It was a déjà view. But where? When? Who? Why? Nurse!
I knew I’d seen such an NBA Game 7 conference final before, so devoid of forethought and planning and so rich in self-defeat that it would stick in my head as impossible.
Why did watching the Celtics lose Game 7 at home to the Heat, 103-84 on Monday, appear as the sequel to a bad movie?
The Celts chose to lose by trying to make 42 3-point heaves, succeeding just nine times (21 percent), and were unable or unwilling to come up with an alternative approach.
As reader Scott Russell put it, “At what point does one realize, ‘Hey, this ain’t working, Jack, let’s try something else’ ”?
Then it hit me: the 2018 Western Conference finals, Game 7, Warriors at Rockets. The Rockets did the same as the Celts did Monday: They played bombs-away ball, unanswered prayers posed as big-game basketball.
The Rockets lost at home, 101-92, on relentlessly bad 3-point shooting: 7-for-44 (16 percent). James Harden was 2-for-13.
Like Boston’s Game 7 on Monday, it was unforgettable, if not unforgivable, for senseless, highest-level pro basketball.
Funny, every time the NBA “experience” seems headed back on track to include attractive team ball, it reverts to games — especially big games — such as the one Monday.
The Knicks, in what now seems like years ago — it was late April — beat the Cavaliers in five games, playing all-in, two-way ball that was good on all the better senses.
But then, against the Heat, the Knicks returned to playing one-on-one long ball and committing turnovers by inattentive, uncommunicative play.
Thus, like the Celtics, they aided and abetted the Heat to appear better than they are.
The Heat-Celts series was immersed in silly senselessness. Reader Doug Heimowitz reminds us that ESPN’s Dept. of Expert Analytics rated the Celts a 97 percent chance to beat Miami.
Many readers noted that the biggest per-game tout of the Celtics was the ubiquitous paid gambling shill (and admitted problem gambler) Charles Barkley.
Game 7 — less game than sorry spectacle — produced a strong TV rating for TNT. Not sure if that’s a good thing.
How many enjoyed what they watched, and how many felt they’d wasted their time? How many thought they’d already seen this movie? Or is it that there’s just no accounting for taste?
Better state obvious nowadays, just in case
Sign of the Times: A sign attached to a fence along a rec baseball field in Elmsford, N.Y. (Westchester County) displays five rules:
1) This is a game.
2) Coaches are volunteers.
3) Umpires are human.
4) No scholarships will be handed out today.
5) They’re just children.
Casting call: In announcing that it’s producing a documentary on Barry Bonds, HBO’s four-page news release included exactly nothing that even suggested Bonds became the all-time home run leader with the considerable help of PEDs, not even at the age of 40, when he hit 45 homers with a massively swollen head that has since receded to its pre-slugger size.
HBO’s release only reads that his career was “controversial.” So is my sister-in-law’s.
Two of the executive producers for the HBO documentary also were executive producers on the Michael Jordan PR vehicle that was ESPN’s “The Last Dance.”
I smell a whitewash in the making, if not the planning.
Watching the Notre Dame-Duke NCAA lacrosse championship game Monday on ESPN brought to mind that 2006 mass hysteria when the media, politicians, college students and national justice warriors rushed to scream “Racists!” at the white Duke lacrosse team after a black exotic dancer, Crystal Mangum, accused three of them of raping her.
Had anyone spent a few minutes of research they’d have found that Mangum, even according to her ex-boyfriend, had zero credibility and an arrest record to prove it, one arrest in 2002 for stealing a taxi cab then fleeing police at high speed.
In 2013, Mangum was convicted of murdering her boyfriend, stabbing him to death.
Still, I can’t recall anyone who blindly supported the false allegations against the three Duke players — all were charged with first-degree rape, but the case died under the weight of a conspicuous absence of truth — who has publicly apologized for their public rush to fully support Mangum’s claims while hollering “Racism.”
Of course, Monday, during the final, ESPN wouldn’t go near that story — even if it had been a long and not long ago sensational national story about one of the participating teams. Mum was the word.
Can’t figure why only Catholics should protest the Dodgers honoring a group of obnoxious, attention-starved, fringe lunatic Catholic-bashers as per a “Pride” game. All civilized folks, atheists included, should be appalled by it.
Retire Melo No.? Why?
The Knicks should retire Carmelo Anthony’s number? For what? One man basketball? Popularizing that “three-to-the-head” gesture? Resenting then ridding the kind of winning team basketball Jeremy Lin resurrected? Anthony made his teammates better? Or irrelevant? Sure, put him up there with Clyde and Willis.
With rapper Fetty Wap sentenced to six years for drug-running, the list of Roger Goodell’s candidates to perform at the Super Bowl narrowed by one.
As for the NFL’s newly installed “fans and customers can drop dead” Thursday night bait-and-switch provision, consider that 24 of 32 NFL owners voted in favor. Champs.
Not so fast, Piano Man. No one, not even resident music act Billy Joel, leaves the Garden without entering his or her mug in James Dolan’s facial recognition machine. What if Joel were to strike any bad chords about Dolan?
Thursday. Gorgeous day. Throwback afternoon. In the backyard with my 45-year-old transistor listening to Howie Rose call Phillies-Mets. His cornball humor making smiles.
Reader Bill Jerome, classy radio vet, suggests that batters who don’t bother to run out dropped third strikes be charged with “offensive indifference.”
Not sure why, but both Michael Kay and Gary Cohen now grow hysterical when a Yankee or Met hits a home run or makes a good play. Given that we can see what they’re screaming about, the pictures too often fall short of their reactions.
Reader Mark Piotrowski has found former MLB pitcher Al Alburquerque, known only to Mike Francesa and Mama Alburquerque as Alberto. He’s pitching for manager Wally Backman’s Long Island Ducks.
Wednesday, Mets up 4-1, one out no one on in the top of the seventh when the Phillies’ Kody Clemens singled. He then made one of those now almost obligatory “Yay for me!” gestures to the Phils dugout in which a 25-30 team sat.
Ever get the feeling that Hal Steinbrenner never owned a baseball mitt when he was a kid?
Reader Rich Meyerson asks what’s up with TV golf announcers identifying “unforced errors”? Well, as in tennis, “unforced errors” sounds cooler and sharper than saying what they are: bad shots.
