I'm sorry I haven't posted in so long. With the football season over, and a moderate interest in basketball until the NCAA tournament starts, what was there for me to say? Yeah, the Patriots videotaping scandal has shown surprising staying power (or maybe not so surprising since it gets elected officials headlines while forcing them to take no risks to their future career prospects whatsoever), but I've already said all that I have to say about that, for the most part.

I know NBA teams are scoring more, and sinking ships in the league are offering big name players to potential contenders at bargain basement prices. But I still can't get fired up to watch too much basketball until the playoffs start. No matter how intriguing some teams are starting to look, that doesn't change the fact that there are 8-10 teams more than the market can support.

While there are enough basketball players to fill the league's rosters in the sense that they can all put enough warm bodies on the court, there are far too many guys who have no business in an NBA arena unless they paid the price of admission or sold beer at a concession stand for my taste. There was a time when a player with so little talent and so few discernible skills in the basketball industry like Brian Scalabrine wouldn't be cashing checks from an NBA team. I'm old enough to remember and miss that time and young enough to be depressed when I do remember it.

I do want to talk a little about the big NBA trades that have come down lately. It gives me a chance to do something that I almost never do, and that is compliment Bill Simmons. I guess I'd file it under the "Even a blind squirrel finds a nut now and then" theorem, but Simmons was dead right on Jason Kidd going to the Mavericks being much more likely to blow up than pan out in the short run or the long run. Simmons nailed every one of Kidd's flaws as a basketball player, and how specifically his competitiveness won't overshadow his inability to fit in on an already flawed basketball team.

That said, I am thrilled that Mark Cuban did this. First, it brings together three people in the NBA that I hate more than anyone, even Ainge, in Cuban, Kidd and Dirk. And it puts the three of them on a ship that will almost certainly sink. As Simmons said, Kidd can't shoot and he's too old to consistently drive to the basket. The players who should benefit from an upgraded point guard position were already shooting very well before Kidd came to town. And best of all, Kidd makes $20 million a year at his age, granted the deal ends after next year, but that's a lot of money to pay for a product that just may be past its expiration date. Good night and good luck to any hopes of a Mavericks' title run in the immediate future.

Simmons made an interesting point that Portland would have been a better fit, but Kidd nixed that deal. Apparently he had his heart set on going to the Mavs. Personally, I can't help but wonder if there might be some small motivation for Kidd coming out of the Toni Braxton fiasco, which ruined the chemistry of the young Mavs teams of the mid 1990s after Kidd and Jim Jackson fell out over their interest in the R and B singer.

I also found it interesting that Simmons dared to ask hard questions about whether this Garnett move might not come back to haunt the Celtics from a competitive stand point down the road. I am actually looking forward to that unfolding, considering the fact that I still hate Ainge and wish this team no success. If they don't win this year, all the players will be a year older. More than that, the issues that can arise on a team with three superstars trying to share shots won't be as easy to work around. If people put the team first for a year and it doesn't get it done, particularly if they lose to a one man team like Detroit or Cleveland, it's not going to work like this again.

As Simmons said, and we all know, the simple, pure economic decision was to go for Garnett. Even without the win differential, it got people excited and interested in the Celtics for the first time in 6 years. It sold a lot of tickets and jerseys and other assorted memorabilia. And something tells me, that even if this team comes apart at the seams in the playoffs and never gets close to bringing the 17th banner to Banner 17, those tools won't lose much sleep over it. Not so long as they make money.

So much for the thought that Mark Cuban is a brilliant business man. I wonder how the people who were desperate for Cuban to acquire the Cubs have taken this. I notice Jay Mariotti hasn't had the time to devote an entire column on this story. I'm not surprised, what with the fact that he had to tell us Tiger Woods had overtaken Michael Jordan. Aside from the horrendously half-assed stab at some sort of poetry to start the piece, the worst aspect had to be comparing a golfer and a basketball player.

Consider the fact that Tiger Woods goes ballistic if a fan dares snap a photo of him while he's in his back swing. Then set against that image a picture of Jordan trying to drive to the hoop against the Bad Boys era Pistons or the Pat Riley Knicks whose hacking habits did what just might be irreparable damage to basketball as a sport. At the end of the day, it's got to take a bit more than a few ads for Amex and Buick for a guy who excelled at a hobby to pass by a guy who took a shameful amount of contact in a non-contact sport.

As for college basketball, I'm really not all that hard up for something to watch that I can force myself to sit down and watch a game featuring two teams that I really could care less about battle it out in conference play. The only thing I feel strongly about in the entire college basketball landscape is that I hate Duke. I just hope that the upcoming NCAA tournament provides some earth-shatteringly interesting story lines, otherwise college basketball might be dead to me forever.

If you've been reading this space regularly, I think you probably know that I hate Barry Bonds by now. And if you haven't, then I guess I ruined the surprise. But every once in a great while, a writer of such talent, perspicacity and eloquence comes along and makes me think for a fleeting moment that I ought to reconsider my opinion of the man who will hold the MLB record for most home runs hit over the course of a career any day now.

Tonight, that writer is Jay Mariotti. I know I spend a great deal of time in a blog that is supposed to be about my hatred for the Boston Red Sox ripping a "man" who writes for a newspaper 1,000 miles from Boston. Sometimes I almost feel badly about it, but then I read his columns and I grieve for Chicago. Mariotti's recent piece that comes dangerously close to being about something but degenerates into an incoherent rant about Bonds is more a cry for help than anything else.

I know I'm no stranger to an incoherent rant in this blog. But I'm generally drunk when I post jibberish, and I usually apologize for it. Also, this site is free. I don't get paid for it. I don't have any ads to click. So I think I have the right to criticize people who are paid handsomely to do a job and who are covered by an editing staff yet somehow manage to submit disgusting mishmashes of sentence fragments and run-ons for profit.

I wonder why an organization like NOW hasn't noticed that Mariotti is as capable of sexism as any figure they've protested recently. If I started a post with a line like: "Swollen ankles? What is he, pregnant?," I imagine I would get some nasty comments back, but Mariotti's piece was published in a big city daily. Where was the righteous indignation?

What worries me is that Cubs fans are signing petitions and hoping that Mark Cuban wins the bidding process for ownership of the team. You know how I know that Mark Cuban isn't the answer to the Cubs' problems? Jay Mariotti thinks it would be great if Mark Cuban bought the Cubs.

