Like the good episodes of the Simpsons and Family Guy, the Miami Heat's title defense might as well be ancient history. Like disco and Vaudeville, Miami is dead. I know this because it seems to be the principle under which Jay Mariotti is operating these days. The sad thing is, under the Even A Blind Squirrel Finds A Nut Now And Then Theorem, he's right. Miami can't beat Chicago. And there is a villain in all of this most people might not realize - Pat Riley.

It's hard to criticize a coach with seven NBA championships on his career resume, but I think Miami might have stood a better chance of defending their title with Ron Rothstein still running things. I don't know how many times Chicago has to exploit the fact that Miami is not quick enough (or perhaps motivated enough) to rotate to open perimeter players before Miami tries something different. Even if it didn't work, it would have been nice to see Miami try different looks.

Also, every minute that Eddie Jones and Udonis Haslem occupy space on the basketball court has become an affront against the sport. Udonis Haslem has been outplayed by PJ Brown, which baffles me since Udonis Haslem is supposed to be a guy who brings energy and hustle to the defensive end of the floor and the offensive glass. Isn't that what PJ Brown made a living doing in the NBA for the last quarter century (deliberate exaggeration)? So Udonis Haslem is being outplayed by an older version of himself, who doesn't really enjoy a reputation as a savvy, heady player. At least not to the extent that it would justify the humiliating fashion in which he has handled Haslem. As for Eddie Jones, he looks like he aged four years in the last two weeks.

Dwayne Wade is pressing, and he's committing way too many turnovers to only score 21 points a game. Shaq is playing well in the first half, when he manages to avoid foul trouble. Too bad that he can't avoid foul trouble. Part of this is his fault for not adjusting to the way the refs are calling the game, and part of it is the fault of the referees for calling touch fouls that cut one way. Based on what I have seen to this point, I feel Shaq would be morally justified if he grabbed Ben Wallace and hammered him into the floor with his fist as though he were Spike (the big bulldog from Tom and Jerry) and Wallace were Tom.

And this brings us to Ben Wallace. If you've been following this blog since its inception, you may have noticed that I don't think much of Ben Wallace. I once called him the evolutionary Bill Russell, which believe it or not is an insult to Wallace and the way the game is played now. Ben Wallace is very nearly able to influence a game on the defensive end of the court the way Russell could because offenses stagnate to wait for a superstar to score and because the refs are immoderately inconsistent with the way they call games.

Ben Wallace is like Bill Russell in the same way a savage kick in the groin is like a steak dinner. When Wallace wants to shift position to front Shaq whilst defending him in the post, Wallace grabs Shaq and uses his body as a lever to get himself into position quickly. That's some good thinking, fine, practical application of physics, but it's not basketball. Russell played Wilt physically but cleanly. He'd be rolling over in his grave watching Wallace defend Shaq if he were dead.

I just don't see how the Bulls were able to handle the Heat so easily in the first two games when I look at the two teams on paper. I realize that Chicago is a better, tougher team than they were a year ago. They're younger and more athletic than Miami. Miami has been decimated by injuries all year, and now that all the pieces are back and in place (even though Wade's shoulder is not healed) they're out of sync. Shaq and Wade missed so much time that the team isn't sure how to play with the two of them on the court at the same time.

Miami wants to look to Wade the same way they did last year, but with 1 and 1/2 shoulders, he just can't be the same guy. So the rest of the team is torn. They're used to looking to him. They want to look to him, but they also know he's hurt and it makes them tentative. This tentativity (it's a word now, baby) cripples them in every phase of the game. I think they have the mindset that D Wade will save them on offense, on defense and in a fire should one break out ingrained so deeply that they can't get beyond it. That's why they're slow in rotations and a bit stagnant on offense.

Antoine and the second unit turned this game around tonight in the second quarter. They forced turnovers, they shot well, they played with energy and they took the lead from Chicago. Meanwhile, while the game started to get away in the fourth, Antoine was on the bench as Haslem failed to track open shooters on the break, failed to catch two Dwayne Wade passes which resulted in turnovers and generally removed objects from the table. Finally with 3:10 to go, Riley put Antoine back on the floor.

I can see a certain logic in making sure that he was fresh for the most important minutes of the game, but with less than five minutes to go, there were stoppages for a called team timeout and a TV timeout where Toine could have been put back in the game. I understand that a coach has tough decisions to make. Toine was excellent in the second quarter, but not so good in the third. But the Heat were down 0-2 in the series, taking on water as the Bulls ran off a 15-2 run.

