I know all about that
This McCants incident got me thinking hard and twisting up my brow in fits of inner sorrow. We've been driven by market forces to put a lot of sweat and groin into chronicling these playoffs, but how much FreeDarko blood has really been shed in the process?
Tonight I saw Marquis Daniels take over a game and wondered how I could've sided with a team that kept him in chains. Then Silverbird called me from the 40/40, wearing shorts and fresh off a brief, warm exchange with Artest (asking him to autograph the FD shirt was out of the question). Josh Howard took his pants off on national television. I'm fine with admitting that Wade is the best player on the planet. . . in the same way Shaq once was, a monolith not nearly as conducive to literature and imagination as say, LeBron.
This is all a long way of asking. . .
WHAT THE FUCK HAVE WE BEEN DOING FOR THE LAST TWO MONTHS?!?!?!?
Stay tuned for the realness. You know we've got it clogging up our organizational spine. We built this NBA, and only we can destroy it.
posted by Bethlehem Shoals @ 6/20/2006 11:59:00 PM
24 comments
24 Comments:
some text message gems from silverbird's journey to the 40/40:
"in. everyone loves marquis daniels."
"me: anyone here tonight?
bouncer: all the vip's are waiting for game 7. except for the guys from 'night rider.'"
on the outcome: "a lot of happiness. a lot of pain (less from mavs fans than from still-bitter NYK fans). wore FD blue and got several nods of i don't know what."
it would've been interesting to get Hov's take on the officiating; by which of course, I mean Hov the ball fan, and not Hov the team owner.
*The only joy that can possibly be derived from game 6, and the whole serie s really, was the sight of Wade snatching the MVP trophy out of Shaq's (who seemed a little surprised) hands during the presentation.
Yea, I dislike watching wade now for the same reasons i disliked watching late 90s jordan. Sure he gets to the basket and makes great plays, but i do get tired of the countless pump fake then lean in, and touch calls. I mean, it took jordan 8-10 years to get calls like that. I know it's not politcally correct but i really believe that the mavs fucked this series up more than the heat won it. It's not popular because wade was truly unstoppable(even though half his points were off touch fouls at the line) and i don't want to take away from him since he's now the official next jordan, but i just don't believe that the mavericks gave it their all when they dominated 3-4 of the games in this series and seemed to lose 15 point leads nightly. The only thing i wanted more than increased marquis playing time was perhaps a pods appearence or two.
I don't know if it's because i share shoal's somewhat nonchalant view on wade, or because i was burned from all the great series before but i just wasn't that into these finals the way i was into the series with the suns-lakers/clippers/mavs, the spurs-mavs, and cavs-pistons. I just didn't feel the same overwhelming importance from this series even though it was the finals. Jason Terry's final shot was really strange in the sense that it seemed like a normal play and no one was really caring about it. Who knows. What i do know is, that i really can't get all that excited about wade. Maybe it's playing with shaq, but then again i loved penny and kobe, maybe it's the ease and seemingly lack of effort in his moves, maybe it's because he has negative personality, or maybe because he's just too good too early.
I don't know, but i'm not excited about him or lebron. It's not that i root for them to fail because they're the best like i did for jordan because jordan still amazed me every time i watched. I don't know, it seems that these two are a bit too concerned with becoming the next jordan. Kobe, vince and tmac vince didn't really want the comparisons nor were they completely apt, but lebron and wade have seemed to fully embrace them to the point that it's scary. Not just their style of play, but the way they carry themselves, portay themselves to the media, and simply be. Maybe i'm bored because they're not carving out a new path for the future of basketball, but merely following a simple forumula for success.
LEBRON IS A BASKEBALL REVOLUTION
and i've decided that it's fine if freedarko is synonymous with anti-wade sentiment since there's basically no one else in the world willing to say the slightest bad thing about him as a person or a player.
Good point about wade's sour personality. Wade's Cruella Deville smile after his bank shot in the 4th was completely unbelievable. And it didn't really seem to fit on his face.
Shoals's Wade hating never really made sense to me until this series. I've never had an FD level of demand for personality, and Wade's game has a kind of smooth, effortless quality that can be very compelling in the right setting. But fuck falling down after every single shot where there's someone within 10 feet of you. And fuck the phantom fouls, even if Wade isn't the one making them. The one on Marquis tonight was galling. Guy backed off and basically said "I'm going to let him shoot this jumper," and Wade still got the and one.
WADE IS THE BASKETBALL ANTI-CHRIST.
This has always been a sneaking suspicion of mine and I finally came to realize it tonight. Don't let his humble demeanor fool you. He's done more damage to the league than Dick Bavetta, Ron Artest, and the Detroit Pistons ever will. And while this may be completely unbeknownst to him, it doesn't change the fact that he is the shear incarnation of evil.