Considering the fact that the Mavericks have not only won every NBA title since Mark Cuban purchased the team but have managed to scrape together 3 Super Bowls, 4 Stanley Cups (they might have had the 5th if not for the lockout) and a runner-up finish in the English Premier League, Cuban will bring 5 or 6 World Series championships to Chicago from jump street. Or maybe I'm the one that thinks an epic collapse in an NBA Finals and a quick exit at the hand of the eight seed the following year isn't much of a resume. Cuban is a shameless self-promoter, not a winner.

Yes, Mariotti loves Cuban now. Just wait until that day when the Benefactor brings his act to Chicago. Mariotti will be the first guy to rip him for acting like a spoiled 3 year old when the Cubs end up on the business end of a close call. Or wait until Cuban can't get into a nightclub and acts like one of the princesses from My Super Sweet 16 when she finds out that Cindy down the block is having a more expensive party.

That's probably why Mariotti wants Cuban to buy the Cubs. That means at least 15 columns a year without any thought on the part of the writer. That's like catnip to a writer of Mariotti's eminence. I don't think a writer owes it to a city to root for its teams, but I do think I writer owes it to himself to be honest about his motives.

I really wish I didn't have to keep saying the same things over and over again, but Cuban can't be allowed to purchase the Cubs. Plus I'm sure John Henry is in favor of Cuban buying a franchise. That way there will be at least one owner who is a bigger tool than Henry with his quaint little Howard Hughes mania for cleanliness. I couldn't begin to think of an executive who would be a bigger waste of oxygen than Larry Lucchino, so I don't know who Cuban's right-hand man will be.

This story arc is taking the jam out of my doughnut, and that's not cool. The Red Sox lost again to the Royals, dropping two out of three to KC. And the Yanks beat Toronto, picking up yet one more game. I should be much happier than I am.

On the plus side, Dave Chapelle said his recent trip to the ER was due to exhaustion. Perhaps it's not as easy to bear the burden of being one-fifteenth as funny as you think you are as I thought. I'm not going to lie, I did like the first two seasons of his show on Comedy Central. And I didn't care one way or the other when he left the way he did. It was his business.

But when I saw him on Inside the Actor's Studio, that was it for me. For a guy whose credits are very meager, Dave Chapelle is an arrogant, obxious dude. My first problem is that there was no mention of the very prominent role Dave Chapelle played in Robin Hood Men in Tights. And the complaints that the studio turned Half Baked into a weed movie for kids didn't sway me. Even if it were the Citizen Kane of weed movies before the studio bastardized it for mass consumption, that doesn't mean the movie deserved to exist in its own right. If you don't want your movie to be altered, don't sell it.

Between blowing through screen doors as though I were the Kool-Aid man and waging one-man wars against Cambridge, Brookline and Connecticut, I have found myself too busy over the last two weeks to criticize some of the old familiar enemies of this space. For too long, Bill Simmons, Dan Shaughnessy and Mark Cuban have been able to vomit up ignorance into the punch bowl we all share whilst the general populace is all too willing to call it alphabet soup and move on. Believe it or not, despite what that last sentence and my track record would have you believe, I'm not drunk. It's just a complicated paraphrase of a great line from an episode of NewsRadio.

Tonight, it's time to criticize the Benefactor one more time. I never got around to saying this at the time he elected to tell the world about his colonoscopy (as I was disappointed in the complete lack of discretion on his part), but I found it surprising. Not just the over-sharing, but for what the doctors apparently didn't find. I would have bet good money (Hell, I would have bet internal organs and wound up in a bathtub full of ice down a kidney) that the doctors would have found Mark Cuban's head right there in his colon. Alas, the search continues.

The reason I feel compelled to criticize the Benefactor tonight is simple. Mark Cuban has submitted an application to Major League Baseball for the right to bid on the Chicago Cubs. No matter what anyone tells you about Persian restaurants and excessive heat, that rumor is what made all those people sick at the Taste of Chicago festival the other day.

The city of Chicago is the second-best city in the world, right behind Boston. I like the Bears. Antoine Walker is from Chicago. Hell, I even like the Cubs. To me, the Cubs represent everything that the Red Sox never were. The Cubs and their fans dealt with losing longer than Red Sox Nation, and they deal with it still. But they bear it with class and dignity. The Boston Red Sox and their fans have yet to bear anything with class or dignity.

One never hears Cubs fans raise a cheer of "Cardinals Suck" the way Red Sox fans chant "Yankees Suck" at the drop of a hat. Cubs fans don't resent the fact that the Cardinals have been more successful than their team. Instead, they pity Cardinals fans for being from Missouri. Chicagoans know that St. Louis has a brewery and an arch and little else on which to hang its hat. I admire Cubs fans for that.

The last thing the fans in Chicago need is for Mark Cuban to purchase the Cubs. Can you imagine how he would comport himself on a stage as big as that? He very likely would morph into Commodus from Gladiator and show up at Wrigley in that white suit of armor that Commodus wore to the arena in the film's final scene. 81 times a year, Wrigley would become a zoo, a place to see and be seen rather than a place to watch a game. Basically, it would become Fenway West.

Furthermore, I don't view the Mavericks as an NBA success story. It is undeniable that Dallas was a doormat before Cuban purchased the team. Now the road to the NBA title goes through, or more precisely over, the Mavericks. However, in professional sports, second place is king of the losers. And the Mavs haven't won it all. Nor do they show any sign that they will any time soon. The Benefactor has yet to address his team's fatal flaws, and it looks like another great regular season and abrupt exit from the playoffs is in the cards.

Even after every dollar spent and improvement made, the Mavericks really aren't a marquee franchise. Admittedly, they should take consolation from the fact that the four time champion Spurs aren't one either. The NBA lives and dies in New York, Boston, Chicago and LA. The Mavericks and Spurs could win the next 74 NBA titles between them and never produce a moment like Hondo's steal (or Bird's) or Reed gimping out to play against Wilt. It just won't happen.

But somehow through all of that Mark Cuban has earned the right to purchase a Major League baseball icon? Dallas is a third-rate city. It has Nieman Marcus and the Cowboys and some oil companies growing fat off gouging the rest of us. Chicago is a whole different animal. If he buys the Cubs he has to win or face a media storm not seen since Jay Mariotti was a child.

Let's say the Benefactor buys the Cubs and turns them into a perennial playoff team, but never wins it all. Obviously it won't taint his legacy, since Mark Cuban, for all his wealth and prominence, doesn't have a legacy. It will, however, be a big disaster for a fan base that has suffered enough.