By the time Antoine came back into the game, it was just too hard to come back. Antoine was called for a charge and a flagrant with less than a minute to go, which hurt more than it helped. The charge was his fault. The flagrant wasn't. I though as I watched the game that it was just a foul, Antoine didn't hit him harder than the situation required and he tried to hold Deng up as he fell to the floor.

Even worse, with 30 seconds to go and counting and down by five the Heat were trying to foul while the ball was on the perimeter to extend the game. And of all times for the officials to swallow the whistle, that's when they did it. For all the touch fouls that they've called on Shaq through the first half of games 1-3, this time the Heat needed to drop Luol Deng to the floor to get a call.

The kick in the ass of a flagrant foul in that situation isn't the two shots, because it was in the act of shooting and the Heat were over the limit at the time. Any foul but a technical would have been two shots at the time. Possession reverted back to the Bulls so stopping the clock didn't help even a little bit. Down by 5, with 18.7 seconds to go, it would have been a miracle if Chicago had found a way to lose.

Interestingly enough, Dick Bavetta was calling this game. For those who don't know, his presence at games which the home team desperately needs to win has been a staple of almost every suggestion that the NBA attempts to assist high-profile franchises survive and advance in the postseason Bill Simmons has ever made. And it just so happened that the officials swallowed the whistle when the home team with huge star power desperately needing a win tried like hell to foul on the perimeter, right up until the time that Luol Deng hit the floor.

Regardless of how a person wants that game to turn out, a foul should be called when contact occurs on the perimeter in that situation. Even though the flagrant foul pretty much turned out the lights on Miami Heat, not only for Game 3 but for the series, Luol Deng hitting the floor didn't need to happen. I don't mean to insinuate that Antoine Walker deliberately knocked him to the ground. Even if I thought he meant to do it, I probably wouldn't admit it here, since I have gone out of my way to defend him dozens of times.

Luol Deng is a big piece of the Chicago Bulls. I think Mariotti rushed to pronounce him a closer after only two stellar playoff games. I think he was phenomenal in Game One; he beat Miami by himself really (not because he didn't have help, but without his tremendous game, Chicago couldn't have won). And he was excellent again in the second game. He didn't have quite as good a game tonight, but he certainly played very well. If he got hurt in that episode, it would have reflected poorly on Walker and it would have crippled the Bulls hopes to beat teams like Cleveland and Detroit.

I think Mariotti rushed to judgment on the closer status (the article is on Deng, the closer crack motivated by the person on Around the Horn, both likely motivated by something like the impulse to apologize for this drivel in a normal human). I have two reasons for thinking that. First, Mariotti is a total douche, a miserable person and a terrible writer. Obviously that would amount to more than one reason if they didn't point to the simple fact that it makes me want to vomit when I find myself agreeing with him even on simple facts like water is wet.

The main reason is that I think a guy has to take a team to a conference finals at the very least before he can become a closer. After all, the Bulls are now on the verge of winning their first playoff series since Michael Jordan walked the Earth. I think that Ben Gordon, Luol Deng, Kirk Heinrich and Andreas Nocioni have not earned the right to be called closers, even if they were cut up and recombined into some sort of Frankentool. How can you be called a closer when you have not, to date, even closed out one team?

And before any one who reads this decides to get in my eye (I expect some negative feedback, because attacking Mariotti has attracted positive feedback in the past but I've never done it while being hostile to a Chicago team), I admit that every single one of the players I just combined into a Frankentool is very good. But let's not forget that I'm not a Chicago guy and not a Chicago fan (I'm not sure how to categorize the strange emotional attachment to the Bears that developed during my efforts to help build and maintain the Bears bandwagon last season).

By the way, I am aware of the Michael Jordan "comeback" with the Wizards, I choose not to acknowledge it any more than I absolutely have to. I was never really a Jordan fan, though I did root for his teams against the Utah Jazz and the Lakers during the three-peats and always against the Pistons. While I am not a Celtics fan now, I used to be right up until Ainge mounted his one man crusade against a team that had made a conference finals appearance and a trip to the second round before he arrived even though it had hired him.

