So, the 2008 NFL Draft is over and done. The Patriots needed to get younger and better on defense. At the moment, they appear to have gotten younger. Whether or not they're better remains to be seen. Even if the young players step in and contribute on defense, it's hard to see the Patriots not taking at least one step back next season.

It seems highly unlikely that the AFC East won't improve at all in the coming season. Adding Jake Long should make the Dolphins offensive line (which was probably their biggest weakness among many, many, many weaknesses) considerably better. Granted, they still have a long way to go to be good in that area, but it's a start. Buffalo and the Jets should be slightly better than they were last season as well. All this points to the Patriots cruising to another division title, but it should be a tougher run and 16-0 isn't happening again.

The mid to late first round was the most interesting part of the draft, what with the trades and the run of mediocre offensive line prospects coming off the board the way they did. If I had to pick one team to blame for that crime against good taste, I think I'd have to blame the Lions. I don't see the sense in their trading down two spots to take Gosder Cherilus four rounds too soon. But that's just me. Apparently it was vitally important that they give Boston College something to brag about with two Eagles going in the first round.

After the Notre Dame game, I posted something to the effect that Cherilus had played himself out of millions of dollars in guaranteed money with the way Kerry Neal and Brian Smith blew past his feeble attempts to handle their speed rushes. Granted Cherilus was playing left tackle when people assure me that he is a natural right tackle. But if two true freshmen linebackers from an historically dreadful Notre Dame team cruised by him repeatedly as though he were Matt Light with a perfect season riding on his ability to block Justin Tuck or Osi Umenyura, how long will it take NFL defenses to exploit this flaw in Cherilus' game? But what would April be without the Lions making an inexplicable and indefensible pick?

I also think Atlanta gave up an awful lot to trade into the first round to draft their left tackle of the future in USC's Sam Baker. It is essential to protect a rookie QB's blind side, or any QB for that matter. But Baker wasn't so dominant in college that he was worth that risk and his injury history is a cause of some concern.

But the Falcons must be praised for picking up a temporary fix at QB until Ron Mexico clears up his legal issues and resolves his indefinite suspension. As I watched the draft coverage, I found myself unimpressed by the deep throw over the middle Matt Ryan completed against Maryland and Ron Jaworski broke down from two angles. And yet the same clip had to have been shown something like 20 times.

The first problem I had with the clip is that Maryland wasn't exactly a dominant team in the ACC last season. Then no mention was made of the fact that Maryland's defense was shifting around and looking very confused before the snap. Finally, with all the talk of throwing the receiver open, Jaws didn't bother to mention that NFL middle linebackers drop into their zones with a lot more precision and much better technique than the Maryland defender showed on that play (his shoulders were turned in such a way that he could do everything but cover the receiver on the play).

With the receivers and offensive line awaiting him, I don't see a very promising future in Atlanta for Matt Ryan. Yes, he was head and shoulders above the rest of the quarterback class of 2008, but that could just as easily be due to the weakness of that position group as a whole as opposed to a ringing endorsement of Ryan's potential.

I think the Cowboys dropped the ball big time when they passed on Rashard Mendenhall to draft Felix Jones. When the dust settles on this choice, I think we'll all be amazed that they passed on a better runner to draft a guy named Jones from the University of Arkansas because they were owned by a moron named Jones who went to the University of Arkansas. And I don't want any nonsense about Jones having breakaway speed. After watching the Rose Bowl, it should be readily apparent that Mendenhall has as much speed as any back with a ball under his arm.

Maybe the Steve Youngs of the world couldn't see why Brian Brohm plummeted the way he did. Personally, I think it's due to the fact that most teams didn't want to risk their future on a 23 year old with a receding hairline, a creepy pink shirt that made him look like he was auditioning for a dinner theater version of St. Elmo's Fire and bowl cut to top it off. He and Aaron Rogers would be set for the weakest QB competition in recent memory if it weren't for Miami taking a QB in the second round for the second year in a row. Chad Henne and John Beck are going to be a running punchline this season, just wait and see.