The one comforting factor in all of this is that there is no way the Cubs will sell for less than $700 million. That means the Benefactor would either have to put nearly half of his net worth on the line or build a consortium to purchase the team. I can't see a consortium putting up with his grandstanding nonsense, so this may all have been a false alarm. Let's hope.

The other day I was reading one of the articles Shira Springer wrote on the upcoming NBA Draft. This quote from Cory Brewer struck me as kind of funny:

It reminded me of the film School for Scoundrels. In it, Billy Bob Thornton's character asks his students if they own any self-help books. He then proceeds to inform them that they cannot help themselves because their selves suck. So good luck improving your offense, Cory Brewer, but you might have been better served to find a good offensive player to help you. Self reliance only works if your self doesn't suck.

I think that scene from School for Scoundrels also applies to the Boston Celtics. To be fair, the Celtics have their work cut out for them before they can accurately be said to suck, that's how bad they were last season. But now the Cs have the fifth overall pick in what some people think is a loaded draft. They have young players and expiring contracts. They should be able to help themselves, right?

First, I still don't believe that this draft is loaded. I agree with most people that there isn't a big drop-off in terms of talent between the guys projected to go at three and those projected to go at 17 in the various mock drafts. That doesn't mean the draft is loaded, that means that there are a lot of half-decent players who probably will earn superstar money and never manage to become superstars. Maybe that's what Boston fans want now, an overachieving hustler who will shine for a few years before flaming out, like Kevin Youkilis. But only a moron would give a guy like that the guaranteed money due to be paid the fifth overall pick in this year's NBA draft.

And one can never get around the fact that this ownership group and management team have proven themselves manifestly incapable of producing a winning basketball team. Lest we forget that the Celtics were coming off back-to-back trips to the playoffs when they came on the scene and now apparently tanked games down the stretch. Just say that to yourself: "The Boston Celtics lost games deliberately to improve their draft stock." It hurts, doesn't it?

Danny Ainge, who ought to know better (and would, if he had an IQ approaching room temperature) having played for the Celtics is clearly not the right man for the job. Under his watch, the Celtics have become such a mess that Kevin Garnett threatened to sit rather than be traded to Boston. And when the proposed four team trade that would have sent Garnett to the Lakers was announced, it would have ended with the Celtics giving up the 5th pick and Al Jefferson to get Jermaine O'Neal.

Can you imagine that? Giving up a guy who was good for nearly 17 points and 10 rebounds a night and a top 5 pick for an older player who will might get you 22 and 10? Don't get me wrong, I still think that Al Jefferson's trade value will never be higher. He'll never be as big a part of an NBA offense as he was for the Celtics this season. He's just not good enough. But that doesn't mean they should give him away to help other teams get better.

Of course, for what it's worth, Ainge has come out and said that the team intends to hold on to that fifth pick. That's a frightening thought. Ainge has done some serious damage to this team for years to come, maybe a generation. Boston is on the high road to becoming the new Dallas Mavericks, in the bad 1990s version rather than the bad we have a great regular season team with no guts and an owner who makes the Joaquin Phoenix version of Commodus look like a model of restraint and decorum of contemporary vintage.

The funny thing is that every one I talked to about that trade before the report came across the wire that it was rejected believed it. No one was particularly surprised that a team got the shaft in a multi-team deal and it was the Celtics. 25 years ago and beyond that would have been a scandal, now it's a go figure situation. Ainge can't help the Celtics. Nor can the Celtics help themselves. The culture of mediocrity runs too deep.

I think this isn't a bigger story in Boston because Boston fans are morons. It's not because the Pats and Sox have forced the Celtics out of the limelight. It's because in the years between 1957 and 1991, the Celtics provided their fans with an embarrassment of riches. The teams were so good, so deep and so competitive that the fans never needed to bother understanding why a basketball team wins and loses. It was enough that they were the Celtics and they very nearly always won.

Now the NBA stinks. And the Celtics are worse. But it doesn't bother the fans because the average fan doesn't understand basketball. They just want to see dunks and buzzer-beaters. It matters very little that other plays have to be made to set up the dunk and the buzzer-beater. It also doesn't matter that every fan who booed Antoine Walker when he played for the Celtics and thought the team would be better if they ran every play through Paul Pierce could not have been more wrong. Boston fans just want to be diverted for a few minutes and given a venue where 18,000 can (and 14,000 do) gather to chant "Yankees Suck" and feel strong for 3 hours.

Even though the Red Sox managed to come back against the Mariners tonight and win the single most impressive game a team has ever played in their 27th contest of a 162 game season, today was still a good day in Sedition in Red Sox Nation world. Tom Brady was seen walking through NYC sporting a jaunty Yankee cap. Bob Halloran wrote an uninspired post for his blog, and there was a mind-numbingly dull piece in Red Sox Times on how to socialize with other Sox fans down in New York. And best of all, Steven Jackson and the Golden State Warriors routed the mighty Dallas Mavericks out of the playoffs.

First, Red Sox Nation is in moral crisis because their football hero Tom Brady is wearing a Yankee cap to conceal his receding hairline while he's out gallivanting his Brazilian supermodel companion. And he's spending his time in New York City when he could be in Boston cheering on the Sox. Maybe he could have been seen in green Sox regalia, after all, isn't it his duty to make sure that he spend every waking moment figuring out new ways to do everything New England fans want him to do?

That's just one more reason to love Red Sox fans. This is a huge non-story. After all, Brady came from California and went to school in Michigan. His ties to anything remotely connected to Red Sox Nation didn't even begin until the Pats drafted him. So why is it incumbent upon him not to wear a Yankees hat?

If Brady does in fact, as I fear, harbor political aspirations for his future after football, doesn't it make sense for him to curry favor in New York? It's a bigger, richer market than New England. And he already has Patriot fans in his corner. Hell, he'd have to start breaking in to season ticket holders' houses at night to smash their possessions and kick their children to alienate them.

Then there is our old friend Bob Halloran, who is not convinced that the NFL pays enough attention to on-field performance in the rush to draft workout warriors who put up impressive numbers at the combine. The vertical leap in particular concerns Halloran. I'm sure it never occurred to him, but the vertical leap is one of the better ways to measure a player's explosiveness from a standing start.

