Fuck Yea[h] NBA

Some afternoon links for this Friday before Memorial Day Weekend. A Friday with no basketball, even as the Clippers/Spurs and Lakers/Thunder played back-to-back at Staples last weekend. Well done Stern.

—Chris Bosh is still out indefiintely, according to Spoels

—Speaking of Bosh, Gregg Doyel at CBS thinks the Heat might be better off without him. Umm, no.

—Wade and LeBron post-game presser after ending the Pacers series. The one with the hot pants.

—Dwight’s claiming he had nothing to do with Stan Van Gundy getting the axe. Even if he didn’t, the perception is that he did, and perception is reality in the world today (just ask the commenter that called me a “passive misogynist,” but I digress)

—Henry Abbott on the “unthinking brilliance” of Tim Duncan. The piece includes a comparison to tennis champion Novak Djokovic and M. Galdwell’s best-selling Blink, if you’re into that sort of thing.

—Sam Amick on Jerry Sloan’s return to coaching (h/t Mr. Ziller). He’s interviewing for the Bobcats slot, which as ESS noted on Twitter, means he’s been living as an eremite for the last year. Seriously Jerry, go talk to Paul Silas before making any final decisions.

—NBA.com’s John Schuhmann on the history of game 7’s between the Sixers and Celtics for the Hang Time Blog.

—More Popovich and Duncan love via Trey Kerby.

—Ian Thomsen on the Celtics’ hopes that experience will trump youth in tomorrow’s game 7 at the Garden (the new Garden, not the old one. Sigh.)

—Adrian Wojnarowski on the Heat’s dominance rolling into the Eastern Conference Finals. Queue eyeroll.

—The always entertaining and adroit Beckley Mason at Hoopspeak on the Miami Heat’s “Occam’s Offense.” If you’re not familiar, Occam refers to Occam’s Razor, a bastardized form of Ockham’s Razor. It’s a philosophical pragamatism named after William of Ockham, a 13th and 14th century logician and Franciscan Friar that birthed, according to Wiki, 

“a principle urging one to select among competing hypotheses that which makes the fewest assumptions and thereby offers the simplest explanation of the effect.”

Don’t worry, a lot of people get confused by it. Basically Beckley explicates the simplification of the Heat’s offense: Isolations for Wade and James and shooters to spread the court (Mason goes into much greater detail that simplification and writes a lot more fluidly than I’m doing here, so go check it out). This probably should have been it’s own post, but whatever. 

—Shoals and a premature Conference Finals Preview for GQ (not Esquire)

[Pic Via]

About those pants, read Dan Devine’s take at BDL, where he breaks down the progenitor of Wade’s playoff style steez. It’s in reaction to Rachel Nichols’ tweeted convo between Wade and LeBron when ‘Bron first saw the pants. To wit:

LeBron: “Damn, for real, those are close-out pants? And the finger sleeve?

Wade: “You gotta coordinate.”

LeBron: “You look like Eddie Murphy in the 80’s.”

Wade: “Eddie Murphy wishes he looked like me.”

So what do you think readers? Does Eddie Murphy* wish he looked like Wade? Or does his perference for all-leather jumpsuits** trump Wade’s fashion faux pas?

Pic via Getty

*You might not be old enough to remember Raw or Delirious

** “Really no dick control at all…”

I didn’t know David Stern was a Sigma Alpha Mu ‘Pledge Master’ at Rutgers University, but it shouldn’t have surprised me. 

J.R. Smith was arrested in South Beach last night for a prior warrant involving his failure to produce a valid license, reports Marc Stein in the New York Post.

Miami Beach police say Smith was arrested last night on a bench warrant for not having a valid driver’s license.

Sgt. Bobby Hernandez told The Post that Smith was recognized on famed Washington Avenue in South Beach. Police originally said that Smith was pulled over while driving a scooter, but after reviewing the arrest report have now said that is not the case. The warrant stemmed from Smith, 26, being cited last year in Miami for driving a scooter without a valid driver’s license.

Smith has until June 26th to opt out of the final year of his contract with the Knicks worth $2.6 million. He’s had a tumultuous time with the Knicks since arriving from China in February. He was fined $25,000 by the league for an inappropriate tweet involving an indiscrete picture of his then-girlfriend Tahiry (former flame of rapper, Joe Budden). He’s also battled with Mike Woodson over his inability to act and dress professionally.

So basically, this quick arrest is just J.R. Smith being J.R. Smith. 

Shaq is too busy enjoying retired life to be a GM.