He's even got the little Devil's goatee going.
It's too easy to blame this on the refs when JET and Dirk shrunk when the lights shone brightest. The same guys who stepped it up big-time against the Spurs were non-existent against Wade and Shaq. Your season is on the line, and you're passing it to ~Dampier~?
Dallas lost this game when Walker and Williams went on their three-shooting spree in the second half and they could get nothing in the fast break. I'm glad the FD world gets a little love with the Daniels revelation, but I guess we have to add "Score a thousan points a game without going to the line" to the list of things Wade must do to earn respect. I hope everyone finds the pain his success brings you somehat enjoyable, ecause he's going to be tormenting your late springs and early summers for a long time to come.
(Also, if you're LeBron, don't you at least consider going to South Beach when your contract is up? Running the town of Miami and the L all at one time sounds pretty damn good to me.)
before dwyane wade won the title, the anti-dwyane sentiment was some intriguing shit -- you guys were the disbelievers and really brought something to the table.
now? its like a haters and bitches roundtable discussion. no doubt in my mind that if al gore would've invented the internet a decade earlier, shoals and friends would be talking about how fake jordan was (its too easy for him! where's the struggle?) and how stacey augmon is the realest shit you ever saw.
i guess about mid-afternoon, you can start talking about how there's "no WAY" the heat repeat, and can curl up w/ your ray felton bobbleheads. but the heat add a MLE player (and they will have their choice), dorell wright shows he's ready for some minutes, and its not like anyone beside shaq and zo are old on that team (payton is retiring), and they'll be back.
have a nice summer dicks.
fuck miami
I'm heart broken
nuff said
"before dwyane wade won the title, the anti-dwyane sentiment was some intriguing shit -- you guys were the disbelievers and really brought something to the table.
now? its like a haters and bitches roundtable discussion."
wait...so beacuse the heat won the title, suddenly nobody can say shit about wade? what part of the game is that? last time I checked FD was about 75% aesthetics and personality anyways.
DWade gets the most bullshit touch fouls called on him since Reggie Miller. Anyone denying that is far worse than anyone hating on him for it, because the deniers are ignoring the ultimate reality of the situation.
What do you guys think about Shaq's post-game speech? No surprise there when he talked about Wade, within seconds you could cross 'humble' and 'unselfish' from the subtle-shots-at-kobe checklist. But disrespecting Phil Jackson like that after not winning anything without him? And all that on the heels of a Finals series where he played one good game and where in the deciding game Mourning made the difference instead of him? I still can't figure out how he is able to make people believe his good soldier routine.
re: Chris Wilson
If you refer to Dirk's missed shots when you say he was shrinking, then I'm right with you. Maybe even the fact that he went along with that stupid play where, when he as the first option didn't get the ball, he went to that little corner of his on the weak-side baseline and let Stackhouse and Howard go 1-on-1 with no results or let Terry dribble way to long on the perimeter. In these situations he probably should have said 'screw you, I'm going to repost and try to get to the basket or to the line'.
But the pass to Dampier - I can't find anything wrong with that. The pass wasn't perfect, maybe a few inches closer to the basket would have made it even more easy for Dampier. But if that thing isn't catchable then he has no business playing in the NBA. To me it looked like Dampier just got ahead of himself and was already thinking about the one dribble and shot or dunk and didn't wait until he had properly caught the ball. Otherwise this would have been an easy score.
re: General steez:
-Now that the Mavs lost, Dirk is really going to regret the fact that, unlike most of his teammates, he doesn't have a college education to fall back on.
re: Daniels:
I totally agree. One of a bunch of bad coaching decisions by Johnson. The worst decision was his determination to NOT RUN A FUCKING OFFENSE for about 16 or 18 minutes in the second half. When James Posey steals every pass you throw for a five minute stretch, you need to switch it on em. That's when Daniels came in and broke the funk, only to vanish as quickly as a Tony Danza sitcom. Johnson made Riley look as sage as that trash heap from the Fraggles.
However, Johnson's call to leave Stack in the game after he picked up his 5th shouldn't be overlooked. That was during the run that kept the game from getting away, and he didn't want to jeopardize that.
this dick is going to have a fucking fantastic summer, thanks!
i'm starting to wonder if some of the ambivalence toward wade is because we simply weren't ready. he wasn't a big time recruit out of high school, then he sat out a year, and while he dominated in college, he played for marquette. they hadn't really been relevant in big time basketball for a couple decades.
with lebron, carmelo, vince, cp3, etc., these guys were majorly hyped in high school and/or had done their damage at big-time colleges, so we knew what to expect. NO ONE expected d-wade to come in and lead a team to a championship in year 3.
obviously, hoops heads knew he was going to be good, but legit best player in the league, finals mvp? no way. part of why i don't like wade (aside from the choir boy image and the unearned jordan treatment from the refs) is that i still don't really understand how he got to be so good or how he went unnoticed before. he's clearly worked on his skills, but he has natural gifts that seem impossible to have kept under wraps.
i guess i'm saying i don't "get" him.