And as for the question of whether the teams don't watch enough game film, that is ridiculous. In the process of media build-up, individual workouts and interview sessions, teams seem like they do more and study more than they should as opposed to less. It's hard sometimes to tell everything you need to know about a player from the game tape. There is a very fine line between the player with a great head for the game and a guy who was in the right place at the right time against inferior competition.

If you are a Red Sox fan and you want to network with other colossal tools, there are a number of places in New York City in the heart of Yankee Country where you can meet fellow travellers. Read this Fist Magnet's Guide To Rooting For The Sox In New York to find out where to go. Use extreme caution, however, and do not operate a motor vehicle or heavy machinery after reading it. The boredom it inflicts could be lethal in large doses.

I particularly enjoyed the story of the author's meeting with Jonathan Papelbon's mother. Oh, to be a fly on the wall for that encounter which I'm sure must have been painfully awkward. Not having a child who pitches for a professional team, I can't say for certain how uncomfortable it would be to meet a random stranger who just happens to root for said team and wants to have a nice chat about my son. But I'm willing to be that it would call to mind visions of Ted Bundy, or at the very least the Robert DeNiro character from the terrible movie The Fan.

And in case you're wondering in Red Sox Nation, there is a touch of grey to the silver lining of tonight's impressive come-from-behind win over the Mariners. First, the Mariners starter should have been pitching to Artie Lange in Beer League. And Matsuzaka walked the bases loaded in the opening frame before he recorded an out. Yeah, JC Romero recorded his first save in a long, long, long time, but lost in all of that is that Jonathan Papelbon might have overstressed his arm throwing those thirty five pitches while blowing the save the other night. That won't be good for the Nation.

Finally, the real story of the night is that the NBA, the Bilderbergers, the Trilateral Commission and the Rand Corporation can rest easy for another year. Mark Cuban and his Dallas Mavericks have just been eliminated from the playoffs by the Golden State Warriors. For the first time under the current playoff format and just the third time ever, an eight seed has eliminated the one seed. It's only the second time a team which had won 65 games in the regular season failed to win the championship, and the first time a team with many wins didn't reach the conference finals.

Google and YouTube are in the process of retreating to the hills. Since the NBA has eviscerated the lone voice of reason on basketball issues by fining Cuban hundreds of thousands of dollars for his crying out in the basketball wilderness in blogMaverick, the Benefactor can but vent his spleen on media conglomerates. With any luck, Cuban will be too depressed to buy the Chicago Cubs in the wake of this catastrophe.

Dirk Nowitzki's performance, especially in the second half, was abysmal at best. I remember a quote attributed to Napoleon that said "scratch a Russian and you will wound a Tartar." Nowitzki has inspired me to offer this version: "hit a German in the mouth and you will make a gutless bully cry." I'm sure Angela Merkel will give Dirk a national holiday to console him, as rolling over in a playoff game is still the most tangible achievement of any German since a ghost in the machine ruthlessly shanghaied a four week old child into the German army.

Even better, Don Nelson led his team past the owner who fired him. Steven Jackson who did his best to take the mantle of worst citizen in the NBA (based on the way the media covers him) or guy who really needs some help with his decision making off the court from Ron Artest as long as Jackson stayed in Indiana is now somewhat vindicated. At the end of the day, Dallas was outplayed and outcoached, they were beaten as an organization. And it put a smile on my face, if it's any consolation to the Benefactor.

All I have to say on the Western Conference playoffs as they progress is this...

Be looking good Warriors. Be looking real good.

And good luck with that, as Baron Davis reminds us that a guy really shouldn't have a beard that's longer than the hair on his head.

Who is Travis Buck? Up until tonight, it seemed like he was nobody. Then he came up to bat in the hallowed stadium in the Fens this evening, facing the single greatest closer in the history of the world, provided of course you limit that history to April-July of 2006. Travis Buck committed a cardinal sin, one for which the Universe will exact a horrible vengeance. He dared hit a home run off of Jonathan Papelbon, handing that fearsome reliever his first blown save of the season.

Having the best record in baseball in April is all well and good, and going through a whole month of baseball without a blown save is the first step on the way to a World Series win. But could it be that there are some flaws beginning to emerge in the mighty Red Sox facade? They started out strong, taking a four run lead bu the end of the third inning. And then they allowed the As to score five unanswered runs.

And in blowing his first save of the season, Papelbon threw 35 pitches. That's an awful lot for a guy with arm concerns. It's even more when you consider the fact that the team is taking every conceivable measure to limit his appearances and keep him from overtaxing his mighty arm. Sooner or later, the team will need more out of its bullpen than it can deliver.

Okajima has massively exceeded expectations, to my disappointment, but there is no guarantee that he can sustain this performance level over 50 appearances. Timlin is not a spring chicken anymore. Brendan Donnelly is a fearsome competitor when it comes to getting into shoving matches with Jose Guillen, but he took the loss tonight. Who knows when they'll need a big performance out of Papelbon again? And who is 100% convinced that a guy who looked pretty tired in his lone inning of work tonight can keep pitching at the level the Red Sox require to sustain this momentum? Plus the Yankees are playing the Rangers right now, and looked like they might come alive any day now.

The Dallas Mavericks managed to stave off elimination tonight, winning Game Five in their series with the Golden State Warriors. It's depressing, but I can't shake the feeling that they are poised to make a run in the next two games entirely too reminiscent of the run Miami made right over them in last year's Finals. I really don't want to see that happen, but for some reason I can't get too motivated to root for Golden State.

I'm not sure why. They play a very entertaining brand of basketball, in fact their style is very close to what basketball ought to be. Plus I really hate Dallas. I think it's Baron Davis that is turning me away from the Warriors. Look at this video of Baron Davis clapping in the process of being ejected from Game Two of this series. I don't really know how to describe it, but it's eerie. I've never seen anyone clap in such a maniacal fashion. Watching the guy clap like that got me thinking that he just might have a freezer full of body parts (human, animal, both) in a garage somewhere in the suburbs of the Bay Area.



Just a bit more on the NFL Draft, I was not particularly impressed with the Bears top pick in the recent draft. I think Greg Olsen has a chance to be a very good tight end in the NFL, but I think they had bigger problems to address. I think they could have used Alan Branch, even though Mel Kiper wasn't in love with his work ethic. They very nearly lucked into him with their second round pick, but Arizona made a crafty move to trade ahead of them.