I haven't done this much explaining in quite some time, probably since the inaugural post or one of my apology posts. But this is a weird post. I don't know that I've been as critical of a team that I don't hate as I had to be with Miami tonight. It's just not easy being one of the appallingly few Antoine Walker fans from Boston. I think all of them are included in my original seven readers.

I apologize for the coherence of this post. I'm not even drunk. But with the Heat playing, the Sox playing the Yanks and now the Mavs deflating in Game Three in Oak-town, I haven't found time to eat yet. The blood sugar is a tad low, so I have to wrap up and get my grub on. Before I sum up as best I can the many, many, many threads of this post, I want to add my voice to the number of people lamenting the fact that the NBA gives out its awards so soon after the regular season. How can Dirk be the MVP and Sam Mitchell Coach of the Year when their teams are on the ropes?

And that brings me back in a very long, meandering, roundabout way to my point (such as it is). There is no way Miami should have found itself in this position in the series with Chicago. Yeah, Chicago is younger and more athletic than Miami. But Miami is seasoned, with players who should know by now how to come up big in big moments. If you had asked me before the playoffs started which series could come close to being a desperately poor man's edition of the Celtics vs. Lakers series in 1987, it would have been the Heat vs. Bulls. Alas, thanks to Pat Riley and his determination to hide Antoine on his bench as though Employee Number Eight were the light under the basket in an inversion of the Biblical original.

I'm not as depressed by the demise of the Heat and the defeat of the Yanks as you might expect. Maybe it's because there was just an excellent episode of South Park (the Junior Detectives episode, I highly recommend it). Maybe it's the fact that Jackass the Movie is on right now. Or maybe it's the fact that I have the John Wayne opus The Horse Soldiers waiting in my saved programs on On Demand. Or maybe it's that Dallas is on the verge of dropping Game Three to Golden State like an overly ambitious Tae Kwan Do novice missing with a big crescent kick and dropping like a sack of potatoes. Who can say? But at any rate, good evening.

I find myself wondering whether Pat Riley wants to win basketball games. Things looked bleak for Miami when Shaq went to the bench with his fifth foul at the 8:35 mark of the 4th quarter. They certainly did not look like they were going to get a whole lot better when D Wade joined him after he was called for his fifth with 8:26 to play. One would have thought that things were going to fall apart for the Heat at that point.

Unfortunately for Scott Skiles and the Bulls, their road to victory was made considerably more difficult by one man. It was Antoine Walker, and the Bulls had no answer for him, as he led the Heat back to within two points with 5:17 to go in the game. Thankfully for Bulls fans, Pat Riley decided that it was time to bring Shaq and D Wade in off the bench at that point. Here is the full game play-by-play, in case you're interested.

I realize that Wade and Shaq absolutely must be on the floor at crunch time. I was looking forward to their return. I just don't think Antoine needed to go to the bench with his twenty when Shaq and Wade had been on the bench for three minutes of game play and three of the Heat (Eddie Jones, Udonis Haslem and Jason Williams) who also played important minutes had managed to combine to score fewer points than Antoine.

By the way, I would pay money to see Eddie Jones do Shakespeare before I paid money to see him play basketball at this point. I understand that Pat Riley has a man-crush on him, but enough is enough. He was done like dinner in the last days of the Clinton administration. Maybe Antoine would have scored more consistently in the regular season if he'd played more minutes. Just a thought. I am also working on the theory that he might have scored more consistently had I watched more of his games. But there was work to be done on the Bears bandwagon, and injuries from which to recover after each time it piled up into a trestle.

Chicago promptly went on a quick 5-0 run, until Shaq picked up his 6th, and Toine returned. Antoine didn't score another point, but finished with 20. His 3 point shooting on the day was pretty good, and he was perfect from the freethrow line for a change. And I would say that his defense did not suck quite as much as the other Miami players' effort on that end of the floor.

Antoine, on the off chance that some one in your entourage reads this and can pass it along, please stop playing hard. You have no right to remind Celtic fans that you were the last person that really wanted to win in a Celtic uniform. Stop showing up Danny Ainge. He does the best he can, and it's not his fault that he cannot run a basketball team. Stop making Bill Simmons look bad for saying that you're moving like Fred Sanford these days. It's not his fault he's a tool, and people seem to prefer his wife's writing to his. He and J Bug or Joe House or Fist Magnet will always have the time they routed Norv Turner from a $10 blackjack table.

