to me that if any team can close out a superior team at home, these warriors are the ones to do it.

even touched but i'm also concerned: the mavericks survived a sick shooting night by those warriors and won a pretty emotional game. don't even get me started on the refereeing, which included some monstrously shady calls at the end of the game. i think the whistle blew before barrrrrrrrondevean george, and that shit was NOT a foul, no matter the definition. that that was his sixth is pure garbage and the referees should be ashamed that they took away golden state's shot at victory because they were quick with a whistle. yes, i know that it was an intentional foul situation, but they have to know that baron has 5, and that he's not going to foul someone. refereeing is a tough job, BUT GET SOME KNOWLEDGE OF THE GAME.

i'm not even bothering with writing about the east: it seems like it should be exciting, but really the only thing kind of holding my attention is sam mitchell's fashion choices. it just feels like he's a moslem/black panther coaching an nba team from the sidelines. i bet that makes lawrence frank nervous.