Sorry, Phoenix fans

May 1st, 2008 | Posted by PostmanE

Since 2004/2005, the Suns have been a fringe fascination of mine. My interest stemmed not only from their style, which begat their early Free Darko love, which in turn begat my heightened understanding of their dynamic, but also from Jack McCallum’s :07 or Less. That book was the zenith, I think: Not only were the Suns revolutionaries, they were smart basketball people, funny little liberal Canadians, confusing and likable and everything else you can want in an adopted rooting interest.

Now, of course, that dream is dead. It was on life support early in the year, and Steve Kerr pulled the plug when he traded for Shaq. The rest has been all funeral march. It’s a pretty sad thing.

What I forget in all this fascination and idelogy, though, is that most Suns fans just seem to want a team that wins. Revolution is great, and entertainment even better, but at the end of the day that stuff doesn’t provide the sort of visceral release that a championship can. My dreamy memories of the Jordan Bulls are far less about the man’s impact than about being up late on schoolnights, hugging my Dad and shooting nerf hoops downward like Scottie Pippen. That’s what any fan wants.

So, sorry actual Suns fans. I forgot about you. You’re probably way more upset than the rest of us.

Anyway, um, keep the dream alive! D’Antoni-Bulls 2008! Sigh.

{Video: AZ Sports Hub}

Tim Duncan and the scourge of the garbage three

April 21st, 2008 | Posted by PostmanE

By now, you’ve seen the highlight at least 65,000 times: The Suns play just OK rotation defense, Shaq helps on Ginobili, no one rotates to Tim Duncan — because no one should ever rotate to Duncan if he’s outside 20 feet — and the Spurs are forced to settle for a Timmy D three with their first-round lives already in the balance. You know what happened then.

The minute Duncan drained the shot, I thought but one thought in my brain: That is so garbage. It’s the same thing I say at least once or twice a night at the gym. There are always one or two really good players that kill you the whole game, so you get your pickup team to start leaving their men and solely guarding the guys with basketball ability. And then at game point, out of nowhere, your lazy scheme comes back and haunts you. It is just like Matt at Basketbawful wrote today:

You have to feel for the Phoenix Suns. That was the exact shot they wanted the Spurs to take in that situation. I mean, Duncan hadn’t hit a three-pointer all season. I can’t tell you how many times that’s happened to me in pickup ball. I’ll be playing against some dude with no offensive skills whatsover, and I’ll leave him open one time from way outside his range…and he’ll hit it. It’s almost like the Basketball Gods are punishing me for slacking on D. And they certainly punished the Suns.

Yep, that pretty much sums it up. Here’s hoping the Suns start the first possession of game two as you would the subsequent pickup game: leave the dude open and make him it again. I want Duncan left alone at the top of the key for the entire first quarter. If can he make that again, fine. If not, the Suns should get … well, I don’t know what they should get. I can’t be asked to solve everything, you know.

What a great day

April 19th, 2008 | Posted by PostmanE

The Cubs beat Pittsburgh’s brains in (sorry, Lack), the Panera chicken noodle bread bowl was especially on point, and now the above: an absolutely disgusting, monstrous dunk from LeBron James. There is, like, one person in the world who can do that. And he just did. (Video HT: Brinson at TSB.)

Oh, and let’s not forget Suns-Spurs, which just finished up, and which was pretty much everything we can expect from this series. A tactical battle, a couple of overtimes, egregious flopping, a Manu Ginobili game-winning drive, and a bullshit Tim Duncan three that kept the Spurs breathing. This is going to be seven games of craziness.

What a great day. I am to playoff hoops as Ryan Dempster is to Marisa Miller. Visibly … excited.

Step right up and buy your Steve Nash bobblehead lollipop

April 1st, 2008 | Posted by PostmanR

Via Basketbawful comes this Steve Nash “bobblepop” doll. Why does this not look like Steve Nash? Why are his eyes channeling some spirits? Why would someone buy this? What NBA marketer thought this was a good idea to produce?

Also: I’m sure that candy tastes awful.

Well, that does it

May 19th, 2007 | Posted by PostmanE

When I wrote just down the page that everyone I knew was rooting for the Suns, I should have included David Stern.

Somewhere, Stern is flipping out, pissed that the Suns squirted the third quarter down their legs and let the Spurs pull away. Somewhere, probably a hotel room in New York or something, Stern chucked his brandy snifter against the wall and rubbed his face, Tony Soprano style.

He feels our pain, and is also a main cause of it.

The Spurs, imperfect objects of hate, are not undeserving at all. What’s sad — besides the obvious impact of the suspensions — is that the Suns never really played Suns Basketball this whole series, especially not in Game 6. Instead, they let the Spurs reduce them to standard NBA pick-and-roll half court stuff, and that’s not what the Suns should do.

Here’s hoping D’Antoni and crew don’t get too reactionary, and keep plugging. We need the Suns as they are to succeed. It’s too bad they had that chance taken from them this year.

A visual argument for the Suns being the dirty team

May 17th, 2007 | Posted by PostmanR

I’m not really buying it. A lot of these plays are either incidental in nature or just not dirty at all. Some maybe — maybe — can fly as dirty, but most not really.

Anyways, let’s just all agree that it’s the playoffs, the game of basketball is physical in nature and that there are going to be a range of plays throughout a game that may or may not be construed as “dirty” or “hard.” (Get you mind out of the gutter.)

And lastly, as Henry Abbott said today: “I would put it to you that, after a while, talking about referees is boring.”

Indeed it is.