And above all, stop playing hard because it encourages the lunatic fringe that wish Ainge had never traded you. Just think, on a day when the Red Sox played the Yankees, I watched the Miami Heat play a basketball game because I like Antoine Walker. If only we lived in a free country, then a grown-ass man could eat what he wanted and watch what he wanted and hope that Charles Barkley runs for President in peace.

You need to see this clip from the Detroit-Calgary game. I know I rarely talk about hockey in this space, and then it's usually college hockey, but this is strange. I am almost speechless. I've never seen a goalie get a game misconduct. I'm sure it's happened before, I just don't want to do the leg work since it's Saturday afternoon and googling hockey was pretty low on my to-do list for today.

It caught me by surprise because I haven't been following that series with much interest. I assumed that Detroit was up 3-1 based on the fact the fact that the score was 5-1 at the time of the incident and the Flames were that frustrated. I didn't realize the series was deadlocked at two wins apiece. There's still a game to play, that ought to be interesting.

I am going to watch the New Jersey game tomorrow afternoon, so I may have a thing or two to say about it. If there are any compelling moments, I may be doing some more writing on hockey as the playoffs progress. I do like the sport, it's just that I have no energy to hate the Bruins with so much devoted to hating the Red Sox and the Danny Ainge era of Celtic basketball.

Here is my conservative prediction for tonight's NASCAR race under the lights in Phoenix: a semi-literate moron will win. Of course since that cruelly insensitive epithet covers the entire spectrum of NASCAR drivers, I have a 100% chance of being right. And let me tell you, it feels good, for a change.

And it looks like the meek are going to inherit the earth today in Fenway, or at the very least a baseball victory. It's not every day that you can defeat a pitcher like Jeff Karstens. Red Sox Nation has a lot to hang its hat on today.

PS - There is a Springsteen reference somewhere in today's post. I wonder if you can spot it and tell me the song from which it came.

I don't have very much to say this afternoon. I hadn't intended to post, but something Bill Walton said at the end of the Bulls-Cavs game deserved notice. Before I begin, I must admit that I hate Walton. I never particularly like him, but I didn't have much animosity against him either until I saw him high fiving New Jersey Nets fans in the Meadowlands a few years ago as the team was in the process of closing the Celtics out of a playoff series. I know he wasn't a Celtic for very long, but that was still a beat thing to do.

But today, the Bulls were down two to the Cavs with 9 seconds remaining on the clock in overtime. The Cavs had just scored, and instead of taking a time out, the Bulls proceeded to inbound the ball and go for the last shot without drawing up a play. When the shot failed and the Cavs won the game, the other announcer asked Walton if he thought that the Bulls should have taken the time out instead of trying to score on the run.

Walton didn't take the chance to rip Scott Skiles or second guess him. I imagine the Chicago press will do just that tonight and tomorrow. I'm sure everybody's favorite blight om the city of Chicago, Jay Mariotti will spill plenty of ink on that topic. But I agree with Walton, these guys are paid to play basketball for a living. They've been doing it for their entire lives. If they don't know what they need to do to generate a quality shot to tie or win a game in nine seconds, it's probably time to contemplate a career change.

Skiles was right not to call that time out. After all, as Walton pointed out, when you try to score by pushing the ball down court the defense doesn't have a chance to set up, they have to react immediately. However, if you do take a time out in that situation you can move the ball up to the hashmark, as opposed to inbounding from under your own basket. But that also gives your opponent a chance to position his defense to counter your play.

After all, these teams have a lot of tape on the other team and plenty of experience playing against each other. The Cavs know how to defend the Bulls in a half court set, or at least they should. But late in the game, with fatigue a factor, it is a reasonable risk to take a chance that a player might be fatigued or surprised that there was no time out called and as a result find himself caught out of position. The odds of getting a good look at the tying or winning shot seem no worse in pushing the ball right away than they do in taking the time out to diagram the play.

It's been a little while now since I last posted on a baseball related topic. Like virtually every other sports fan in America, I have been devoting most of my attention to college basketball of late. For instance, I filled out my second bracket sheet today on boston.com. I hadn't intended to enter their bracket challenge until I saw that I could compete against Brian Scalabrine. The way I see it, between my total lack of athletic ability and Dann Ainge's penchant for brain typing, if I beat Scalabrine in this competition, I should get a million dollar deal with the Cs.