The Bears draft started fairly promising, at least they finally tried to get younger on the offensive line. Why they drafted a running back in the second round when they had much more critical needs at quarterback and wide receiver is beyond me, however. Yes, Cedric Benson hasn't produced the way the team desperately needs him to produce. But part of that has to be due to the inferior offensive line play last year and the fact that the team wasn't a serious passing threat.

I won't deny that I have probably been Cedric Benson's biggest supporter. Nor will I deny that he's disappointed my prediction that he would become a 1,500 yard rusher in the not too distant future. But no matter how you feel about Benson, it doesn't change the fact that the Bears top three receivers are Mark Bradley, Marty Booker's preserved remains and Devin Hester (who is at least another year away from being something beyond a novelty act in the passing game). And the less said about Bears' QBs the better. But maybe their later picks will turn out better than I think.

As a final note on this draft, why did the top two picks from Notre Dame have to go to teams I hate? I like John Carlson as a football player, or at least I did. Now I have to root against him because no one in their right mind wants to see anything good happen to the Seattle Seahawks. And why did Trevor Laws have to go to the sinking ship that is the Eagles? Putting a quality run stopper on a team like that is like putting a lace doily on a bowling ball. One can only hope he becomes an excuse for Donovan McNabb's inability to put the team over the top and he goes on to a team where he can thrive.

In other matters, it's been too long again since I've ripped Bill Simmons. First, I need to point out something from his piece on the Bruins Canadiens series. This is the verbal indictment of the Boston sports fan I've been waiting for, and true to form that jerk Simmons thinks it's a good thing, but here's a sentence he wrote:

We won an emotional Game 3 in overtime, followed by a number of postgame brawls on and around Causeway Street between Boston and Montreal fans, at least 50 of them involving guys named Sully and Murph teaming up to beat the hell out of someone named Pierre.

That's one more reason Boston sports fans are overrated. It takes two of them to beat down a French Canadian named Pierre. General Patton would be rolling over in his grave if he gave a damn about Red Sox Nation. If it takes two to beat up a lone Canadiens fan, how many does it take to throw a piece of pizza off the back of a Canadiens fan's head? On the plus side, I suppose I should thank God for the shanty Irish, otherwise Irish Americans might look like they make a contribution to American society instead of being degenerate drunken bullies. Thanks for bringing our ethnic group down once more, people of Boston.

Now consider this paragraph from Simmons' playoff awards column:

The Brian Fantana Memorial "Hey, Champ, Maybe You Should Stop Talking For Awhile" Award
To Charles Barkley for declaring last weekend that Rasheed Wallace is the most talented player in the league and could have been the greatest player ever if he wanted it. Chuck Wagon, we love you ... but you can't possibly believe that, right? Rasheed couldn't handle the responsibility of being great every night, true, but part of being great is that you've made a conscious choice to accept that everyday responsibility and live up to a different standard of pressure and expectations. It's like a chicken/egg thing. If Vince Carter was wired like Michael Jordan, he would have been Michael Jordan. If Derrick Coleman was wired like Kevin Garnett, he would have been the greatest power forward ever. If Sam Jones was wired like Jerry West, he would have been the NBA logo instead of what he was -- a top-50 player and one of the NBA's memorably clutch shooters. Rasheed was much closer to the Sam Jones camp than the DC/Vince camp, but all of them had one thing in common: They didn't totally want it. And that's part of being great.

Is it just me or did he rip Barkley and then go on to make exactly the same point Barkley made which made Simmons rip him in the first place?

Happy trails to Pat Riley, who has given up his coaching duties in Miami. When Dwayne Wade becomes this generation's Michael Ray Richardson three years from now, I'm sure every one will blame Star Jones, but a few of us might wonder what might have been had Riley given up after the 2006 title run or at the very least hadn't acquired spare parts like Shawn Marion and Ricky Davis (two very talented players but more concerned with stats than wins or team play).

And way to go Roger Clemens, thanks for having an alleged ongoing affair with a mediocre singer starting when she was 15. That really helps my effort to defend you against all logic. At least TO has been well behaved lately, so I have that going for me. Which is nice...

I find myself feeling very depressed at the moment. And it has remarkably little to do with the unfortunate collapse of the Texas Rangers earlier this afternoon. Rather like last season's impressive Mother's Day Miracle, this was a substantial comeback against a terrible team who probably never should have had that lead to begin with when compared with this version of the Red Sox.

