In a move that will hopefully send some to heaven. . .

I have decided to dramatically alter my strategy for watching this round of the playoffs. It is true, my constant bemoaning, however principled, has become more than a wee bit insufferable. You hate reading it—try writing it!!!! I have high hopes for the next round, where, as DLIC pointed out, it will actually feel like every team is being tested. And naturally, LeBron's next discovery awaits us all. Still, to salvage what has undoubtedly been one of the low points of FreeDarko consumption and production, I will now invite you to enter the most saccharine folds of my personal life.

I love my live-in girlfriend very much. The only thing that ever causes problems in our relationship is that, as a creature of Dallas, she insists that any offspring we might one day have together will have to spend its early days in a Dallas Cowboys "onesy." I object to this for a number of reasons, and thus have made countless efforts to shift her primary allegiance over to her Dallas Mavericks. Her bizarre affinity for Avery Johnson has certainly made matters easier, and while Jamie may never mention FreeDarko on Cold Pizza, the debt I owe to him for posting this radical gem may be unrepayable. Put simply, every step like this makes it that much more likely that her one semi-serious sports preference will land on an NBA team, not a football franchise with a long track record of despicability and, for the last five years or so, unwatchability.

So tonight, I plan to sit down in front of the television not to uncork my by-now-predictable tide of rancor, but to fuel my relationship in an ultimately self-serving way. At the same time, I may gain some fascinating insight into all those things that our hyper-refined, and self-selecting, brand of basketball-watchdom tends to overlook. I mean back to the fandom womb, kidz. Who knows. . .come tomorrow, it may be her words of outright enthusiasm, not my pall of horror, that greets you upon blog lines's dawn.