I simply could not let this article in the New York Times pass by without comment. Because Philadelphia fans booed Mike Schmidt and Yankee fans boo ARod, the two situations must be somehow related. Those of you who have been reading this blog for a while will already know that Mike Schmidt was my favorite player as a kid. I even wrote a post using him as a foil when I addressed the revisionist claim that Jim Rice was the most feared hitter in baseball when he was in his prime. Thanks to the magic of labelled posts, you can navigate to it with relative ease by clicking the Mike Schmidt label in the right hand column.

Mike Schmidt and Alex Rodriguez are not as similar as a comparison of their career numbers would lead one to believe. A Rod broke in at a younger age, 19 as opposed to 22 for Schmidt, so he has much better numbers at age 30 than Schmidt did. But Mike Schmidt played in an era with fewer teams. He also played his entire career in the National League. Even though they're both third basemen, it's still relevant because NL lineups all have that glaring hole in the 9 spot because the pitcher bats. For a guy like Schmidt that had to be cost him 5-10 RBI over a full season.

Schmidt also played in an era of massive ball parks that were nowhere near as conducive to great power numbers as the stadiums of this generation. Think about The Vet, Riverfront in Cincinnati, The Astrodome, Three Rivers, Old Busch Stadium (when it was the ghastly monstrosity with astroturf in the 1980s before the renovation in the 90s) and Fulton County Stadium in Atlanta to name a few. And even without steroids, HGH or any of the rest of the illicit performance enhancing substances we suspect today's power hitters to have used at some point (if they aren't still cheating on the sly), current players have a massive advantage over their predecessors of even 20 years ago because of the advances in nutrition and strength and conditioning programs.

But A Rod and Mike Schmidt are different in more ways than just numbers. A Rod has better postseason stats than Schmidt, but Schmidt was World Series MVP and champion in 1980. And Schmidt's surprising low postseason stats (.236 with 4 HR and 16 RBI in 36 games) are in large part due to a disastrous World Series in 1983 (1 for 20 over five games, .050 average with no walks, no RBI and six strikeouts). But even the Mariner teams A Rod took to the playoffs had better lineups than the Phillies teams of the 70s and 80s. It seems impossible to believe, but Mike Schmidt hit 48 HR for the eventual World Series Champions in 1980. The other seven regular position players combined to hit 58 home runs.

Mike Schmidt's relationship with the fans and media weren't perfect because Philly is Thunderdome. A Rod's trouble in New York is largely his own fault. I don't blame Yankee fans for disliking him. To come out and suggest that his difficulties in connecting to the fans were the result of being good looking, rich and biracial is absolutely insane. After all, what is Jeter? He is all of those things, plus he comes up big in big moments and he bust his ass every game.

I've heard more than a few people say that Red will be looking down on the Cs and working the lottery in their favor. I don't believe that for a second. Karma hasn't deserted the Celtics. Karma beat the Celtics half to death and left the team bleeding in a ditch. If you don't believe me, consider this. The Celtics lost to the Bulls tonight in the United Center. When the Bulls wore GREEN jerseys. I don't give a damn if it is the only home game of St Patrick's Day week. You simply don't wear green against the Cs.

Can you imagine wearing green jerseys against the Celtics with Russell, Heinshon, Cousy, Hondo, Cowens, Bird, DJ, Parrish or McHale on the floor? When the Cs lose out in the lottery, and I'm predicting now that even if they had all but 3 ping pong balls in the draft, the universe would find a way to stick them with that 4th pick. So Celtics fans might want to brace themselves for Joakim Noah or Big Baby Davis. When they miss out on Oden/Durant they're going to take one or the other of last year's models. And next year, we'll see Pagliuca come out and say: "If Delonte becomes Bibby and Al Jefferson becomes Karl Malone, I'd say Danny has done pretty well." And who knows, maybe I won't be the only one who finds that preposterous.

At least Wyc has his red Ferrari with the Celtics plate to console him as Banner 17 runs the last vestiges of Celtics pride into the ground. Either he thinks he's Magnum, or he's overcompensating for something. But it doesn't change the fact that the team has gotten worse and not better since Banner 17 took the reins. And Tyrus Thomas wearing a green jersey had a career night against the Boston Celtics.

And congratulations to all the pundits who lamented the fact that Drexel were not granted an at-large bid in the NCAA tournament. They did one hell of a lot of damage in the the NIT. They really made the committee look foolish.