This was shaping up to be a very average weekend anyway. There was good news tempered by bad news from the NFL Network. Bryant Gumbel has done the right thing and left the broadcast booth to pursue other challenges, presumably he will go on to bore and frustrate an entirely new audience in an entirely new venture. Good riddance.

Alas, that news can only be greeted with a moderate smile. In the same article, the NFL Network revealed that they are searching for a new partner to call games with Cris Collinsworth. Perhaps they can fulfill Bill Simmons' ultimate fantasy and pair Collinsworth with Gus Johnson. Not that it matters.

Unless they pair Collinsworth with a person who will backhand him whenever Collinsworth sees fit to remind us that he was probably the single most spectacular receiver of all time who never made a difference on the field and is the second biggest fraud ever to attend the University of Florida (and believe me, that is some stiff competition) behind only Steve Spurrier, this will not bode well for football fans.

Collinsworth is a terrible broadcaster and a dick. He also has a penchant for dressing as though he were the Man from U.N.C.L.E. or auditioning for the lead in a dinner theater version of the Ghost and Mrs. Muir. And sadly, he brings more to the table than any other member of the NBC NFL studio crew, which speaks volumes to the degree to which Olberman, Costas, King and Barber have elevated sucking to a form of high art. I didn't forget Bettis, but I still have a problem with bad-mouthing a man who turned in two transcendent performances in bowl games for the Fighting Irish.

That is my nightmare situation at the moment, that the NFL Network would pair Collinsworth with Tiki Barber. Perhaps two such massive egos couldn't coexist in a booth for four hours at a stretch, one can only hope. What a disaster that would be for fans. Especially since neither one of them ever brought enough to the table to justify having such prominent egos. I don't fault people for self-involvement, but those two guys' selves aren't anywhere near as impressive as they would have us believe.

In other news, two strange stories came to my attention recently. First, Dwayne Wade might be dating Star Jones. All I can say is...yikes. She, even more than Charlie Weis (who almost died in the procedure), is the poster child for what's wrong with gastric bypass surgery. She has a massive fat face on top of a grotesquely skinny body and a turkey neck. It's creepy.

But it serves D-Wade right. He became infatuated with the image the media projected on him during his first couple of wildly successful seasons, particularly the championship run of 2006. He took that "me against the world" suicide drive mentality to the extreme last season and into this year. His body is breaking down because of it. He's alienating fans because his style of play (when he plays) is no longer fun to watch and his team made the Titanic's sudden sinking seem like a relatively mild disaster. And apparently his judgement in other areas has taken a hit as well.

The other story that disturbed me was Michael Westbrook's recent revelation that the perception that he was gay damaged his NFL career. Apparently it had nothing to do with the fact that he was overpaid and underperformed. Maybe he just wasn't as good as we were led to believe, even in spite of his physical gifts. Now he's involved in mixed martial arts in Arizona. Rolling around on mats with strange men in varying stages of undress will go along way to convincing us he's straight. Not that there's anything wrong with that...

And one more completely unrelated matter... I recently found out that I am expected to fulfill every one's favorite civic duty. I have jury duty in July. And I opened the notice while I was watching Twelve Angry Men (the original version). And that coincidence is what is really depressing me at the moment.

So many of our old friends have been up to so much, it's hard to know where to begin. Daisuke Matsuzaka was trounced by the Indians and chased from the game in the 6th. Kobe Bryant has found himself sinking into a morass of his own creation in Los Angeles, but he's mad as hell and he's not going to take it anymore. And to top it all, there is a rumor of a new football league in the developmental stage and the Benefactor is involved.

After so many wins, I am cautiously optimistic that the Red Sox are due to fall back to earth. With any luck, they'll go straight from dizzying height to terrifying low, bypassing the creamy middle. But for a change, I'm going to do my level best not to jinx this one. After all, Carl Pavano's to do list probably reads like this now: 1). have Tommy John Surgery. 2). track down and apply savage ass whooping to pseudonymous anti-Red Sox blogger who predicted 18 win season in 2007. 3). rehab from Tommy John Surgery. So no more on the Sox for the moment.