I was also hoping they'd get a chance at Joe Staley when Kansas City didn't take him. I, or more precisely my fantasy team, badly needed Kansas City to take the best available offensive lineman. Larry Johnson was the centerpiece of my team for the last season and a half (it's a keeper league). Now, there is the fact that it's been many moons since a back who set the NFL record for carries in a season came back strong the following year. Signs do not point to LJ having a very good year behind a makeshift offensive line which has not recovered from the retirement of Willie Roaf and now Will Shields is gone. Bad times, but I can't let LJ go at the moment.

But back to Greg Olsen...

After today's revelation that Olsen was part of a group of nitwits who recorded an obscene, sexist rap song as freshmen at the U and Jay Mariotti's "effort" to waddle his way to the moral high ground on the subject, I'm inching my way closer to supporting him. In the interest of full disclosure, since I did not own up to the fact that I called out a Red Sox pitcher in my tirade against said team's proclivity for beaning opponents to send messages because he's hit more batters than any other pitcher since 2003 without mentioning that the pitcher in question throws knuckleballs and a fastball that is slower than most changeups, Greg Olsen forsook the University of Notre Dame to play for Miami. So I'm still not particularly inclined to empathize with him.

I know I piled up some tool of note segments yesterday, but believe it or not, I have more. Check out this hilariously disappointing video of a tool trying to power slide/burn out in a Barbie convertible. It's disappointing because there is no audio and it's difficult to tell just how fast he was going at the time of the incident. What a shame.

Perhaps I'm being cruel in enjoying what appeared to be a fairly painful injury as much as I am. But it serves him right. The odds of me experiencing a similar injury have to be in the trillions to one against. There is no way that I'd get into a Barbie car in the first place. I certainly wouldn't allow any observer to record the moment for people like me to mock. And if by some ghastly set of circumstances I broke one or both of those restrictions, I sure as hell wouldn't try some Fast and the Furious style nonsense whilst driving a roofless vehicle designed for little children. So this nitwit deserves to be mocked.

Then there is this video. I'm not sure if it qualifies as a tool of note segment. But it's worth watching. Some unknown person operating under the moniker Leeroy Jenkins is roaming the World of Warcraft landscape and leading unsuspecting gamers into ambushes. I have to salute him for the industry he has exhibited in his quest to tool on tools.



However, World of Warcraft is reeling from being mocked in South Park last year and a recent episode of the Simpsons. Plus it seems like a hell of a lot of time and effort for about 15 minutes of genuine entertainment.

Bad times. Bad times, indeed. The Yankees couldn't get it done against the Red Sox at any point this weekend. But if I had a choice presented to me over the weekend where the Yankees could have won all three of the games against the Sox but Dallas would win game one of the series against Golden State, I would have taken the Red Sox sweeping the Yankees.

I hate the Red Sox much more than I hate the Mavericks, but they have over one hundred and forty more chances to lose this season. The Mavericks are much closer to an NBA championship than I ever want to see them. I don't think Golden State has any kind of a chance to keep this pace up against the Mavs, but the longer this series last, and the more competitive the games are, the less likely the Mavericks are to be at full capacity against better and deeper teams than the Warriors down the road.

I just don't see why Joe Torre went to Proctor to start the 7th inning. I thought Pettitte could have gone another 9 pitches. I think Proctor has been overpitched more so than any other Yankee reliever (even though overpitched isn't a word). I was pretty impressed with Chase Wright, though.

It would have been nice if he hadn't let up that epic barrage of home runs, but I have to respect his poise and class. There is no way on God's Earth that a team could hit four consecutive homers against the Red Sox. After the third straight homer, that next hitter would be better served wearing a suit of medieval plate mail armor to the plate. One or another of the gutless frauds pitching for the Red Sox would throw at his head.

That is another instance for the hypocrisy and fundamental dishonesty of Red Sox fans to rear its head. When a Red Sox pitcher throws at an opposing batter, it's part of the game. When some opposing pitcher hits one of the Red Sox, it is time for benches to clear and the Olde Towne Team goes to DEFCON 1 like they saw missiles in a satellite photo of Cuba. One would hope that a team with the unpleasant memory of the incident that essentially ended Tony Canigliaro's career in its past would show more sensitivity, but then what do I know?

I was very impressed with the overall quality of the play in the Devils-Lightning game this afternoon. Outside of one ill-advised pass by Brodeur which resulted in the second goal for Brad Richards, he was great. I know that after he's won 3 Stanley Cups, climbed to second all time in playoff wins and shutouts, I'm not breaking this story to you. But it's also the second time I've mentioned the NHL in this blog so bear with me.

Two things that bothers me about the Devils going forward. First, three Devils had breakaway opportunities on which they did not convert. Second, I still don't know why Lou Lamoriello fired his coach and took the team over (again) in the last week of the season. Last year, the team was sputtering when he did it. This year they had 102 points and the inside track on the two seed in the East. But they have the best playoff goalie currently playing pro hockey anywhere out there. Outside of Patrick Roy, I can't think of another guy I'd rather have in net, including Hasek.

Finally, I felt badly for the villain from the Chris Tucker film Money Talks. He did every thing he could to get the Tampa Bay Lightning to stave off elimination today. They came out with good energy in the second period, down 1-0 against Brodeur, who was great in the first. They almost came back and won.

I have a riddle for you. When is a win not a win? When an official goes mad with power, runs amok and ejects the best player on either team with little or no justification. Such was the case last night in Dallas, where the Spurs went into a funk after Joey Crawford kicked Tim Duncan out of the game on a insane power trip and lost to the Mavericks.

After a long silence on the subject of basketball, the Benefactor weighed in on this subject today. Mark Cuban doesn't want you to send him emails complaining about the officiating in the NBA anymore. He wants you to email the owners or managers of the other NBA franchises to stir up grass roots action to change the face of NBA officiating.

Of course, as a blogger who has long been critical of his hypocrisy, I have to wonder whether the Benefactor would have been so quick to bow out because of the severity of any fine the league would levy prevents it from being worth his while had it been one of his players instead of Tim Duncan. I have to think that had Joey Crawford had so much as troubled the serenity of Dirk Nowitzki by mentioning the fact that the German government recently tried to draft a four week old child into its war machine or pointing out that David Hasselhoff's music sucks, the Benefactor would have manned the barricades and screamed bloody murder. But that's just me.

That gets to the root of my problem with the Benefactor. More even than his atrocious personal deportment in the crowd at games, which constantly evokes the image of a spoiled four year old throwing a temper tantrum because another child is playing with his favorite toy, the fact that his concern with the quality of NBA officiating begins and ends with how it impacts the Mavericks.