(via artyucko)

Game 6: Miami at Indiana

They came, they saw, they conquered. The mighty Miami team peopling were praising even as they limped into the postseason, continued their transformation from earlier in the Indiana series. They’ve loudly dispatched the Knicks after blowing an elimination game in MSG, then faltered in the next round against this Indiana team without a real star. They lost 2 of their first 3 and Chris Bosh. People were cheerfully over-reacting and claiming this was the end of the Heat. 

The amount of glee and unrestrained schadenfreude towards this Heat team is unparalleled since possibly the Bad Boys started knocking off the Celtics and Lakers teams that dominated the first half the 80’s. Except, there was something commendable about the blue collar Chuck Daly-helmed collection of badasses, and everyone implicitly agrees the Heat are just a collection of stars too scarred to star on their own, and now they’re might not even be good enough combining their forces (like an under-performing Captain Planet!).  

During the first 3 games of this Indiana series, Dwyane Wade played so poorly and acted like such a poor sport, I was forced to ask y’all* whether he was a douche. The overwhelming consensus was, yes! Now Dwyane Wade had turned into a douche, and when combined with LeBron and his oft-repeated and much-maligned Decision, a patina of douche had formed over the entire Heat team. The Heat will always be the villains, but now they weren’t even very good villains, getting out-played by Indiana at home.

This continued into the first half in game 4, where LeBron played well, but with Wade—the newest douche on the douchy Heat—still struggling. When the second half of game 4 rolled around everything clicked, and Dwyane Wade started acting like the 2006 NBA Finals MVP again; LeBron kept playing like the league’s MVP, and now here we are with them again running away with a series win. Wade just turned in a 40-point game (after LeBron’s in game 4), and they’ve escaped the “S-O-F-T” Pacers.

The Pacers did keep it close. After Miami rattled off a 9-0 run to close the 3rd and take a 10-point lead into the 4th, David West and his “grown man” post play got the score to 83-78, but could get no closer. The Pacers went away from what worked for them when they took a series lead: getting the ball inside to Hibbert and West who could take advantage of a Heat front-court down Haslem and Bosh. Even if West and Hibbert didn’t score, it would open it up for their over-matched guards and wing players that couldn’t stay with the ‘Bron & Wade show. The Pacers’ sloppy 22 turnovers didn’t help matters because once you’re turning it over, the Heat trains starts running, and like most trains, it’s hard to slow down.

The two superstars played like superstars for the 2nd (and a half) straight game: they combined to score 69 points (Bron 28 on 13/24 shooting, Wade 41 on a Dirkian 17/25); they grabbed 16 rebounds (6 for ‘Bron, 10 for Wade), dished for 10 assists (7 for ‘Bron and 3 for Wade) and collected 5 steals (3 for ‘Bron, 2 for Wade). Together, they were an unambiguously dominant duo. Sure Chalmers had 15 and Mike Miller 12 (before he started tossing airballs again), but these two just won on their own both in the boxscore and within the game itself. Even with Indiana sticking with them in the hopes of stealing the game in the end, the never stopped coming.

They both attacked relentlessly, with Wade splitting the double team and knocking down a cornucopia of various bank shots

Or he’d simply going all the way to the rim, take the contact and getting the ball up on the rim for a 3-point play; it was a clinic on how to split the top of the key double team.

Wade was special tonight, and when his mid-range game is flowing like it was in the first half, there’s only 1 or 2 guys that can match that level of excellence (and one of them is his teammate). George Hill would play perfect defense on Wade: pushing him away from the basket and forcing him to pick up his dribble and take a contested 2 outside the paint, only to have Wade hit an off-balance step-back fadeaway that for anybody else would be an airball and a mouthful from the coach, but for him only hit the twine. Special players have special games and this was Wades.

The craziest thing is LeBron had 28 points, 7 assists, 6 rebounds and 3 steals and it felt like just an OK game. Wade and ‘Bron two are scary good when they decide to be. Lets hope for the sake of competition, they don’t decide to be all the time, or perhaps they can’t.

Bron and Wade have played big minutes in this postseason (James played 45 minutes, and Wade and his drained knee 39 tonight) and with the loss of Bosh early, they’ve been playing even more minutes and expending even more energy scoring all the points Bosh’s abdominal muscle stole from them. With all this effort needed to knock out a frisky Indiana team, a team that’s not really a title-contender, will they have enough left over for the Conference Finals?

How are they gonna fare against Boston or Philly?

Final: Miami Heat 105 - INDIANA PACERS 93

The Heat win the series 4-2

PHOTOS VIA

*I’m back talking about Indiana so I can use that contraction*