I really hate jumping on bandwagons at late stages, but I really do not like Kobe Bryant. For those of you who have been reading this space from jump street, you know that. You also know that I am a big Elvis fan. So when I heard the series of interviews with Stephen A Smith and Dan Patrick today, it reminded me of a relatively obscure country song Elvis released in the early 70s. The song's title is "It's Your Baby, You Rock It" and it includes the following line: "You made that bed you're sleepin' in and I'm tired of hearing about it friend."

Kobe really, really, really wanted Shaq out of LA. Since Bryant was the younger of the two superstars, management obliged him and sent the Big Aristotle to Miami. Shaq has gone on to win a championship with the Heat. Kobe has yet to carry the Lakers to the second round of the playoffs. And now Kobe says team management promised to build a title contender around him in the immediate future. Bryant's hurt, he's betrayed and they lied to him. And yet I am not in tears.

It seems incredibly unlikely, but I guess there is a remote possibility that Kobe Bryant doesn't know basketball. You'd think that he might, since he's played it since childhood, his father was a pro ball player and he chose it for his career. But that might not necessarily mean he knows the game. After all, if management told him they were looking to compete at the highest level in the wake of the Shaq deal, and he believed them, Kobe is either ignorant or full of something unpleasant, particularly in the heat of summer.

The Lakers traded Shaq for Carom Butler and Lamar Odom. Shaq, at that point in his career, was a veteran of 5 NBA Finals and a three time champion. Carom Butler and Lamar Odom may have won any number of titles playing NBA Live on X Box, but neither has played so much as a minute of basketball in the NBA Finals. Moreover, they're both power forwards. They play the same damn position. How could any one not see that as a bad deal for LA?

It is true that the Lakers parlayed Carom Butler into Kwame Brown, who was supposed to be the center of the future. At the time, in literary parlance, that was rather like the Ancient Mariner from the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner trading in the albatross around his neck that weighed him down for a large metal anchor. Since then, the trade has gone on to look much worse, as Butler made the Eastern Conference All Star team this season (yeah, the East kind of blows, but it is still an All Star team) and Kwame Brown is stuck in neutral. He might not be getting worse, but he surely isn't getting better either.

None of the Lakers other moves have panned out since they let Shaq go. Lately, the "brains" of their operation have been taking a lot of heat for failing to deal for Jason Kidd at the deadline. I don't see why. Can you honestly tell me that Kidd would have made the Lakers markedly better than any of the other seven teams that qualified for the playoffs in the West? I just don't think that would have been the case.

So I'm sick of Kobe whining. This was never about winning, this was about getting away from Shaq's shadow. Now Kobe has been jarred back into reality because everything that was his now belongs to LeBron and D Wade. Wade has a ring, and LeBron is fighting the Pistons to a standstill. They're younger and more dynamic than Kobe. Kobe needs to do something or he'll lose his league.

The trouble is, fans everywhere believe he forced management to sell Shaq for pennies on the dollar. Fans have been convinced after the scoring binges of the past two years that Kobe cares more about his numbers than his team. Kobe is in danger of becoming the answer to the trivia question: "Who scored the second most points in a single NBA game?" Would that he had chosen a more dignified route around his present course to oblivion.

Then there's the Benefactor. He's already on board with the proposed venture known as the UFL. Because the American landscape needed another professional football league. Because the USFL and the WFL and the XFL were all unqualified success stories. Because the NFL is much bigger, wealthier, more powerful and infinitely better prepared to adapt its product to the environment in which it exists than it was when the AFL challenged it in the 1960s. That's why the UFL is such a good idea.

What no one on the outside of the football business looking in on it's riches seems to understand is that the AFL succeeded for a reason. It wasn't because the upstart league was able to sign huge college stars like Namath or Mike Garrett, or develop guys like Len Dawson, Lance Alworth and so many others into household names. Those factors helped, but look at the USFL who went for broke luring Herschell Walker, Jim Kelley, Steve Young, Doug Flutie and others into their league and got pretty damn broke pretty damn quick.

