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.

hold your applause

as it turns out all it took to shut down the mavs streak and make dirk shit himself was just the GS warriors and baron davis on some "i'm back like spandex" shit. that alone should tell you something about what we here at lamar blogom (WE ARE NOW A DOTCOM, REKOGNIZE) value so much about the lower half of the nba.

it ain't that the lower half is better on some metaphysical level. actually fuck it, it is that the lower half is better on a metaphysical level. you heard it, i said it. as pmac, who's the spirit animal of lamar blogom said "fuck discipline, i'm tryna see bangtime." word to god on that. no-one in their right minds would rather watch some spurs-jazz play-executing bonanza than the suns and the warriors banging on each other in a serious point scoring contest.

there are those who would argue by gloryifying the pursuit of points (and bangtime) above all else, i'm ignoring a key aspect of the game; defense. they would also argue that i'm merely a novice at basketball appreciation or whatever the hell it is that they call it. those are the same people that will argue that ball is jazz, and that jazz>hip hop and everything else. these people are not to be trusted. any man that holds bruce bowen above josh smith is not a man to me. as in "i don't like you go away please now thank you."

anyways, so that was a totally different thing. back on topic. the point mainly is that sheeit happens in the regular season that makes people all irrational and goggly and sweaty under the collar, etc. don't believe me? check the eastern conference from last year. while the pistons were rolling up on the eastern conference, beating ass like everyone was redheaded step-children the miami heat were laying in the cut maybe popping their head out for short stretches. then, playoff time and they are not to be denied. as good as the pistons looked in the season, the cavs damn near broke their backs--and would have if lebron had half of a supporting cast-- and the heat jumped all over them like nobodies business.

well now we fast forward to a few days ago and we see the mavs absolutely tearing up assholes like it's shower time in prison and we think to ourselves "how are any motherfuckers even about to talk about this team can be beat?" but recognize that playoffs literally are a second season with some tangential relationships to the first. even those fade into the deep background after the first round, and then shit might as well have not even occurred when it comes time for the finals. ever heard of shaq?