I just realized that Ray Allen is going to Boston, where there is no WNBA team for his daughter and him to support! And here I was all excited for him to be on a team with Allan Ray. Basically for no other reason than the symmetric silliness.

But I guess that he has more than enough money to go down to Connecticut (or anywhere else he wants to go) for a game. So that's something.

In international basketball news, I'm going to go to an entire day's games of the FIBA Americas! I get to see Brazil, USA, Argentina, Canada, Virgin Islands, Uruguay, Puerto Rico, and Mexico. It was affordable too.

Brazil has almost all of the major players accounted for. Nene has decided to stop being an ass about Team Brazil, and should be playing this summer. Tiago Splitter isn't yet playing for Popovich (who has a reputation for convincing his players not to play for their national teams), so he'll be there. Anderson Varejao is his usual excited self, and seems to be completely committed to the team.

Barbosa is a different story. He seems committed to the team, but I'm not sure if he'll be able to act on that commitment this summer. I was angry about how he was playing in the Spurs series, but as it turns out he was injured and in need of surgery. So I guess I owe him an apology.

The recuperation might interfere with the tournament, and also he has problems with insurance. I love the fact that he's made this a public issue in the press. Now granted, that article came out almost three weeks ago, but I haven't heard anything new on this subject. (Although FIBA is terrible at all things internet-related and it's not like the American press cares about international teams, so anything is possible.)

This all means that if insurance gets dealt with and he recuperates well, I could be seeing Leandrinho in August. Which, y'know, is all that really matters. Right?

(Also interesting, at least as a footnote, is his work with the college basketball system in Brazil. This is in huge contrast with Nene, who basically said, "fix it yourself.")

Shot heard 'round the world

I know it's been awhile since I've posted. It's not for lack of things to talk about (oddly, since it's officially the off season now), but just basically because I'm lazy. I have made a list of things to write about, but first I wanted to mention something that's not on the list.

It was recently the 31st anniversary of the Greatest Game in the history of the NBA. I was a basketball fan for the 30th anniversary, but I didn't know about it then.

It was game 5 in the finals between the Celtics (of course, weren't they all back then?) and the Suns. The Celtics won in a triple overtime forced by one of the awesomest sequences that I've ever heard about.

According to Harvey Frommer (from the above link), with one second left on the clock and Boston up by one the Suns' Paul Westphal asked for, and received, a timeout he knew his team was not entitled to. It was good strategy, though. The Celtics were given a technical foul, whereupon Jo Jo White hit the free throw. The Celtic lead was moved up to two points, but the technical foul enabled the Suns to make the inbounds pass from midcourt.

Forward Gar Heard caught the pass to the right of the free-throw line, turned and hit a 20-foot jumper right at the buzzer. The noisy Garden faithful was stunned into silence for the moment. And they went into a third and final overtime.

Not only is this an amazing turn of events (that I wish I could see), but it all happened on my birthday. Which, yeah, was two weeks ago. I intended to post about it on the day itself, but you know what they say about the road to Hell.

Next time I post it will either be about the Mystics and their season of doom or about Leandro and his chances of being at the FIBA Americas tournament in Vegas. There are other things too (7 Seconds or Less, trade rumors, Kobe, etc.), but the likelihood is that one of those will be next.

Say what you will, but that dog can shoot!

I turned on the television tonight for background noise as I got ready for work and Animal Planet was showing Air Bud. Now I understand that this movie is hardly of the highest quality, but how is it that I had never seen it before? Last year after the Suns had dropped out of the playoffs, I went on a basketball movie watching binge.

I saw so many basketball movies in about a month and a half, that I'm surprised my eyes didn't fall out. The Air Up There, Hoop Dreams, White Men Can't Jump, Glory Road, He Got Game, Coach Carter, Hoosiers, the list just goes on and on. But for some reason, I never saw Air Bud. (Or Space Jam, which needs to be rectified ASAP. But that's a different story.)

This movie is incredible. But even more incredible is how far you have to suspend your disbelief. Never mind that the coach for this middle school boys basketball team is a former Knicks player. (Because that's what I'd do after retiring from the NBA too. Yeah, right.) Never mind that the reason that Bud gets to join the team is because there "ain't no rule that says a dog can't play basketball!" Never mind that Buddy returns to his family just in time for the big game after being deserted (one imagines) miles and miles away from his home. Never mind that the bad guy is an evil clown who we are lead to believe beats Buddy with a newspaper and wants to sell him out to a beer company.

No, the plot point that I got stuck on is that the coach made Buddy a registered member of their team at some point prior to the big game. At some point, he was like, "what the hell, I'll add the dog to the roster. It can't hurt anything, and it'll be damned funny." Only, y'know, cleaner. It is a Disney movie after all.

I fully expected there to be a major plot point in which the other coach challenges Buddy's playing because he's not only a dog, but also not on the roster. And you can't substitute a player like that in the middle of a game. But no, there's a throw away line in which the coach says something to the effect of, "he's a registered player, he trains and travels with us."

Whatever.