If Joey Crawford broke a chair over a player from any other team's head, kidnapped his family to force them to participate in some ill-conceived cross-country race or sold poisoned milk to school children, Mark Cuban would keep his mouth shut. But if he misses one call that the Benefactor thinks should have benefited the Mavs, and it's go time. Even if David Stern decided to forgo the standard fine and handed Mark Cuban over to black market organ harvesters to exact punishment, the Benefactor would move heaven and earth to get his two cents heard.

And Mark Cuban doesn't want to be bothered by fans looking for a mouthpiece to articulate their discontent with NBA officiating. It seems like he should have made that call a few years ago, before he set himself up as NBA gadfly to get people to notice him. And if you don't think it's about ego with the Benefactor, then maybe you shouldn't read this little piece about what a tool Mark Cuban is.

I have a solution to his little problem. Email Mark Cuban to complain about NBA officiating. Email him to talk about the umpires in Major League Baseball. Email him to talk about the weather in your town. Email him to ask pointless, unanswerable questions. Email him to talk about sailing ships and sealing wax and cabbages and kings as though you were the damn Walrus from Alice in Wonderland. Email Mark Cuban several times a day to tell him no one cares about his opinion on Google and YouTube. Just email him to tell him he's a tool and a hypocrite and wish the Mavericks an early exit from the playoffs when you email him.

I think I have reasonable precedent for this. According to legend, the eminent comedian WC Fields would send Elanor Roosevelt and the IRS letters every day to complain about them. I think you should take the time to complain about Mark Cuban, provided of course that you want to. God knows, if I ever become famous, I'm going to send a letter to remind people (like John Henry, Theo Epstein, Larry Lucchino, Danny Ainge, Wyc, Steve, Irv, the rest of Banner 17, Bill Simmons, the CHB, Bob Ryan, Jay Mariotti, Mark Cuban and others) that I don't like them.

Just do me one favor if you decide to email Cuban, keep it clean and don't do anything illegal. And do not under any circumstances send any complaints to the IRS. That sounds like one hell of a good way to get an audit, and I just don't need that hassle.

Tonight, we have a combined tool of note segment and random thing I hate thing segment for the first time ever. They both come out of that colossal waste of time that is the Boston Marathon. While I hate the marathon, it is not the random object of my derision tonight. Instead, that honor goes to the space program.

Space exploration was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be a giant waste of time and money. So what if we got Tang, Velcro and pens that write upside down. I just don't see how that and all the and a little flag on the moon justifies the billions and billions upon yet more billions of dollars of the next dozen generations' money that the government spent on the space program.

Even if there is intelligent life in the universe (based on what passes for it on this planet, I sincerely doubt that intelligent life exists anywhere), I just don't see how sending people up in rockets to do experiments of little tangible value is going to help us here on Earth. So what if aliens invade the planet to probe rednecks or kidnap people or kill us all.

And among all of the colossal wastes of both time and money in the space program, there is this gem. A woman at the space station was tethered to a treadmill to run the Boston Marathon in spirit. And on both Tax Day and Patriots' Day. The Founding Fathers must have been rolling over in their graves. They revolted against a relatively benign tyranny over a 3 cent tax on tea, and now we have a woman in space running on a treadmill at the expense of billions of dollars of public money.

Even better, the woman was running the Boston Marathon in spirit as a gesture of solidarity with her sister. Aside from the gargantuan waste of money, this struck me as a total fraud. First, if there were gravity on the space station, why did they have to tether her to the treadmill? And if there was less than normal gravity shouldn't she have had to run further? And how does it count, even if she'd changed the incline settings at the appropriate times? It's not like she ran real, honest to goodness, no fooling hills in the rain.

And on top of everything else, the woman was a Red Sox fan. There they were on TV, the banners, trappings and paraphernalia of the team I hate as the woman was wasting an entire nation's money in an exercise that was so obviously fraudulent. A perfect storm, in the metaphorical sense, and with no pun on the miserable weather.

As a special bonus, here is a second tool, with a bizarre infatuation for the terribly pointless UPS whiteboard ads.

I don't know if I can finish tonight's post. I might just be so scandalized by so many things that I might explode. The least of them is CMT (Country Music Television) is currently rebroadcasting it's countdown of the 100 Greatest Duets. I am watching it because Miami is being slaughtered in Dallas. Much as I complained about the Blender Magazine countdown of the 50 Worst Things to Happen to Music (if you might want to see it, please use the tags), I must complain about this. If Reggie Miller gets to sing a bar or two of Kumbaya without being beaten savagely, I can rant about whatever I want.

George Jones and Tammy Wynette came in at 16 with Golden Ring. Seven Spanish Angels came in at 15. I love both songs. They should have been 3-4, behind Roy Orbison and KD Lang singing Cryin' and Roy Orbison and Emmylou Harris with That Lovin' You Feelin' Again. That's the way it should have been. I know Mitt Romney just came out and said Roy was his favorite music, but I can't hold that against Roy. I'm not coming out against Mitt, just don't attach much weight to his opinion as arbiter of music.

As it was, Brad Paisley and Alison Krauss came in ahead of the four songs mentioned above with Whiskey Lullaby. Tim McGraw and Faith Hill was 13 with a terrible song. I won't go through them all, but Marty Stewart and Travis Tritt came in at number 12 with The Whiskey Ain't Workin' Any More. Roy Orbison singing Oooby Dooby alone is a better duet, despite the fact that it's not a duet and, as much as I love Roy Orbison's music, Ooby Dooby blows.

Before I get to the real heart of this post, I do have to say this. You're the Reason God Made Oklahoma came in at 6. Personally, I rank it at number 5. Not so much because it's a great song (it's average), but because it is one of the great mysteries of all time. Is it tongue-in-cheek, or are they serious? It baffles me. I will admit that I don't know much about Oklahoma, beyond the fact that True Grit was set there (I'm not sure where it was shot, but I love the movie). But three is no way that's a compliment. After all, it's not one of those iconic places that come to mind when one thinks about great natural beauty like Hawaii. To me, it sounds like the song's subtext is basically: "You're very average and I'm OK with it."