The real reason no football league will ever compete against the NFL the way the AFL did is simple. Because there were no collective bargaining agreements, minimum salaries and pensions back in the 1950s and 1960s, there was room for a second league to come in and start a bidding war for the solid, dependable veterans that make up the guts of a professional football team. Now the NFL has all that infrastructure in place for all 32 of its teams.

Can you imagine how much capital would be necessary to start 8 new teams at once? Not to mention creating a league office to codify the rules, set up a draft, schedule all the games and make sure that each new team has a home city and a home stadium? And on top of those headaches deal with the fact that the 2,000 best football players in the world are currently under contract to NFL teams? Any one who thinks they can do that with 8 different billionaires who have no experience in football beyond watching a game or two here and there, no current common bonds and Mark Cuban involved is dreaming.

If this new league tries to get off the ground playing in the fall on Friday nights, they'll be destroyed. Maybe they'll get a few high profile college draft picks, some older stars looking for one last big score like an aging thief in a crime drama and some other assorted has-beens and never-will-bes. That might be enough to challenge for a Grey Cup or two, but not to take money out of Jerry Jones' pocket.

People don't often realize, since it takes a little more thought than the average tool is willing to put in to the sports he or she watches on the TV, but Namath made the guarantee and his teammates won the game. Randy Beverly and Johnny Sample were two former NFL defensive backs and they made huge plays in the Red Zone to stop big drives for the Colts. In the old days, guys like that were on the open market. It's just not the case any more.

And what is the Benefactor going to do? Spend like Dan Snyder? We've all seen where that has gotten the Redskins lately. I suppose I ought to shut my mouth. If he wants to waste his money on a colossal failure in the making, that's his business. And the sooner he gets back to his new favorite pastime of hiding and trembling lest David Stern smack him down again, the better for us all.

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.

For a while, I was looking forward to the new season of Mind of Mencia. I saw his stand-up show, Take a Joke, America about 5 years ago. I've been watching his Comedy Central show since it came on the air. But then I saw the commercials for the season premiere. And it reminded me that there's a lot to be said for the cliche that timing is everything.

I think at this point, every joke that can be (and probably should be) made about that astronaut that went on the cross-country spree of insanity. It's too bad for Carlos that his show was on hiatus and he didn't get a chance to beat that to death with the rest of the media when it happened. But it would have been far better to let it go than to cram it into a season opening episode three months after the fact like a little "dee-de-dee" (sorry to steal his catch phrase) trying to force the round peg into the square hole.

I said all that because I'm running the risk of making that same mistake tonight. It's been nearly two weeks since the Falcons traded backup quarterback Matt Schaub to the Houston Texans. I really don't know why I care, but this trade seems like a mistake for both teams.

It seems like the Texans made this move so that they'll never have to hear commentators rip them for passing on Reggie Bush and Vince Young. As bad as the Mario Williams move looks now (I am still not willing to say this was a wasted pick after only one season, give him another year or two before the verdict is delivered), it's still a million times better than giving a guy with 2 career starts a $48 million dollar deal over 6 seasons. Fortunately for the Texans, only $7 million is guaranteed.

I think my favorite line from that link was Schaub's agent referring to this deal as "a real contract." That's the guy I want to represent me. Where did he go to business school? DeVry? I bet he's the type of guy who calls business school "B-school" in casual conversation.

The real problem here is that the Texans have been around now for five full seasons and they show no real signs of improvement as a franchise. It seems like the team faces an either/or decision every year and they choose poorly every time. It's actually kind of amusing, it must be what non-Celtics fans and people who aren't consumed by a bitter hatred of Danny Ainge see when they look at his tenure as the Celtics GM. If the Celtics come out of this draft without landing a franchise savior, it might just be the NBA's version of that Mario Williams pick.

This is a mistake for the Falcons, too. They're rolling into a season with plenty of turmoil (new coach, Vick's trick water bottle and the rest). And they have no reliable backup for Ron Mexico. A wild rumor has them considering bringing in Drew Bledsoe, which has disaster written all over it. So Atlanta is one injury or ill-advised carry-on item away from a lost season. What a shame it would be if they missed the postseason again.