(HT: TrueHoop)

Case of the Mondays: Farewell, sweet Warriors

May 14th, 2007 | Posted by PostmanE

On Friday night, in the midst of the Warriors’ dunk-fest blowout win over Utah, I got this exact text message from commenter PMK:

Dear ESPN … We know it’s loud in Oakland. Put away the stupid decibel meter … NOW! Love, PMK

At the time, I wholeheartedly agreed with him. Leave it to ESPN to bring us an annoying, overdone feature trying to hype up a team and a venue that didn’t need any hyping. This isn’t ARCO Arena; everyone knows how loud it is in Oakland! Can’t we just watch the game and appreciate the crowd organically?

Perhaps I spoke too soon. Because if the Warriors lose to Utah at Utah, and we see this run come to an end, I’ll realize the bad karma I’ve created. Here’s my pledge, Golden State: if you keep winning, I’ll keep tolerating the decibel meter. Screw it: I’ll let them run the decibel meter all the time if it means you guys will pull this off in seven. Do we have a deal? OK — don’t let me down.

As for the actual basketball on the court, the Jazz proved a lot by winning in Golden State last night, and have sealed themselves as winners of this series. Decibel meter or not, that crowd is no joke, and Golden State seemed like a different team there Friday night. For Utah to take the punches and keep coming back out — led by incredible performances from Carlos Boozer, who is suddenly a Top-15 player — is really impressive stuff. You never know: maybe the Jazz can take the winner of Phoenix-San Antonio. Crazier things have happened, even within the past two weeks.

Speaking of the Suns-Spurs, I’m ready to agree with MJD: there’s no reason this series shouldn’t be better than Warriors-Jazz in the long run. The teams are better, they seem to genuinely hate each other (fuck Bruce Bowen), and, thanks to aging stars, both should be playing with a certain level of desperation. Duncan and Nash aren’t exactly retiring next year, but the window is closing quickly for both. No reason this shouldn’t go seven games, and be totally worth it the whole way. But the Suns have to find their balls first.

Finally, one more note about Warriors-Jazz. Huge cheers to TNT for televising the conversations between Jason Richardson, Mehmet Okur, and Derek Fisher after Richardson’s hard foul on Okur in garbage time last night. If you didn’t see it, with about a minute left and the game sealed, Okur drove the ball hard to the glass and rose up for a big, both-arms-extended dunk. It would have been the sort of “Screw you” slam that is basically just for show, and Richardson was having none of it. He fouled Okur hard, got a flagrant-2, and was ejected, but before he left TNT zoomed in just enough to see him yelling at an incensed Okur: “Stop being a pussy, that’s a hard foul! Stop being a pussy! It’s a hard foul, stop being a pussy!”

I nearly fell off the couch laughing. These are the kinds of things that make me smile about competitive basketball — despite huge chasms in skill, you can hear the same banter in the NBA Playoffs as you can at your collegiate rec gym, and everyone understands it on the same level. Fantastic.

Weekend Fun: Refocusing on high quality

May 11th, 2007 | Posted by PostmanE

After last night’s debacle — which even prompted a Glass Joe comparison from currently blacklisted FanHouse friend Matt Watson at Detroit Bad Boys — I’ve come to a new and resolute conclusion: I’m not going to lament this loss at all. Sure, I was furious for a little bit last night, but now it’s time to face facts. The Bulls are simply not that good yet. As encouraging as the Miami series was, this Pistons team is the class of the conference, and Chicago simply doesn’t have the horses. They have a good team, a solid team, a team that will probably only get better … but they’re not there yet. And I’m OK with that.

The reason it’ll be easy to get over that is because despite what Bomani Jones tells you, this is an effin’ great playoffs so far. The Warriors-Mavs series is something that any basketball fan should treasure forever, and right now the Suns and Spurs are locked in a Finals-worthy contest. Not only that, but that series is getting overlooked thanks to the continued insanity of the Warriors, who are now getting overlooked thanks to Jazz. Everyone out West is one-upping each other, and it’s made for a conference without a single playoff dud so far. OK, so the East has flopped, but we should have seen that coming. What are we complaining about again?

So that’s why I’m choosing to forget about the Bulls. I’ll watch the game Sunday, and if they win, I’ll watch the next day … but it’s time to change the focus from geographic loyalty back to where the real entertainment lies, and that is not in the Eastern conference.

With that, we’ll see you around this weekend. Since we neglect the sport so much (we don’t even have category on the sidebar there), I’m going to try and learn about hockey and write a post at some point in the near future about what I’ve learned. If it doesn’t show up, that’ll show you how much the topic has enthralled me.

UPDATE: Just noticed I titled this “Case of the Mondays” instead of the appropriate title, Weekend Fun. I’m sure you were shocked at the oversight. We’re back up to speed now, though.

The Suns have a rich history of almost being good in the playoffs

May 9th, 2007 | Posted by PostmanE

And, in the spirit of their win last night (hint: they’re still sort of screwed right now), nothing illustrates that fact quite as nicely as the menagerie of playoff clips put together by AZSportsHub.com.

There’s Raja Bell’s shot from last year, Amare’s block on Tim Duncan last year, a little Charles Barkley, a little Stephon Marbury … the list goes on. But I’ll choose site favorite Dan Majerle’s 1993 3-point fest. You just can’t beat that kind of shooting out of that sort of hunky man-meat. Mmmmm.

Steve Nash is one tough Canadian

May 7th, 2007 | Posted by PostmanR

I know this has been absolutely everywhere this morning, but hey, what’s one more mention of it? Anyways, here’s Steve Nash’s nose injury from yesterday that would just not stop bleeding.

It makes me feel lucky that I’ve never been busted in the face in such a manner and that I’m um, not a woman.