Came in late. Tired. Depressed. Don’t know what to think or say about whatever the heck that was last night. So I’m going to share an e-mail I got from Zac Crain. He wants to be mayor. But he’s also the biggest Mavs fan I know. And his note is funnier and more insightful than I can manage this morning:
Imagine someone took the sperm of the 50 greatest NBA players (Bird, MJ, Magic, and so on), centrifuged it together Twins-style, then implanted that super sperm into the womb of the greatest female basketball player ever–say, Sheryl Swoopes or maybe Nancy Lieberman. Doesn’t really matter; pick one. The offspring of that lab experiment is then, thanks to another meeting of the Council of Nicaea, declared to be the son of God. Everyone agrees this is the finest possible basketball player ever, capable of almost supernatural feats on the hardwood.
This player would still not get the foul calls Dwyane Wade got in the last four games of this series. Unreal.
Yes, the Mavs made some mistakes down the stretch. So did the Heat. Difference was, every time the Heat absolutely needed points, the refs gave ’em foul shots. And to have two straight Finals games decided on questionable (at the very best, and that still feels wrong) calls by the refs makes me wonder why I devote so much of my life and paycheck to a sport that is so crooked. It’s like if every single time Peyton Manning threw an incompletion, the refs called pass interference.
Another thought: Next time the Mavs make the Finals, and I believe there will be a next time, someone needs to tell Cuban, Chris Arnold, Terdema Ussery, Donnie Nelson, and Humble Billy Hayes that the games are not the same as regular season games. So you don’t have to pimp the fan shop, or the freaking Pizza Hut box or whatever. The crowd was apeshit during the first quarter … until they had some sort of BS tricycle race during a timeout. They were never the same. ‘Round the same time, Arnold came out TWICE during the same TO to shill for Mavs gear and giveaways and the like. They should have just played “Thunderstruck” during every single timeout. Ridiculous.
Now I’m going to go string up a noose in the the yard. You guys can split up my CDs. That’s about all I have. And tell Isaac that his father loved him.