All in all, though--a fairly entertaining movie if ridiculous. Plus, ever since seeing the Fisher King, I've really enjoyed Michael Jeter.

Well that's that.

I'm probably not going to pay too much attention to the rest of the playoffs.

That being said, the WNBA season started last night. So there's still more basketball that I care about! Yay! I got to go to the Mystics opening game and was pleasantly amazed by it.

Alana Beard is currently out for a sore shoulder that she suffered while playing for Team USA this spring. Without her, they still managed to keep pace with the Connecticut Sun (boo hiss) until the end. In order to try to take the lead, the Mystics tried a very foul heavy strategy. It failed, as the Sun sunk (almost?) all their free throws.

I just really adore the WNBA. I love watching it, it's a high level of quality, and it's just so exciting. Being there live is amazing. I loved the NBA games that I went to, but (especially as an away fan) being there was full of negativity. Going to Mystics games is just so positive.

It's so family friendly, and actually just so friendly period. I wish there were more people in attendance, or at least that they sat us all on the first floor so that there was the illusion of a bigger crowd. But even though they don't, it's just such a charged atmosphere. Last night, fourth quarter was so exciting. The crowd got involved, and I just was very happy.

It was the perfect antidote to Friday night's misery.

Emotional fuckwits!

I just woke up early from a dream that had me posting reasons that I'm angry at Barbosa. About how he's been lost and unable to connect on anything. Which is all true. And I am angry, but I think I'd rather not post about that.

I want to post asking why in a game like last night's, we played without Jalen Rose or Marcus Banks. A shooter like Rose with fresh legs? A player who has purportedly good D like Banks? Get them out there when we still had a lead. Rest the guys who looked so sloppy in the fourth.

I was so giddy and elated in the first half. It was like the team that I fell in love with last year in the playoffs was back. No one plays basketball like they did last year, not even this year's team. Last year everyone counted them out and they got so far playing such amazing and beautiful ball. They had so much to prove. This game was shades of that, and I really was excited to see them come out and do it again.

And then midway through the third they started getting tired. They started losing that beautiful lead. In the fourth when it was all gone, I thought I'd cry.

I don't know if I'm on the conspiracy bandwagon, that this was fixed by the NBA, but I can tell you that I think that it was an unfair ruling that did benefit the team that perpetrated the flagrant. I know that if Duncan and Bowen walked on that court following the Elson and Jones incident, they should have been suspended too. There is some bias in that, even if it's not intended to be game-fixing bias. If rules are rules and we should suck that up as Suns fans, then rules should be rules for everyone.

The latest I've heard about that (and this hasn't been confirmed, just word of mouth) is that Stu Jackson (NBA exec vp of basketball operations) said that Stoudemire and Diaw got their suspensions as a result of leaving the bench to participate in the near brawl, but that Duncan seemed to get up out of concern for Elson, and therefore wasn't suspended.

Do I really need to address that asshattery? No I didn't think so. (It does briefly bear mentioning that that's been Diaw's story about why he left the bench from the get go. He was worried about Nash.)

Whatever. I feel robbed by fate, frustrated by the outcome, and angry at Barbosa.

Tomorrow's game had better be awesome.

Bell's a dad!

Congrats to the Bells! They just welcomed their first child (a boy) into their family.

Everyone seems to be ok, because Raja is playing tonight in game 5.

Yay Raja and Cindy (and the little Bell)!

I'm 6-10, I'm in the lane!

Dear LeBron,
Your team just swept the first round of the playoffs against a very depleted team. The God pose might be a bit much. Just maybe.
Trying to be helpful,
Jean

I have been having a bit of trouble thinking of things to say about the playoffs lately. Mostly I just want to say that I so totally called the Warriors playing the Mavs hard and maybe even winning the best of seven. Everyone's acting so surprised about it, and I don't really know why. There are so many reasons that the Warriors can play so well against the Mavs.

The other thing that I want to say about the playoffs so far (that I have said and will say again long after I click the "publish" button) is "Eeep, Spurs!" Why can't Denver cooperate and just beat them for us? It's really scary.

I think it says a lot about the Lakers and how they're playing that I'm more worried about the second round than I am about the rest of the first. I just strongly feel that we'll win it even if the Lakers win tomorrow night (knock wood).

Oh, and I've decided that I'm not a Smush Parker fan. Not as though I was ever cheering for him, but he's pretty much sealed my opinion of him. Last Thursday, at the end of game three, he had that ridiculous dunk attempt. If you're up by six and there's a couple seconds left, you dribble it out. You *do not* run the fast break for an easy dunk. You just don't. It's rude and bad sportsmanship.

And then on Sunday he fouled Barbosa hard twice. Both times he basically grabbed him and took him into the stands. It was bizarre and unnecessary. And of course had me yelling at the TV. Because a) that's what I do, and b) I'm oddly protective of Barbosa.

One last thing about the Suns podcasts, and then I'm off to bed. It's mostly stuff (or maybe even all stuff) from the multimedia section on suns.com, but I love it! I've been having a ton of fun watching and listening to things that I never would have otherwise. Especially this.

Enjoy!