Starting Five
Yes, this shot is NOT taken from last night’s game.
1. Kyrie Eleison*
If you stayed up late last night, there was a classic regular-season NBA game on last night/this morning. Elsewhere, and taking place simultaneously, the Knicks were at the Lakers.
But I digress…
The world-champion Spurs led by six with :33 remaining, but then Kyrie Irving hit a REEDICULOUS 3-pointer from the far left corner. Then Kawhi Leonard missed two free throws that would have iced the game with :03.1 to play. Then Irving hit another to force overtime.
Then he hit another. And so did LeBron. Irving finished with a career-high 57 points. The last time anyone posted up more than 50 points in a game against the Spurs? 1984, Bernard King.
Charles Barkley, added to the TNT court-side crew, said, “This is one of the best NBA games I’ve seen in person…ever.”
Agreed. HUGE statement game. Do you even remember how awful the Spurs Cavs were in Miami on Christmas night?
By the way, best NBA game I ever saw in person? February 13, 1980: Larry Bird’s rookie year. Phoenix Suns 135, Boston Celtics 134, in regulation. Bird finished with 45 points and five three-pointers. I didn’t even have to look those numbers up.
p.s. The Knicks won. But they still have the NBA’s worst record.
*Translated: “Lord have mercy.” Applies here.
2. Suns? More Like Brothers*
Van Arsdale clones. Blame them for the trend.
Last nightTwo nights ago, with less than two minutes remaining in a win against the Minnesota Lupines of Wood, the Phoenix Suns inserted recent 10-day contract signee Seth Curry into the game. Curry is the younger brother of Steph Curry, and he’s still understandably irked that he didn’t get to Steph’s brother in that new State Farm ad (or that they refer to him as Sebastian).
This is the thing about the Suns: It’s not that they sign a guy who has a brother who plays in the NBA (or both of them), but they ALWAYS seem to sign the lesser talented of the pair. I compiled a list of 2nd-best NBA brothers who have now played for the Suns (I put asterisks next to name if their better halves have also played for the Suns, and two asterisks if they played for Phoenix simultaneously):
Tom Van Arsdale (Dick)**
Wesley Person (Chuck)
Robin Lopez (Brook)
Jarron Collins (Jason)
Luke Zeller (Cody and Tyler…Yes, he’s the 3rd-best Zeller)
The Suns would do a sign-and-trade for Chico Marx if he were available…
Miles Plumlee (Mason)
Zoran Dragic (Goran)**
Marcus Morris (Markieff)**
Seth Curry (Steph)
Totally Suns material
* We hope you appreciate homonyms
p.s. Speaking of Phoenix sons, and brothers, the band Kongos, which is comprised of four brothers who are also sons of a musician, hail from Phoenix. You’ve heard their song.
3. Paging Dr. Snyderman
The doctor is OUT. Comes the news that Dr. Nancy Snyderman is leaving NBC News after a rough patch recently in which she misremembered which helicopter she was aboard in Iraq. Wait…
Anyway, I wish her the best. As I’ve mentioned here before, I had the chance to be Dr. Nancy’s “date” for a night in Beijing, as the two of us watched Usain Bolt’s classic 100-meter gold-medal run inside the Bird’s Nest at the 2008 Olympics. We bonded over the fact that she is an Indiana girl whose father used to take her to all the Notre Dame home games when she was a lass back in the Sixties. She’s smart, nice and beautiful.
Don’t know where she’ll end up, but all the best to her.
4. Bald is the New Black
The world of Bald has gone from “Who loves ya’, baby?” to “Get a T.O., baby!”
Who started it? Dickie V.? Maybe, but Mr. Vitale has the classic monk’s cut. ESPN’s college basketball crew, in full force during conference tournament week, is All-Savalas: Jay Bilas, Dan Shulman, Dave Pasch, Seth Greenberg, Will McDonough, Shane Battier.
There’s more domes on ESPN’s college basketball crew than in Florence (“Hey-O!”)
5. This is The End*
I never learned if the plural term is “ani” or “anuses.”
A long form piece on your anus? Sure, on the BBC.com website. Sphincter? I barely touched her!
*The judges would have also accepted, “Readers Digest”
Music 101
“No Sugar Tonight”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amqgUwIMjw4
As the story goes, The Guess Who wrote this tune in 1970 after overhearing a biker chick in Berkeley, Calif., tell her biker man, after a heated argument, that he’d be getting “no sugar tonight.” One man’s involuntary abstinence is another’s classic rock hit.
p.s. I always thought that Cream should have covered this tune…
Remote Patrol
Oliver!