I don't see the logic of this move from the Texans standpoint. I haven't seen a lot of Matt Schaub, but then again who has? After only two starts, who knows what he can deliver in the long run? He seems like a younger David Carr with less mileage on him. Considerably less mileage, what with the fact that David Carr gets hit more than some tackling dummies every week. But if David Carr wasn't the answer in Houston, I don't see how Matt Schaub will make them any better.

As for yesterday's Final Four games, I was right about Ohio State and wrong about Florida. Too bad. I hate Florida even more now than I did yesterday. With any luck Ohio State will beat them by a ludicrous, inconceivable margin. I was right, I think, about the Oden-Hibbert matchup. When the two of them were on the floor together, however brief that time may have been on account of foul trouble, it was very interesting. There might be some hope for the NBA yet.

I don't know if you got a chance to see any of the Detroit-Miami game, but it was very depressing. Miami took a 9 point lead into the fourth quarter and murdered it. Jason Williams is not remotely qualified to run an offense in the NBA. Detroit went to a full-court press, with Richard Hamilton guarding the point. And Miami's offense went into cardiac arrest. Antoine Walker was forced to bring the ball up when Gary Payton was in the game. And I was, in all fairness, disappointed with Toine's performance too, but maybe if Riley played him more he'd be less rusty.

If a full court press by Richard Hamilton destroys your offense, it might be time to consider a new sport. I never would have believed a veteran team would be so mystified by a simple tactic like the full court press. After all, elementary school kids are taught the full court press. And a "coaching legend" like Pat Riley had absolutely no answer. Miami might as well have had four guys on the court, for all the good Williams did there.

God help the Heat in the playoffs. I never thought Dwayne Wade's ability to bring the ball up against the full court press would be the aspect of game the team missed the most. I figured it would be much harder to make up for his scoring and his defense than for a rudimentary skill like handling Richard Hamilton pressuring the ball. Not that I could bring up the ball against Rip Hamilton, but he's not exactly a fearsome defender.

Even if you've been living under a rock lately, you have likely heard that the NFL is preparing to implement a three strikes personal conduct policy for its players. Many people have been wondering exactly what will count as a strike under the terms of this policy, which is still very much in the preliminary stages of development. Unlike most of the disciplinary reforms in the NBA and MLB (dress code and new drug policies), this new conduct reform initiative was not suggested by the league office, but by a group of players.

Even though a panel of NFL players presented the idea to the league, I think it's a bad idea. It bothers me because it seems like an artificial reaction. I'm not convinced that these players particularly care about standards of behavior as much as they care about getting press exposure. I also think that they're overreacting to the problem, just like the NBA overreacted to the Artest incident in Detroit. For the life of me, I don't see how a new dress code for a group of overpaid athletes is going to change the culture of the NBA.

The panel of players include such luminaries as TJ Houshmanzadeh, Troy Vincent, Steve Smith, LenDale White, DeAngelo Hall, Jeff Saturday, Ernie Conwell, Jason Witten, Ken Hamlin and Kevin Carter. That doesn't exactly read like who's who of people to trust with anything of importance. LenDale White fell to the second round of last season's draft because scouts were concerned he gained too much weight and used a trumped up hamstring injury to avoid the predraft workouts.

Then there's DeAngelo Hall. As TO's last fan, I can't stand Hall. He is a shameless fraud of a cornerback who's reputation is built on the back of two high profile games. First, on the Monday Night Football opener in 2005 he held TO to 112 yards receiving and kept him out of the end zone. Earlier this season, Hall shut down Chad Johnson. And his wikipedia page reads like a bad middle school book report.

But I think we'll remember Hall as the man who took a courageous stand against TO for the infamous spitting incident this season. A lesser man would have gone after TO on the field, incurring a 15 yard penalty at the least and probably an ejection. A smarter man would have confronted TO after the fact to kick his ass (make no mistake about it, spitting in somebody's face merits a whooping). But it takes a true tough guy to cry and whine to new commissioner Roger Goddell. Unfortunately for Hall, and the country as a whole, the league refused to step in to fight this battle.

