bulls-celtics

absolutely unbelievable. 6 games in: 4 OT games, 1 double-OT game, one triple (TRIPLE!!!) OT game, with transcendent performances by multiple guys on each team: Ray Allen, Rajon Rondo, Paul Pierce, Derrick Rose, John Salmons, Brad Miller, Ben Gordon. It's been an absolute joy to watch. You've got to love any basketball columns by the Sports Guy (despite the fact that this one involves one of his favorite teams) because, as he often says, he's one of 12 actual basketball fans left:

Derrick Rose took the superstar training wheels off. Rajon Rondo turned into Isiah, The Sequel: Just as talented, just as hated, just as nasty. Ben Gordon and Kendrick Perkins turned into Andrew Toney and Robert Parish. The great Ray Allen became a minus-130 favorite in the "Reggie Miller versus Ray Allen" argument and might have to change his name to "The Great Ray Allen." Paul Pierce added to his legacy and sullied it a little at the same time. Brad Miller made the Faces Hall of Fame and the Dorkiest White Guy Celebrations Hall of Fame. John Salmons and Glen Davis put themselves on the map as bona-fide NBA players. Kirk Hinrich redeemed his career. Stephon Marbury destroyed what was left of his career. Doc Rivers and Vinny Del Negro inspired their players and undermined them at the same time.

I'll leave you highlights from one of the best playoff games I've ever seen.

lebron.

do you think it upsets lebron that he's 50 times better than everyone else on the court? how can anyone even QUESTION if he's the best player in the game? lebron is really the ultimate combination of dominant scorer, passer, and now, defender. when he works an isolation he's like ladanian tomlinson. as a passer he's chris paul's equal. he plays defense like bryan dawkins or ed reed, just trolling around disrupting everything. its absolutely ridiculous.

i was the biggest michael jordan homer anyone's ever seen. so much so that my dad actually used to antagonize me when jordan would have a bad game (probably to teach me not to hero worship so much) and i would actually start CRYING. and i wasn't even that young. and i'm STILL going to go ahead and say it. lebron makes teams better than jordan ever did in his prime, and lebron would leave jordan for dead one-on-one. there's only a few things that jordan's got over lebron at this point.

1) jordan had the greatest killer instinct i've ever seen. it's not even the whole "game winning shot" thing - in the 4th quarter, jordan would just take games over. and not even games in the playoffs - mid season garbage games. you got the sense that he would cheat to win, if he had to. i've never seen anyone in any sport be that level of cold-blooded killer. the only one even close? kobe.

but lebron is getting there. i just saw him get upset that rip hamilton hit him in the face while he was going up for a rebound. he takes the ball down court, backs into a corner to lure hamilton to him, then blows by him and 3 other pistons, takes it to the hole, draws contact, hits the layup plus the foul, then stares hamilton down, giving him a "don't take me on" look. you got the sense that until he went to the olympics and hung out with kobe (who's so one-dimensionally obsessed with winning that it's almost counterproductive, much like jordan early in his career) he cared more about being a 'global icon' and being funny in commercials than about beating the Celtics. Not anymore.

2) i guess this is sort of related - you never thought jordan would miss the last second shot, and he almost never did. of course, that made him valuable at the very end of the game, but it also affected other teams as the game was winding down - they always had it in the back of their head that they had to put the game out of reach. lebron just isn't as good a shooter as jordan was, and that hurts his "end of the game" rep (as I just watched him blow by all 5 pistons, lay it in, and look bored.) BUT. he almost doesn't need to be as good a shooter because a) he gets to the hole virtually whenever he wants, and b) its insane how good a passer he is, and how good court vision he has. if the rest of the cavs could shoot, he's have 20 assists per game. Still, jordan's pull-up jumper was basically a dagger, because it was completely unguardable, and you knew that he would make it virtually whenever he wanted to. lebron isn't quite there yet.

still, as a composite athlete, he's in a different stratosphere from the rest of the world. he may have actually evolved into an entirely separate species. its nothing less than a joy to watch, and i say this even as red sox manager terry francona is stubbornly sticking with hideki okajima as his setup guy even though he's done, and i have to watch him give up 4 baserunner while inducing an amazing 0 outs in the 7th inning of a close game against the hated yankees. time to give okajima the old yeller treatment, tito. fuck.

kobe

This is a PHE-nomenal article on Kobe and really touches on the killer instinct thing I blogged about before. That quote, "There's only two real killers in this league" is awesome. Hate him or love him, you kind of finish this article respecting him and people like him who have that sort of borderline-unhealthy fixation on their craft. Hooray for one-dimensional obsessiveness!

this is pretty random.

random thoughts and a rant!

basketball: if the spurs can't win when they hold kobe to less than 10 points in the first half, then its not going to happen. kobe is so weird, man. i heard his post-game interview and he sounds like he has aspergers. like he's given up the pretense. they asked him about his first half and he was like "whatever, it was more important for my teammates. i can basically score whenever i want." kudos.

democratic primaries: im ignoring hilary at this point. how about some vice presidential candidate talk? obviously there's she-who-will-not-currently-be-named, and joe biden. but how about Jim Webb? he seems like a popular choice that would make sense, unify the party, etc etc. im sold, but it doesn't take much with me.

now for something random.

I first saw Underworld when I was 16, at the Electric Factory. They had just come out with Beaucoup Fish (which is why its my sentimental favorite, even though objectively Second Toughest... is probably their best work). I think the reason I love them so much was because theirs was a first in a series of artists I started getting into whose construction was pretty simple. Aka, I felt I could write stuff like this if I wanted. Yet, that simple construction had within it something kind of primal and cathartic (I think this is why people like house in general). So on a day when I dont have much else to add, here are my 4 favorite songs by underworld.

Cups: because the first 9 minutes sounds like music that comes on in a fusion jazz-trance lounge (if those ever existed) after like 2 am. i like the muffled vocals, and the beat just seems to slink along, rather then being abrasive.

Born Slippy: you dont really like underworld if you dont love born slippy. i can still recite all the nonsensical lyrics by heart. nothing like hearing everyone at an underworld concert yell "she said comeover comeover she smiled at you, boy". i also like all the stupid remixes of this song. i should note that this probably one of like 10 songs i like whose tone is predominantly happy.

Push Upstairs: basically the flipside of Cups (kind of cool that they follow each other on beaucoup fish). insistent piano line over a driving, thumping beat. the kind of music you want to play when you're getting ready to be in a race, or a fight, or something. kind of a theme song for obsessive compulsives.

Rez-Cowgirl: mostly because its the best live song they do, with like 5 separate climaxes in the 12 minute song. Rez is mostly upbeat with a really awesome synth line that any true fan knows by heart. cowgirl has a fairly repetitive synth drone and melody that are weirdly addictive despite being kind of robotic until the (i dont think any terms that refer to song structure work with underworld but whatever) "bridge" where you get another awesome stream of consciousness rant. karl hyde, apparently, wants to give you everything, everything, everything.