In case you care, the top duet in Country Music history, as judged by the CMT brain trust was Islands in the Stream, the Kenny Rodgers-Dolly Parton crime against humanity. The Roy Orbison duet with KD Lang came in at 26, and That Lovin' You Feelin' Again somehow placed 41st. Perhaps it was due to a series of clerical errors, a bizarre offshoot of the anti-Mark Cuban conspiracy or the fact that every one but me and, of course, my readers (unless you're reading this to monitor me for one of my many enemies) is a moron. But, for the record, sucks. But I should move on, while I still have a reader left.

Among the other things that scandalize me at the moment, and do not relate to the sports world: VH1's Celebreality. I know it's hard to get famous, and it's hard to stay famous. But the people they drag in for show's like the Surreal Life Fame Games probably never should have been famous in the first place. There's the guy from Poison who wasn't Brett Michaels. And who the F--- is this New York that I'm supposed to love? Has any person done less to be famous? God help us.

But into the sports world. Miami might be down by 26 with 2:40 to go in the third, and it seems like it would take a miracle for them to win. But I am shocked and appalled that the officials have not called all of the fouls that the Heat have committed. They must have taken pity on the people who paid to see the game, because there is no other explanation for why all 12 Heat players didn't foul out 20 minutes ago. I would have documented all their abuses, but I'm busy waiting for Mark Cuban to admit that Dallas has been the beneficiary of even one bad call.

You know it must have happened. The law of averages commands it. Furthermore, if David Stern is even 1/3 as intelligent as Bill Simmons makes him out to be, he'd at least try to cover his tracks. Maybe it's just so hard to conceal anything from Mark Cuban that he's given up trying to hide the machinations that deprive the Mavs of title after title. One would have to get up very early in the late afternoon to outfox the Benefactor.

I salute Antoine Walker for his foul on Dirk Nowitski. Toine hit him hard, harder than necessary. It was a flagrant foul, but he didn't try to put Dirk out of the game. What happened to the day when one could send a message with a hard foul without Stu Jackson banishing the offender to the island prison from the Ray Liotta film No Escape? And if poor Dirk is traumatized, he can just cry like a little girl and Mark Cuban will make it all better.

I can't decide what scandalizes me more, so here are the two top contenders in no particular order. I don't know if you saw on PTI or read in the Globe, but the Boston Red Sox announced that Wise Food Inc. is now the Official Potato Chip and Cheez Doodle Sponsor of the local professional baseball concern. There are so many things about this that upset me, I hardly know where to begin.

First, does the "cute" misspelling of cheese open the door for the Red Sox to create partnerships with any number of companies that produce said product and employ any conceivable permutations of cheese and doodle in their logos? Second, is it that much of a stretch to make ends meet at Fenway that they need to do this? Third, why Wise? When I told a friend about this story, he mentioned Vincent's or Boyd's because I had forgotten for a moment the name of the company involved. His rationale was that those are both local companies. John Henry is always willing to go the extra mile to forge connections with the local business community. After all, Wise is almost a local company. The company's headquarters is about 15 minutes away (by SR-71) in Berwick, PA.

This brings me to the other of my main sources of irritation on the evening. When I heard this story, I immediately thought of a line from the the movie Miller's Crossing. Gabriel Byrne's character tells one of the other characters "if there was a market for little old ladies, you'd have Grandma Bernbaum first in line." That sums up the John Henry business model. Any way to squeeze a red cent out of this team, its properties, its trademarks and its fans is acceptable.

It bothers me, not that they have an official snack food company, but that they narrow it down to that extent. I await the day when they sign a deal with Pringles, since I'm sure the tube based potato crisp falls outside the rubrics of their agreement with Wise. But I'm also irritated by the fact that I could swear I used that Miller's Crossing reference before, but I couldn't find it by googling the blog or checking the tags. I suppose I could look some more, but I'm tired. It's time to sign off.

P.S. If I end up in the trunk of a car in the weeds three weeks from now, you'll know that I might have one more reader than I think I have at this point. I'm not saying I told someone that she was the reason God made Oklahoma when I was intoxicated, but I might have. All I can say is, I'm sorry. Nothing I say when I'm drunk can be held against me. Just look through the back numbers of this blog to find the "this will make us all soldiers" that very nearly makes me sick to my stomach with confusion and shame when I think about it. But I'm not admitting anything.

And another thing - the simple fact that I'm paranoid doesn't mean that I'm wrong. After all, Richard Nixon was paranoid. But people were out to get him. They must have been, because they got him in the end.

While I am two days late to the party, I really meant to post this after Miami won. Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance because I had to get up early in the morning to TCB (not that I own any TCB memorabilia, but Elvis' motto should be good enough for anyone). Then I started watching Firewall last night, and just didn't feel like posting last night. But it's official now, the Heat are the champions of the NBA.

Antoine Walker has a championship ring, and Danny Ainge is locked up in a secure location planning to draft the player that will cost the most money, take the longest to develop and compete for playing time at the 2 or the 3, like 9 other players on the current roster. There is always the possibility that Kevin Pittsnogle could be available. What a compliment he'd make to Raef LaFrentz (he's far too awful to get a link from this site). They'd have the tallest, softest front line that the NBA has seen in many a year. Read the profile in the link above and see if this is a fair synopsis: "He'd be a pretty good pro player, if he didn't suck." BTW, that site with his profile has Pittsnogle going to Charlotte at #50. Ainge won't let that happen.

Something occurred that was slightly more important than Antoine earning a measure of redemption (yes, his shooting percentage was everything the CHB et al. could have hoped for, but he played defense very well and he did pull 11 boards in game 6). The hexagonal conspiracy against Mark Cuban claimed another victory, although it was by the slimmest of margins. Mark Cuban served notice that he was through taking crap from David Stern's minions by staring the commissioner down after Game 5. Stern, however, seems not to have received the memo that Mark Cuban was not a man to be trifled with lightly. Game 6 went off according to plan, Miami won. Dallas lost. Wait till next year? Justice delayed is justice denied.

Every thinking person in America knows that Dallas should have won the series. Not only that, but they should have accomplished that feat in five games. No less a light than Ric Bucher said so on Sportscenter at the start of the series. Alas, he didn't say it in print on the ESPN site, so you have to take my word for it. And we all know that Ric is never wrong. Just ask him, and he'll tell you so.

