Starting Five

1. LeBron James makes 13 of 14 shots (.929) as the Heat breeze past the Bobcats du Charlotte, 99-94. It is the best shooting night of LBJ’s career and ties for the third-best, minimum 14 attempts, in the NBA in the past 18 years (noted soft touch Shaquille O’Neal shot 15/16 one game while Dwight Howard was 15/15). Yes, no one has had a 14 of 14 game or better since the stat started being kept. That is something to, um, shoot for. LeBron’s lone miss? A four-footer that lipped off the rim a la Phil Mickelson’s 59th shot in the opening round of the Waste Management Open.

You may ask, How did LeBron have the best shooting night of his career and yet Miami only beat the Bobcats by five? Good question.

2.. I can see the pitch now: “It’s ‘Argo’ meets ‘The Lovely Bones’ meets ‘Forrest Gump’.” Authorities storm an underground bunker (we specify “underground” because in NYC overground bunkers are referred to as “apartments”) in Midland City, Ala., to rescue five year-old Ethan from the clutches of 65 year-old kidnapper Jimmy Lee Dykes. The raid, which took place after a seven-day standoff, resulted in the death of Dykes. As for Ethan, who turns six tomorrow, he is currently the most famous male in Alabama, so by day’s end he will be dating Katherine Webb.

3. It may be a little early to ask, but I will do so anyway: Is Russell Westbrook a Hall of Famer? Not yet, of course, but if he continues on this trajectory, is he? The fifth-year guard out of UCLA is seventh in the league in scoring (22.6 ppg) even though he shares the court with the league’s leading scorer, Kevin Durant. He is fifth in the league in assists (the only other player in the top ten in both categories is LeBron, and his HOF status was ordained nearly a decade ago) and fourth in steals. Westbrook is the only player in the league in the top ten in all three categories. He’s a special cat, no matter what Skip Bayless says.

Point guard or points guard? Who cares, Westbrook fills up stat sheets.

4. “Good Morning, America’ has a segment with Matthew Terry, the Calvin Klein model from that Super Bowl ad. He’s 21, lives in New Jersey, and was stocking shelves at a supermarket until his mother sent his photo into a modeling agency. The three women of GMA ask him to show his abs twice while Josh Elliott sulks in a corner.

My active campaign to lose two-thirds of this site’s readership

5. So, yes, in case you didn’t hear, five-star linebacker recruit Reuben Foster, who last summer decommitted from Alabama in order to verbally commit to Auburn (he showed up with his three year-old daughter wearing an Auburn cheerleading outfit….yes, he still was not yet even a high school senior) has now decommitted from Auburn and re-verbally committed to the Crimson Tide. The lone glitch is that Foster has a massive Auburn tattoo on his forearm.

Also, this year’s most popular homophone among top recruits? Jalen. There’s Jaylon Smith, a 5-star LB headed to Notre Dame; Jalen Ramsey, a 5-star DB on his way to USC; and Jalin Marshall, a 4-star “athlete” who is committed to Ohio State.  All are in Rivals.com’s top 35.

Our favorite name, though, belongs to Muscle Shoals, Ala., native Dee Liner, who plays D-line. Liner has not yet committed to a school but is already a first-ballot All-Aptly Named Hall of Famer. Like Foster, Liner has decommitted from the Tigers and is now said to be leaning toward Tuscaloosa. By the way, is Muscle Shoals not one of the coolest names for a town anywhere? I don’t even know what shoals are, but I’m all for them.

Reserves

For no particular reason, here is our favorite video of our favorite rock-and-roll front man of all time, Freddie Mercury. It’s Wembley, it’s 1986, and Freddie decides to give the crowd an opera lesson before launching into the greatest Queen song of them all (you may disagree). Unbelievably potent voice. And Brian May’s guitar is strokingly hot. Five years later, Mercury would be dead from AIDS.