I had a rough week this week. I won't get into detail, but needless to say, that's why I posted rather...infrequently over the last five days.
So I finally got some time to settle down and watch a game and react to it here on the blog. I was looking forward to a great game, and I got 47:59 of that. And then Kobe Bryant gave the entire geographic area known as Wade County the Bud Adams Special:
Note: Some may consider the following video offensive. It's SFW and pretty benign, but just giving you a heads-up.
He hit the shot. What kind of shot was that? He was running towards the scorer's table! Dwyane Wade was right in his face! He was double-covered! He banked it two feet above the rim! What kind of shot was that?
If you're a Lakers fan, or a neutral party, you loved it. If you're a Heat fan tonight, you're angry, hurting, sobbing and wanting to inflict injury on yourself or others (I know, I read the tweets). But there's no doubt that kind of game really shows the high drama capable of being shown in a big-time NBA match-up.
Now let me take off my hokey analyist hat and put on my serious hat. Let me tell you this, average Heat fan. You should be mad after this game. It was within your grasp, and it was taken away from you. Not by Kobe Bryant or Derek Fisher. But by the Miami Heat themselves.
It's been hashed and rehashed, but 15 missed free throws is unacceptable. There was chance after chance to truly salt the game, and the Heat couldn't sew it up. If you miss that many opportunities at free points, you don't deserve to win any game.
The other thing that stuck out to me in this game is depth. I saw the Twitter stream from fans complaining about Dwyane Wade sitting on the bench while Kobe Bryant warmed up in the fourth quarter. Hell, I even seconded the complaints. Erik Spoelstra has received much criticism about his...imaginative?...rotation selections. But do you want Wade's knees grinded down to a fine dust by February? How about Jermaine O'Neal's? The fact is this team is not at all deep. You're the Heat, and you're playing a Lakers team that has a full second shift ready to go on the bench, what do you do to begin the fourth quarter? Rest your closer and hope your non-starters can hang. Miami fell behind by nine quickly in the fourth, and if Miami had even a little bit more depth, that defecit would have been smaller and the Kobe shot would have been rendered meaningless. Instead, the Lakers win the Cadillac Eldorado, and Miami doesn't even get the steak knives.
So that's it for tonight. It's not fun, it's not pretty but it's life and that's all that matters.
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