For his part Mark Cuban denied that he stared the commissioner down, and denied that he ever said the series against Miami was rigged. You really have to read the blog to get a sense of the level of oppression endured by the Benefactor on the course of a given day. Tears sprang to my eyes when I read his impassioned plea to the editors/publishers/fact checkers at the Miami Herald to take the time to find out whether or not he owned a boat. It is a pleasant surprise to see Mark Cuban react to the events of these playoffs with everything but magnanimity. It makes it so much easier to criticize him.

blogMaverick is a treasure-trove for someone like me, who cannot stand its author. Aside from the fact that he's whiny and has a morbid aversion to the apostrophe, there is so much to criticize. This particularly entry, on the merits of cursing, Cuban comes off like a 12 year old talking trash to an authority figure to make his friends think he's hard. The Benefactor says he has no patience with people who waste his time. I wonder what else he had to do other than answer a simple question. A reporter asked him if the loss in question was the worst loss ever. Not the most intelligent of queries, I concede, but it was a chance for Cuban to drop an F bomb.

The Benefactor announced that he was commencing a crusade against corporate crime on HDNet in a recent post. It was unclear from his language whether his sale of broadcast.com to Yahoo! will be among the topics covered. According to his bio on NBA.com, broadcast.com is the "leading provider of multimedia and streaming on the Internet." Wikipedia does not present such a rosy picture. Here is an interesting case study of the build-up to the Yahoo! acquisition of broadcast.com. This guy seems to share my opinion of Cuban's business acumen, although it would be nice if he knew Jerry Jones owned the Cowboys and not Jerry Johnson.

The level of discourse present in the comments section of blogMaverick is pathetic. So pathetic in fact the author has discontinued them. But if you look on some of the older entries I linked up above. It seems that there is an infinite number of Dallas/Cuban fans willing to massage his ego and drink his Kool Aid. But based on the fact that they've met their demise, I must not have been the only person that had a problem with them. Perhaps Mark Cuban has at long last learned that the postings of a legion of sycophants in Dallas aren't enough to get a billionaire into a trendy New York City night club.

While I don't much care for the journalistic integrity of the New York Post, every now and then there's a gem like this in there. Read it to unearth tidbits like Mark Cuban seemingly making reference to his endowment (or lack thereof). Gossip must be taken with a grain of salt, and hearsay and conjecture aren't admissible in a court of law. Of course, this blog isn't a court of law. To me, the story has the ring of truth because I won't give the Benefactor the benefit of the doubt and because nothing can make Mark Cuban look more ridiculous than his own actions. All the money in the world, but not much in the way of class.

Mark Cuban was quick to declare that Bill Simmons is his new hero (based on the way his superstars played in crunch time against the Heat, he needed one) . Of course supporting almost everything Mark Cuban says is the surest path to wisdom. The Sports Guy's claim to that pinnacle rests on this plaintive lament about the future of the NBA. Of course, his statement that a Dallas victory might be better for the NBA because Miami riding Wade's success would inspire imperfect imitators (Vince Carter, Paul Pierce, Gilbert Arenas, et al.).

These would-be Wades will drive into the teeth of the defense time and time again at crunch time with their teammates watching them in Simmons' nightmare scenario. Dallas, in his view, is a much better role model because their offense is more diverse than that. So many players can shoot and score they never become a one man team. Of course, one could easily posit the argument that no one on the Mavs is man enough to take over a game when it really matters which is why their offense didn't stagnate at the end of the game vs. Miami. It disappeared entirely.

Yet one more reason to go after Mark Cuban is that he inspired Bob Ryan to write this column, which very nearly made me regret inducting him into the Max Mercy Hall of Fame. This particular tidbit just might be the second best evaluation of the Benefactor's behavior:

Each time a call is made against the Mavericks, [Cuban] stared intently at the big screen to see the replay. Invariably, he reacted to what he had seen by a) making a face, b) shaking his head vigorously, c) making a face while shaking his head vigorously, or d) spinning wildly while making a face and shaking his head vigorously.

I don't think that captured the ridiculously childish behavior of the Mavs owner as well as the quote I used from "As I Please 6," where George Orwell described someone as "looking more like a monkey on a stick than you would think possible for anyone who is not doing it on purpose." That is Mark Cuban in a nutshell.

I think by now I've spent enough time on the Benefactor, so I will move on to the series in general after a parting shot. This link will take you to an article by Jason Whitlock where he argues that the NBA ought to suspend Mark Cuban for a period of time to get him to tone down his criticism of officials. I think the writer overstates his case, but the parallel between Artest and Cuban is not entirely unreasonable. I think (perhaps hope might be a better word) that an owner cannot incite a riot. But the idea of banning the Benefactor from the arenas until he can behave like an adult is intriguing. Also, since I pride myself on giving the devil his due, I must applaud Cuban for his charity work on behalf of families who have lost loved ones in the ongoing unpleasantness overseas.

I noticed that the Maverick PA system played the Eye of the Tiger down the stretch in a timeout. Would that it had worked out to inspire the team. While Dwyane Wade came up big, the Dallas stars came up small (no pun was intended on the performance of the Dallas Stars hockey team who also came up small this postseason). I saw a woman in the crowd wearing a Nowitzness shirt. I hope the round-trip tickets to St. Louis, KC, San Antonio or Houston (courtesy of the Benefactor and American Airlines from Fan Appreciation Night) are enough to console the fans of the Mavs who found themselves Nowitzless in the 4th quarter.

I will not jump on the Wade bandwagon. He is a great player who was unbelievably clutch in this series, but I am not a bandwagon jumper. Never have been, never will be. I will dwell some more on the Mavs. Dirk did have 29 points in Game 6, but he went 0 for from the field in the 4th quarter and only had 2 points. He helped cause a turn over late in the 4th when he threw a relatively difficult pass to Erik "Hands of Stone" Dampier rather than take a shot himself. And when the Mavs were down 3, it was Jason Terry who took the last shot, not Dirk.

I understand that Miami took great pains to keep the ball out of Dirk's hands as much as possible. That said, great players are expected to find a way to lead their teammates to the promised land. Look at the lyric sheet for Springsteen's Promised Land, and tell me whether Dirk qualifies as a boy or a man. Miami got big contributions from role players. Haslem shot very well, Antoine got some big rebounds. Without Marquis Daniels, who knows if Dallas could have kept it close.

In the immortal words of Jim Morrison: "when the music's over, turn out the light." As the lights go out on the Mavericks, they and their can take consolation from the fact that it took all the Commish's horses and all the Commish's men to get Miami the title. That should tide them over, provided that they don't dwell on the infinite improbability that they are the only victims of human error in officiating.