Starting Five

1. Heat Wave

“As owners of the NBA’s second-longest win streak, the Heat can’t ignore the obvious,” reads the subhed on the home page of ESPN.com.  Hey, Bristol, have you been paying attention? Miami doesn’t want to ignore it. This team, these players, are fully aware of their shot at history and the only real downside is that now they’re going to have Mark Schwartz pulling a Pedro Gomez, riding shotgun on this magnificent quest, until they lose again.

 

If you’re a Heat fan, you breathe easy knowing that the next true test does not come until Miami visits San Antonio on March 31. If you’re a Celtics fan, you say, “Well, welcome to the NBA — finally — Jeff Green (the former Georgetown stud scored a career-high 43 in what is his fifth season).

Two more items: 1) the Denver Nuggets have their own little 12-game win streak going (much obliged, Joakim Noah), but that ends this evening on the second night of a road back-to-back in Oklahoma City. 2) If the Heat keep winning, they’ll go for record-breaking 34 on Tuesday, April 9 — one night after March Madness ends, how convenient — at home versus Milwaukee.

2. Tiger Woods, meet Alfred Hitchcock.

The world’s best golfer and film’s master of suspense had/have a type. And it’s the same type.

TIGER

(Elin, Lindsey)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SIR ALFRED

(Grace Kelly, Eva Marie Saint)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3. Flori-Duh: Deer head heist!

4. Boston Phoenix. It’s not just the 1976 NBA Finals (Gar Heard!), but it’s also one of the the country’s oldest alternative newspapers. Except that now, after nearly 50 years in print, the Phoenix is $1.2 million in debt and must stop printing. Ironically, and tellingly, the newspaper informed its readers of this sad news via tweet. Some 40 employees will begin looking for steakateria gigs be unemployed.

5. In case you STILL haven’t heard, Twitter is a public forum. It appears that the son of the FDNY (Fire Dept. New York) commissioner, Salvatore Cassano, never learned that lesson or even cared. Joe Cassano, an EMT, recently resigned in the wake of his pro-Hitler, pro-boob job, anti-Obama tweets (kudos to young Mr. Cassano for upholding the public’s — and Denis Leary’s — stereotypes of NYC firemen, by the way). Stick around for the last two grafs on the second page, by the way.

Reserves

Jere Longman of the New York Times with a take-out piece on the long, slow and tragic descent of Tim Danielson, the second American high school boy ever to break the four-minute mile.

Stephen Douglas of The Big Lead with an inspired account of a long, fast and not-so-tragic descent involving Katherine “World Wide” Webb.

 

We should note, by the way, that “Splash” originated in Holland under the title “Sterren Springen“, or “Celebrities Jump”.

I guess it’s time for Medium Happy to move its home offices out of Nicosia. That’s the capital of Cyprus, which is where lots and lots of corporations –particularly Russian ones — based themselves to avoid paying standard tax rates. But now Cyprus banks are being compelled to up their tax rates if they hope to receive Eurozone bailout money.

Ken Pomeroy, alias “KenPom”, outs my former SI colleague Seth Davis on Twitter, noting that Seth chose Kansas to win it all over at SI.com and Louisville to cut down the nets at CBSSports.com. This is what our mutual ex-colleague Chad Millman might call “hedging your bets.” Between this and Josh Elliott’s deleted “black smoke” tweet from last week, these are sad days for former members of the SI bullpen.

You win $10,000 for making a halfcourt shot at halftime of the Atlantic 10 tournament final, so how do you celebrate? By speding about 11% of it –before taxes — at your favorite steakateria.

Defiance, Ohio, is not just a town but its T.J. Lane’s theme. While being sentenced to life in prison for a school shooting that left three classmates dead, the Chadron, Ohio, teen wore a T-shirt that read “killer” and flipped the bird to people in the courtroom, including family members and victims’ families. At least he correctly spelled “KILLER”.

Remote Patrol

Middle Tennessee State vs. St. Mary’s

NCAA Tournament Play-In Game First Round

ESPN 9:10 p.m.

We are desperately lobbying Mayor Bloomberg to call for the eradication of the “First Four” in Dayton (64 is a nice, round number that is both eight squared, four cubed, and two to the sixth; why would you mess with that???), but he is just so busy these days ruining everyone else’s vices fun. The Blue Raiders went 28-5 and 16-0 at home, which seems deserving of an NCAA bid. The Gaels went 19-3 in their final 22 games, with all three losses at the hands of No. 1 Gonzaga. As you know, they also boast Aussome Aussie Matthew Dellevadova, the most onions scorer in the tournament.

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