Wade makes a lot of fantastic shots and plays; he has a great jumper and bank shot; why does he have to do that "throwing yourself into the other play to draw fouls" nonsense as well? I think I get irritated with Ginobili for the same reason. He's spectacular, but then he resorts to these cheapie foul techniques all the time.
On an unrelated note, did people see Stack's amazing block on Haslem's dunk attempt at the end of the game? It was amazing.
Don't know about y'all, but this "nobody respected us; it was us against the world" meta-narrative used by teams to motivate themselves seems pretty fuckin' tired. The nadir came in one of the post-game interviews when one of the Heat players (Wade? Payton?) claimed the Heat going down 2-0 was actually a benefit to them as it created the requisite circumstances for said "us against the world" mindset.
Here's the post-game narrative I would have liked to hear:
"It was nice to help Coach Riles burnish his fading legacy. He really wanted this one, y'know? I mean, Dude went to all that trouble kickin' Ron-freakin'-Jeremy to the curb so's he can, what? Spend mo' time with his family?!? Shee-it! Guess Brother Mencken was right 'about not underestimating the smarts of the American people. Ain't nobody can accuse Riles of that shit!"
"But what really pumped us up was the prospect of whuppin' Cuban's sorry butt. Just what this country needs: Another puffed-up, Texas frat boy with an insatiable lust for projecting his rampaging id out on to the world by means of an 'army' made up of mostly people of color. Well, at least we got to wipe the smirk offa one of their ugly mugs!"
i'm so fucking sick of anon commentors who puff their chests off, wag their nuts around, and see fit to try and shit all over us when they can't even bring their FAKE NAME out in INTERNET public.
noixe is right about why the order to "STOP HATING: HE'S GOT A RING NOW" makes no sense, and obviously anon is too stupid to read FD if he thinks we don't like dominant players.
somewhere, there is a man named lebron james. and another called kobe bryant. and some dude, working his ass off to get back, who goes by amare.
I, for one, welcome our new D-Wade overlord.
I don't like the treatment he gets from the refs, either, but he's the one player on the Heat that I enjoy watching (exception: the four seconds that 'Toine did the floor shimmy, during which time he bore an enjoyably frightening resemblance to Whitney Houston).
Also, much credit to you, FD commenters. With all the "we wuz robbed" chatter elsewhere on the Internets regarding the refs, there's been a refreshing clearheadedness here about the Mavs' missed opportunities.
Seriously. The heat weren't underdogs in the slightest. They were the 3rd preseason favorite, they were the finals favorite(at least from the analyst picks i saw), they have the most likable player in the nba(even though i can't stand his gigantic, petty ass anymore), and the new next jordan in wade(late 90s jordan complete with bail out calls). I don't know how these teams like the heat and steelers get motivated by all the "haters and doubters."
On being a hater and bitcher about wade since he won. Does that mean title winners are exempt from valid criticism? Someone should alert the media so they can give kobe a break for a change. All the man did was carry shaq in the 4th quarter, make spectacular athletic plays, and make some clutch shots in the playoffs. Sound familiar? Here's the difference. Kobe is kobe. Despite his attempt at media manipulation, he's original on the court and off. Wade is....jordan? the next jordan? shaq's 3rd sidekick? Maybe all of those, but i don't even know who wade is yet.
re: bublitchki
The "us against the world" motivation is understandably ubiquitous. Although tired, the reason it keeps popping up is that it can be used by BOTH sides of pretty much any prolonged sport campaign.
Any time there is an exaustive amount of press dedicated to any particular event, negatives accrue. Regardless of any successes achieved, these negatives usually outnumber the positives and draw the attentions of the subjects in undue proportion. A couple of perfect (and real) analogies exist:
1: Israel v. Palestine: both sides feel marginalized and misunderstood. Both sides feel that all impetus belongs to the players, and none to the spectators.
2. Conservative media v. Liberal media: Both of these are perceived as hegemonic at the same time. Both sides are incredulous as to the rightward/leftward spin imparted on their every word and action.
word verification: huhgesy
the act of denying the existance of larry hughes
http://www.usmarshals.gov/district/va-w/news/chron/2005/030305.htm
There's a metaphor in there somewhere...I just can't find it.
Just in case someone here didn't see this... here's the 'Toine Shimmy in all it's creep-tacious glory: http://youtube.com/watch?v=MDgVNzjeiYE&search=antoine%20walker
WV: horyl -- backwards, it's lyhor, which is what Riley is regarding the Van Gundy situation... A liar and a whore, all rolled into one. A fabulous word indeed.
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