As for the heart of the issue, I am not convinced that a one size fits all personal conduct policy is the answer to the league's problem. The Bengals off field issues were an embarrassment to the team and to the league, but were they the worst thing that has ever happened to the Queen City? 9 professional football players were arrested over the course of a year. It's not like they were part of a COBRA plot to conquer Cincinnati by selling poisoned milk to school children.

What worries me is the fact that this policy is reactive rather than proactive. The league is slightly embarrassed. Columnists and talking heads across the country can bury us with the woe is the sports world routine, and God knows they have. Which brings us to this point. These situations ought to be handled on a case by case basis. The NFL has survived for over 80 years without a personal conduct policy. I think this will end up doing more harm than good, especially if they rush it into effect.

In the end, what do the arrests and incidents mean for the overall health of the league? Everybody has been told to be afraid lest the NFL lose fans because a small handful of its players are out of control. Maybe I'm a bad person, but if 9 or 90 Cincinnati Bengals or Seattle Seahawks or Barcelona Dragons run afoul of the law, I'll still watch all the football I can. I doubt very highly that the average fan will leave the league either.

If you don't believe me, just look at the disaster area that is the sports world at the moment. NFL Live still holds the 4:00 time slot on ESPN. The entire NBA season might just have gone up in smoke with the injury to D-Wade. A possible second half run by the Miami Heat was the second biggest story of All Star Weekend, right behind Barkley vs. Bavetta. We're so starved for sports that Daisuke Matsuzaka bedazzling some Red Sox farmhands was a national story. So the NFL isn't losing any prestige over this situation.

They ought to reconsider the 3 strikes policy. I don't see why the new commissioner simply can't review the roster for the Pro Bowl and postseason awards and say player X was suspended for offense Y, QED he's not eligible for the honors in question. Or if we can't trust one man with this grave responsibility, I'm sure an ad hoc committee of coaches or GMs could do it. If we want everything to be decided to the most exacting standard of probity with a minimum of personal rancour and self aggrandisement, I'm sure Jay Mariotti or Dan Shaughnessy could be coaxed from the ivory tower.

On another note, America is not rallying around the underdog the way it ought. Barry Bonds is receiving death threats again. At this point, I just don't care anymore. He's almost certainly going to break the home run record with the least amount of class and dignity conceivable. No one believes the this is legitimate except Barry. No one seems to like him except Barry. And it's his fault. It seems like every time he had a chance to do something nice, or cool, or human he's gone the other way. So he'll get no sympathy from me, which is strange since I usually regard widespread dislike as a credit to a person rather than a demerit.

You will have to bear with me tonight as I write this post. I am so torn by emotion that I am having trouble resisting the impulse to throw my monitor off of each and every wall in my apartment. The particular emotions which are tearing apart the fabric of my universe are rage and disappointment. And I am having trouble finding out who is responsible for these conflicting emotions.

The most obvious target is Dwayne Wade. But there are others who are very nearly as responsible for what just might be the final nail in the coffin of civilization as we know it. The NBA bears responsibility for allowing Wade to talk about things he cannot know. The management of the Miami Heat also bear responsibility for not silencing their star. And all right thinking Americans bear some of the burden for allowing this greatest of travesties to take place.

In case you haven't heard, Dwayne Wade dared question the leadership qualities of the single greatest basketball player in recorded history. In case you might not be as well educated about the NBA as you should be, the best thing that ever happened to basketball is Dirk Nowitzki. And he must never be questioned. Ever. Unless of course you want to make the most powerful of enemies.

Mark Cuban laid what would be the smackdown on Mr. Wade, provided of course that a jock sniff and a fraud could lay down the smackdown on anyone. Of course, one would expect this from the guy who owns the team for which Nowitzki plays. And one would expect it to be as eloquent as all get out considering its author once wrote an impressive evaluation of a recent cinematic classic (believe it or not, he called Happy Gilmore a classic).

Among the many problems with Cuban's defense of his player is the fact that he dismissed Wade's criticism first and foremost because Wade's commercials are boring. Outside of the incredibly, unfathomably, indescribably brilliant ads that feature the PC vs. Mac debate, how many TV commercials aren't boring? I must say that those PC vs. Mac ads are so awesome that I hereby volunteer my services as a free-range organ bank on the off chance that Steve Jobs should ever need a transplant. A man that wonderful and with that much to offer mankind must live forever, and the rest of my life is small price to pay as means to that end.

