Sports 4 Dorks

Utah
90, Houston 84

Perhaps I
was a bit harsh on this one’s prospects heading into Game 2, I’ll fully cop
to that, but you can’t blame me - Utah has a supremely solid offense, but was
going up against a devastating defense that has held it in relative check; and
while Utah isn’t great shakes defensively, the only way the Rockets have been
able to score against them is by getting to the line.

Pointless hacks and resultant free throws versus contested
everything. Not my typical cup of Irish Breakfast.

But it was a fine game, a great game in parts, and
professionalism exuded. Utah refuses to get
flustered with a withering defensive attack from the Rockets, while Houston continues to move
the ball and hope that Tracy McGrady (23 points on 22 shots, 13 rebounds, nine
assists, five turnovers, two blocks, three steals) could keep it up for four
quarters.

He couldn’t, and TNT’s
postgame fawning over his all-around play was a bit much for me. T-Mac was
absolutely brilliant until he sat for the first part of the fourth quarter, and
while he may have been incredibly tired in that final frame, he didn’t do
himself any favors by launching perimeter bomb after perimeter bomb while the
Jazz pulled away on the other end.

Just because the man was tired, it doesn’t make him immune
to criticism, nor does it force him into bad decisions - and those fourth
quarter shots were all bad decisions.

McGrady, for the bulk of his career, has
been borderline unstoppable in the triple-threat position at the low post
extended. Give him the ball down there without exhausting his dribble, and he
can drive, shoot, or put the ball on the floor for a post up.

Instead, in the fourth quarter of Game 2, he tried to take
over with a series of 21-footers that didn’t have a chance. And it’s not like
those shots were going in over the game’s first three quarters, because all his
misses came off poorly-conceived jumpers even before his legs left him.

The heart isn’t in question, no flippin’ way. It’s the decision-making.
That’s always been my issue with him. And this is coming from someone who spits
invective at PTI every time they bring up McGrady’s first round failures: ask
yourself, since Tracy
first hit the playoffs with the Raptors back in 2000, have his teams fallen to
an inferior opponent?

No. Not once. And, over the last two Game 7 defeats, the
Rockets were losing to a superior team from Dallas,
and a far superior team from Utah.
It’s not McGrady’s fault.

And tonight’s Houston
loss wasn’t McGrady’s fault, but it doesn’t mean he shouldn’t take a huge chunk
of the blame.

(Utah is a championship-caliber team that deserves most of
my word count for pulling out two wins on the road, but I don’t have much time
left to talk about the Rockets, so sue me if I Houston too long …)

After the game, McGrady prattled on about how Houston’s defense had let
them down, and about how he wasn’t worried about offense. It’s a classic NBA
cop-out, designed to feed a series of reporters who want to offer pointless
platitudes about how defense wins championships, and that the team in question
just didn’t have the grit to pull out a win.

And it’s wrong. Defense and
offense wins championships, not sure if you heard, and while the Jazz executed
quite well at times down the stretch, there’s no way in hell a Houston defense
that held the Jazz to a pro-rated 104.7 points per 100 possessions (after the
team averaged a league-best 117.6 per 100 in the regular season) let themselves
down in any way.

As you guess, it was the ten missed free throws, the 4-19
shooting from long range, and the 41.6 percent shooting from the floor that
probably downed the Rockets. But McGrady doesn’t want that blame, he doesn’t
want that focus, and he’s afraid to call out his batch of defensive-minded teammates
who have been put into scoring situations that they’re not used to.

Tracy’s
a good bloke for doing so, and you have to give him credit, but he’s still
wrong.

Cleveland
116, Washington 86

There’s so much going on this series that I’m just going to
have go notes-style. Dig:

*Two game sample size, I know, but Cleveland’s defense is back. The Cavs have
held the Wizards to 95 points per 100 possessions over the first two games of
the series, a sharp downturn from the 110.4 it averaged during the regular
season, an 82-game run played without Gilbert Arenas and Caron Butler for a
combined 93 games.

The Turner crew was worried over Gilbert Arenas’ weak knee
(and less, curiously, about his bum wrist), and how he wasn’t able to put a
little strength on his shot, and they were right. But in the right system, this
guy can still hit flat-footed bombs. He just couldn’t muster the space enough
to get (good) shots off (2-10 from the floor on Monday).

Meanwhile, Butler
and Antawn Jamison: 8-26 from the floor. That’s not a slump. That’s Mike
Brown’s exacting defensive system returning to where it was this time last
year.

*LeBron James is the MVP, and though this game does nothing
to change what is a regular season vote, it should be noted that this guy just
put down 30 points, 12 assists, nine rebounds, two blocks, a steal, and one
turnover in a 90 possession game.

Seamheads: which would you consider to be the more dominant
performance?

A pitcher striking out 11 hitters in five innings of work
(lifted for arbitrary reasons), or a moundsmen (any of you guys ever use that
one?) striking out 13 hitters in eight innings work? Possessions are important.

*Practice skirmishes with Etan Thomas aside, Brendan Haywood
is a good guy (sings real
pur’dy too), and I’m sure the last thing he wanted to do was send LeBron to
the floor as he did.

But it doesn’t mean that you don’t punish the sort of
stupidity and lack of clarity that leads to someone sending a two-armed shove
James’ way as he reaching the apex of his jump toward the hoop. It was a lazy,
moronic foul that deserves a Game 3 suspension. I say that with no joy. I want
to see both these teams at full strength.

*16 points and nine rebounds in just 24 minutes for Zydrunas
Ilgauskas, who is having a terrific series. 49-34 rebounding edge for Cleveland.

*Washington
deserved every inch of this loss, and the lack of immediacy and understanding
about just how important each possession is was apparent early on as Ben
Wallace got several close looks at the bucket.

This is a man that needs to be
fouled, and even if Haywood takes a whiff with foul trouble on his mind
(Brendan didn’t want two first quarter whistles), then the wings need to get
down and wrap Wallace up.

Two or three trips to the charity stripe don’t make or break
things in a 30-point loss, but that first quarter was pretty revealing. Everything
counts, now. The Wizards downed a Eddy Curry and Luol Deng-less Bulls team in
2005, complained (rightly or wrongly) about the refs in 2006, and had the
injury excuse in 2007.

What’s lacking this time around?