Witness protection program

I was at the AT&T Center for game 5 of the Spurs-Jazz series on Wednesday night, but unfortunately, there's nothing more to say except the Spurs took that game. They jumped out early and never looked back, something they don't do enough. The real story during the conference finals has been the Cavs-Pistons series though.

These are slowly becoming the King James version of the playoffs. I wrote before game 2 of this series that I thought LeBron James was finally going to show us something special. Well, I was one game off. He did in game 3. And in game 4. And even more so last night in game 5. As you can read at any sports site, that was truly a performance to be cherished.

You can credit Detroit's lack of defense at the rim for part of that (who would've thought they'd miss Ben Wallace this much?), but mostly it was LeBron. All LeBron. You don't need to know the statistics; as incredible as they are, they don't begin to tell the story.

The work isn't done for the LeBron and the Cavs, they still have to win one more game against a better team. But if there's one player who can take down a team, it's him. And even if he doesn't, we'll remember these three games for what they are: special.

There were no games last night, so what the hell am I going to write about?

That is the one drawback to the games getting deep into the playoffs, the lack of games played. Very rarely since October have there been nights where there have been no basketball games played. So what do I do? Well, I write about tonight's game.

But there's a problem to that to. Everybody is writing about tonight's game. And it seems everybody has the same idea. Right after I decided what I was going to write about, I read Scoop Jackson saying the same thing, although, much more eloquently. And Sam Rubenstein at SLAMonline had pretty much the same idea too, although his relates to LOST.

It comes down to this. LeBron James had his team in a position to win on Monday night against the Pistons with not his best game. But at the same time, Chauncey Billups and Tayshaun Prince for the Pistons had bad games too. You can't expect that two games in a row.

LeBron has also had a fairly quiet postseason. And I don't mean quiet like Tim Duncan quiet, where nobody notices. I mean quiet like people are expecting more from him.

And yes, I do realize he's averaging almost 25 points per game along with 8 rebounds and 8 assists per game during the playoffs. But these are the Eastern Conference Finals now. He's four wins away from the NBA Finals. He's playing one of the toughest teams in the entire NBA. People are expecting something special from him on his conference's biggest stage.

People are expecting one of those performances from him where years down the road, they remember where they were and what they were doing that night. LeBron James is the type of player who inspires those expectations in people.

I believe LeBron James knows this.

And I think (I hope) tonight is the night he delivers.

Down with the King?

A lot of people are on LeBron's case today. You know what? I'm not. I'm going to break it down for you:

• Donyell Marshall is a very good three-point shooter.
• Donyell Marshall was wide-the-hell open.
• LeBron is a great passer.
• LeBron had about three good-to-great defenders coming at him when he got to the lane.
• The old saying is you go for the tie at home and you go for the win on the road. Well, the Cavs were on the road.
• Calm the f*ck down. If Marshall hits the three, the Cavs win and everybody is talking about what a great decision LeBron made to pass the ball.
• I've heard people say that Michael Jordan would've taken the shot. I seem to remember Money hitting Steve Kerr and John Paxson for game winning jumpers in his playoff career.

The draft lottery is tonight and the future decade for several franchises could be decided tonight, good or bad. My God I'm glad the Spurs are in the playoffs; I couldn't deal with that stress. But I'm excited to see what happens.

I'll be at game 2 of the Spurs-Jazz tonight and I'll watch the lottery there. I'll have my thoughts from both the lottery and game here tomorrow.

From one finals to another

The last few posts I had, I was looking forward to the regular season ending and the playoffs starting. Then, I would have some interesting stuff to post about. Then finals happened. The couple weeks I spent wrapping up classes and working on finals took up most of my time and completely threw me off my rhythm.

Now that finals are over and I'm sitting in front of a computer for eight hours a day, I think it's time I try to get back into that rhythm. And you know what? It's a shame that I haven't posted for the last couple of weeks, because I missed out on some good stuff. Here are some things off the top of my head that I missed:

• Tim Duncan vs Joey Crawford -- I will be campaigning for this to be on the undercard of the inevitable De La Hoya-Mayweather Jr. II fight.
• Golden State Warriors vs Dallas Mavericks -- The series paved the way for the Spurs to have possibly their easiest route to the finals ever. And it gave me something to harass 50% of my friends about until November.
• San Antonio Spurs vs Phoenix Suns (or more specifically, Robert Horry vs the city of Phoenix) -- The most controversy the Spurs have ever been involved in. Before that, it was Phil Jackson campaigning for the Spurs to have an asterisk next to their 1999 title. For what it's worth, the rulings against Amare Stoudemire and Boris Diaw were unfair considering the circumstances, but they clearly violated a rule. As much as it sucks for the fans of the Suns and that series, the right ruling was made. The rule definitely needs to be addressed in the offseason.
• LeBron James vs Expectations -- LeBron knows what he's doing. He didn't care when people criticized the way he was playing in the regular season, when he was saving a lot of energy for the playoffs. Now he's four games away from reaching the NBA Finals against a team that he almost single-handedly beat in last year's playoffs. The Eastern Conference playoffs might finally get interesting.

Hopefully I'll be able to keep on track now that I have the time. We'll see. Enjoy the conference finals.

I'm Never Really Asleep Cuz Only One Eye's Closed

I haven't posted in a while, and frankly, I haven't had time. Well, that's a lie. I have had time but I've been really busy and I just haven't had the motivation to post. I have been taking care of somethings that might really enhance this blog, so keep your fingers crossed on that.

I am delighted to tell you that my NCAA tournament bracket is healthy. I was planning on taking a picture of me lighting my bracket on fire and posting it up here, but my bracket looks good. I picked three out of four of the final four teams with only UCLA not there and both of my national championship teams are alive.

Speaking of sports contests that I'm in and get no real benefit from winning, I'm dominating my NBA.com fantasy league and in second place in my Yahoo! fantasy league with a bye in the first round of the playoffs. Who's beating me in my Yahoo! league you ask? Amazingly, my dad. I'm as shocked as you are.

Back to the Final Four though. The more I think about it, the more excited I am. For some reason this Final Four seems amazingly strong. Maybe I don't know what I'm talking about; maybe I've been reading too much Bill Simmons; I don't know, but I'm excited.

My pick is still the Ohio State over Florida in the final. Greg Oden for MOP just because if Ohio State wins the NCAA will feel compelled to give it to him. I won't argue.

I haven't watched a lot of NBA this past week, my guess is I'm subconsciously saving my energy for the playoffs, or LeBron-Jamesing it, because I know I will be watching a ton of basketball when playoffs come around.

Speaking of LeBron, how about his new house? I'm thinking of faxing my résumé over there so maybe I can get a better paying job. Somebody has to work in his bowling alley, right?

That's about all for me tonight. I need more sleep these days.