Of course there is no way that Wade could know Dirk's leadership skills. It's not as though Wade took over the series himself and brought the ring to Miami. To think that Wade did more to win the championship than Dirk did would mean you would have to believe that Wade scored nearly 60 points more than Dirk over the last four games of the series. Oh, wait...

I have tried to be one of the people who doesn't link to his own past posts during the history of this blog. Tonight, I have to link to this post from two days after the Mavs lost the finals. It has a few of my favorite elements in it. For instance, there is the Orwell quote. I am also partial to my little pun on the Nowitzness shirts that Dallas fans wore to answer the Witness ad campaigns featuring D-Wade. I still love that Nowitzless line, and it's funny because it's true.

In Life, The Universe and Everything, Douglas Adams describes the home world of the mattresses. The mattresses live in swamps and flollop around. According to the author, flollop is not a common word because it's a thing only live mattresses can do. Of course, Douglas Adams probably never saw Mark Cuban, as he passed away in May of 2001 (Adams, unfortunately, Cuban will be with us always). Even though I don't know what flollop means, I imagine it's the only word that can concisely describe Cuban's petulant 4 year old act as he sits in the stands.

Perhaps I'm being unfair to Cuban. Maybe he has virtues that I have missed in the infrequent attacks on him in this space. He has done great things to benefit the families of those who have lost their lives in America's military operations overseas. But in my defense, he is also a douche and I hate him.

But more on Nowitzki. He is one of the best players in the NBA and a measure of my sarcasm is probably undeserved. He did score 29 points in the deciding game of the 2006 Finals. He is an excellent player, until the final quarter of the biggest games. He went 0 for the field in the fourth quarter as Miami closed out the series. He passed up an open look to pass to Erik Dampier in the last minute. And most damning, in my view, Jason Terry took the final shot for a Mavericks team down by 3 in the decisive game of an NBA finals.

Imagine this as a scenario. It's the mid-1980s. The Celtics are in a series deciding game. Replace Dirk in the preceding paragraph with Larry Bird. Could you imagine Bird allowing that sequence to occur? Wade had every right to call out the most overrated German athlete since those clowns that Jesse Owens dusted in the Berlin Olympics of 1936. There is no such thing as an almost champion, and second place is a fancy word for king of the losers. Nowitzki didn't play badly, but when a Gatorade container feels your wrath more than the opponent in the NBA Finals, maybe you do need to work a little on the leadership skills.

I did enjoy Mark Cuban's subtle dig at the NBA officials and commissioner, hinting that he would be fined again if he mentioned the secret of Wade's success in the finals and saying that he loved watching him shoot free throws. Mark Cuban would do well to remember the Boy Who Cried Wolf, or at least take an oral tradition class. Then maybe he'd stop whining about the officiating after every game, or at least point out one instance where Dallas benefited from a missed call (I pointed one out in last years' playoffs and I'd link to it if I hadn't already linked to myself tonight).

I don't feel like so much of a dork bringing up fables and oral tradition, since Cuban questioned whether D Wade had taken business classes at Marquette. Of course, I should have realized that the business schools are the new cradles of leadership. After all, look at how the courageous MBAs contributed to the great deeds of Enron and TYCO. And we all know that Patton attributed his ability to inspire troops to feats of greatness to the business seminars he took at the academy.

Running a crap corporation and tricking Yahoo into buying it doesn't qualify you to speak out on leadership. Carrying a basketball team to a title probably doesn't, either, but it's still better than the former. Mark Cuban should remember the one thing that separated broadcast.com from the rest of the dot com busts was good timing. And he should remember to shut his face once in a while, and if it's not too much trouble, any time he feels up to it, he can drop dead.

That final sentiment might be a little harsh, but Cuban reminds me of Ethel Merman's character from it's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. The film happened to be on this afternoon, during the 31 Days of Oscar on Turner Classic Movies (which almost makes me forget the NFL season is over when they show some of the greatest movies of all time). And I love the scene where Buddy Hackett suggests that Ethel Merman drop dead.

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.