10:45 p.m. TCM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0gNMQsImoQ
Not only did this musical adaptation of Charles Dickens’ classic work win six Oscars, including Best Picture in 1968, but it is also the only Best Picture winner to have an exclamation point at the end of its title–though, to be fair, I would have voted for Airplane! in 1980. As for other Best Picture winners, would Gandhi! have been a better title?
As you watch–if you watch–try not to notice that all the urchins in this film are better dressed than any children you’ve ever seen with the exception of class picture day at school.
Near-miss on the punctuation-at-end-of-best-picture goes to 1941’s “How Green Was My Valley,” which sounds better if posed as a wistful, nostalgiac question.
I recognize and appreciate the time spent on finding a tone-appropriate Jim Belushi photo for this post. Others were considered and, in time, ruled out.
Second nomination for best picture: Cy Young!
Mostly, I appreciate that you read all the way to the end.
Me, to AIR yesterday: “Chairman Meow… Nothing?”
AIR: “I didn’t have time to read it all.”
Me: “But it was a HEADLINE!”
Well, if it makes you happy, I read all the way to the end today.
And all I got was an asshole.
A couple things –
1st, apparently I was abducted (yet again!) by aliens yesterday as there’s NO WAY I would have actually wished for last night’s CAVS-SPURS game to be a “rest night” for LeBron. To actually WANT Pop to sit his starters. It’s like saying, “yeah, I’m GLAD that Santa Claus dude isn’t real, who wants free presents?”
I’m still all atingle – can you believe that was just a REGULAR SEASON game?! WHOO-EEEEEE!! (& no Shaq, you leave OFF the 2nd “w”!)
And that Kyrie kid, well, looks like he’s gonna work out after all. 😉
I have to watch the repeat broadcast on NBA-TV tomorrow as, um, well, I, ok, I fell asleep after the 3rd quarter for a bit. It was LATE! I have a super-comfy sectional! I only got 5 hrs sleep the night before & it was only for 7 minutes or so! Anyhoo, I woke back up, ticked off that I’d nodded off, saw that were down 10 or so & I’m quick with the rationalizations – ‘it’s GOOD we lose, teaches the young pups we’re not quite ready yet for the Playoffs & still have some work to do’, yadda, yadda, yadda. Not so fast! Whoo-eeee, that final 3-4 minutes of reg time & then OT. I was pinching myself the entire time (partly to stay away but MOSTLY because it was just awesome!)
I (almost) don’t even mind that Kyrie’s getting all the love today. 🙂
However, I am concerned about two things – LeBron & Kyrie scored 88 of the Cavs 127. YOU would know better than me, jdubs (as you WROTE THE BOOK) but is it really a good thing when just TWO of your players score 69% of a TEAM’S points? Also, ‘love may be all around’ but he sure ain’t around much in some of the Cavs 4th quarters. Are they TRYING to get Kev to leave after this season?!
Other than that, I’m still on Cloud 9, Over the Moon…
“Believe it or not,
I’m walking on air.
I never thought I could feel so free eee eee.
Flying away on a wing and a prayer.
Who could it be?
Believe it or not it’s just me.”
Greatest American Hero – LeBron James & his ‘wingman’ – Kyrie Irving. 🙂 🙂
That’s “STAY AWAKE” not “away”. Fingers…
Also, I saw ‘OLIVER!’ twice in the movie theatre back in 1968 & several times since on TV, the last time around Xmas. My older sister was furious with me back in 68 as I wouldn’t stop singing along with ALL the songs in the theatre. I still know all the lyrics. Hey, I had to learn them back then for Chorus & then again for summer camp’s musical water pageant production. If I had to memorize all that, I wanted to belt it out every chance I got, sister or no sister pretending not to know me.
Which reminds me, after last night…
“Who will buy this wonderful morning?
Such a sky you never did see
Who will tie it up with a ribbon?
And put it in a box for me…
Who will buy this wonderful feeling?
I’m so high I swear I could fly
Me oh my, I don’t want to lose it
So what am I to do to keep this sky so blue?
There must be someone who will buy”
Have a good weekend, jdubs & tell your mom I said ‘Hi!’.
🙂