NBA Playoff Chatter #5

Chris (right after Game 5 of Cavs/Celtics): Wow the next 48hrs of hype is fuckin monstrous. Lebron playing for his season. Maybe his last game in a cavs uniform. Supposed to be his year (just like last year which everyone forgets but whatever). Et-fuckin-cetera.

If the cavs don’t pull this series out, the chatter will mostly consist of 2 angles I believe. The debate will be whether or not it was his elbow, or was his supporting cast just not good enough. I hope someone other than skip bayless brings up a 3rd point, regardless of whether or not 1 and/or 2 are both accurate, and that should be, ‘is lebron james a championship type of player?’. I’m not sure what side of that I’d land on, but I want it to at least be discussed if boston wins the series.

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Chris: 5 hours til tonights game. Its going by sooooo slow. Can’t fuckin wait.

In the meantime, a few other random things to keep my mind off tonight.

-The actual ‘game’ in Fresh Meat 2 really sucks. If someone like Darrell picked Laurel, and they were dominating the game, we would hate it. It gets overlooked because its Kenny and he’s just so freakin handsome. Seriously though, there’s no way they’re gonna lose. Put them into exile, they’ll beat whoever they face. Don’t put them in and they get to the finals, where they’ll beat whoever they face. Everyone else is playing for the 2nd and 3rd place money. Its not fair.

-The Brian Cushing re-vote. What the fuck was that? If the AP deems there’s a reason to have this vote again, due to the winner cheating, how the hell is said winner still an option to win the re-vote? Seems like the AP wanted to stand on some high moral ground, but let some other people (the voters) make the actual decision. To me there were 2 options. First, do nothing. We knew what we knew when we knew it, and the vote was based on that. Rewriting history is a dangerous path to take, and the re-vote may open pandora’s box. Second, have a re-vote without Cushing (the guy who CHEATED), and let one of the other players win the award.

-Been bumping a playlist the past few weeks with cuban linx 1 & 2, ironman, and supreme clientele. Basically all I’ve been listening to. Its amazing how much the tracks from cuban linx stand out, even when mixed with another classic (ironman), a debatable classic (clientele), and its own sequel, which is newer and really solid. Obviously this is not breaking news. Its one of the top 3 albums of all-time. Just love being reminded of it.

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Luke: Thoughts on lebron before game 6:

  1. First of all, everybody needs to simmer down.
  2. The people whom I would say were once over-praising lebron irrationally are now crying out with irrational criticism. A lot of people have said they were completely shocked by lebron’s performance. I was really surprised at the time, but not totally shocked, the same way I wouldn’t be totally shocked if kobe put up those same numbers (Kobe would never be as quiet in lebron in a game but where bron was quiet and sort of drifting on offense Kobe might just sink his team with relentless/futile shot attempts). I’m not shocked, not because I don’t think lebron is all that, but because anyone can have a game like that.
  3. That doesn’t mean I’m letting Lebron off the hook…it’s an explanation, not a justification. I think the fact that he was so quiet in the game (way, way too quiet) shows lebron’s humanity/personality more than any other moment I can remember. You usually try to leave your humanity off the court; just go out there and play the game. Some guys, like Jordan and Kobe and from what I hear Bill Russell, I’m convinced, actually aren’t human at all. I’m a huge Kobe fan and Ive grown up idolizing him, but it’s clear to me we operate on entirely different wavelengths. Lebron on the other hand has always seemed human to me. The way he behaved during the game and afterwards at the press conference, it’s clear to ke that lebron cares what people think. I think he’s under an absurd amount of pressure. I’m not ready to say that that pressure made him go 3-14 in a big game, but I am ready to say that pressure made him act the way he did on the court and then at the podium.
  4. I’m not ready to say that game definitively alters lebron’s legacy. I think talking about it that way is kind of presumptuous. It’s not easy to judge a person’s legacy while it’s not even halfway established. What we can say about that game is that lebron’s legacy is now (appropriately) uncertain again, in a way it hasn’t been for a while. The lebron faction has been steadily gaining members since he came into the league. The train really started to gain steam when his bid for best player in the league started to get more validation (I’m thinking of the 2007-2008 season). In 2010, lebron has a lot writing the story of his exellence before he’s getting the chance to prove it, so when he does finally get the chance, he can only take one of two paths, the first being the path we’ve built for him, what we expect of him, and the second being a path of disappointment and underachievement. For most players, that first path is about success and victory, but for lebron it’s what everyone has seemingly already prophesied. Now our relationship with lebron can get a new spark. We won’t just be goin through the motions when we appreciate lebron. We don’t yet know what kobe’s legacy is going to be before he retires, so why should we know lebron’s when he’s 6 years behind?
  5. I feel kind of bad for lebron. If not bad then at least sympathetic. I know if I were in his shoes I’d be struggling to keep my chin up. The thought of where I was playing next year would be constantly spinning around my brain. I’d be mad at the fans for booing me. I’d be thinking about what all the journalists had said about me. I’d be worried everything was falling apart. That’s why these guys aren’t supposed to be like me. The way they’re psychically different from the average person is part of their greatness. But when I see lebron biting his nails on the bench in the fourth quarter, I wonder if we’re really that different afterall.
  6. Fuck you, Cleveland. Your city doesn’t get mentioned more than 15 times in the last decade if not for lebron. You might have a right to boo the team for being down 25 points, but to boo specifically when Lebron is at the line? To make it personal like that? Fuck you, Cleveland. You don’t even deserve him. I wish there was a way lebron could stay but you all had to leave.

Word.

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Chris: Very well done. Especially for a (what are you now? 14? 15?) kid.