Things About Things

Usually I come to write this thing with some thoughts in my incredible, amazing brain; something that’s going to make your mind explode.  But lately, I’ve been watching less and less basketball as the February malaise sets in.  It’s a long, long season and there’s a lot of stuff to take in.  About this time every year I start to get a little unfocused when watching games.  I’ll watch the games, but I’ll constantly be doing other things too.  That doesn’t let me learn as much as I’d like, but it happens.

But this year, I’ve decided that rather than try and watch as much of as many games as I can during the malaise, I’ll focus on one game and maybe take in some others on the peripheral.  Blend that with increasing my pop culture intake, and I think I can stay on top of things both in the NBA and in enjoying basketball.  It’s worked well so far, and it helps that Eastbound and Down, Important Things with Demetri Martin, and Survivor all recently premiered.  By forcing myself to not watch every game, I can still love the games I do watch, rather than feel obligated to watch them.  I suggest you try it.  It’s pretty freeing.

Now this doesn’t mean I’m not watching a lot of basketball, because I’m still watching way too much.  But the point is it feels like I’m not tied down anymore, and that’s what I’m going for.  And seriously, Eastbound and Down is hilarious.

Things About Cleveland/Miami

There’s really only two new things I could take from this game.  Of course LeBron and Wade went off.  That’s what they do.  They’re 40% of the top 5 players in the league, so it’s not too surprising that they do things like score 40 against each other.  It’s fun, but not unexpected.

The major thing I took from the game is that I’m not very sold on Mario Chalmers.  Plus/minus isn’t a great stat over the course of a season, but in a single game it can be valuable.  Chalmers seemed like he was killing the Heat, and it turns out he was -14.  And that seems about right.  At times, he came down with Jannero Pargo Syndrome, but other than that, it was just poor decision making and substandard play.  Of course, he’s been statistically a below average point guard this whole year, and that’s going to be a problem in the playoffs.  The main reason for this, of course, is that he’s a rookie.  He’ll probably mature in to a serviceable starter, but this year, he isn’t.

The other thing about this game that surprised me is how unaware both the Heat and the Cavs were that anyone was ever behind them.  In a three minute sequence, I counted five times where the ball was tipped out from behind or there was an easy block because someone was unaware there was a trailer.  Can we get a WOLF call of something?