"Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now."
My Boog Pages
Monday, May 1
FANNNNTASTIC!!!
What a great weekend of games in the NBA playoffs. I was actually going to live-blog the Mavericks game on Saturday afternoon, but a trip to the zoo and an early dinner with the family scotched that. I got home in time to see the replay's of Dirk Nowitzki's shot that sent the game to overtime, which eerily resembled Rober Horry's shot to beat the Kings a couple of years ago.
On Sunday I only managed to catch the Lakers versus the Suns. I've been very interested in that series because, if the Mavs make the West Finals, their opponent is likely to be the Suns or the Clippers. So I was rooting for the "weak" Lakers team to take out Phoenix.
Well, the Lakers have looked anything but weak. Apparently Phil Jackson's hard work is paying off, because in this series the Lakers have played better than they have all year, and in fact better than at any time since they were routed by the Pistons in the NBA Finals a couple of years ago. Part of this is the Suns' injury situation; their only reliable big men are Shawn Marion (normally a small forward) and Tim Thomas (also a small forward).
Having said that, the Suns played very well yesterday and should have won the game. At the end of regulation they had a 2-point lead and the ball, and the Lakers needed a miracle to survive. Well, they got one: they stole the inbounds pass, leading to a Kobe Bryant layup to force overtime. In the extra session, the Suns had a 1-point lead and the ball with less than 15 seconds when Luke Walton was able to force a jump ball with Steve Nash. Walton tipped the ball to Kobe, who canned a jumper. And that's your ballgame.
Of the sixteen playoff teams, the Mavs have looked the best. They are the only team yet to lose, and they've been relentless on both ends of the floor, never taking a win for granted or giving up on a game they're losing. Example: Memphis has a 4-point lead with less than 30 seconds to play and lost. The Grizzlies have been hampered by their lack of a one-on-one scorer, someone who can slip a defender and get his own shot/set up a teammate.
The Clippers have also looked very good, and I think it will probably come down to them versus the Mavs in the west. In the east I think Chicago has a chance to get to the East Finals, though the Pistons will most likely beat 'em.
More fanboy ranting. Just yesterday I learned that Richard Linklater has made a film out of Philip K. Dick's A Scanner Darkly, one of his best books. I was a big fan of Dick back in the day (not that there's anything wrong with that...) but the movies made from his stories have generally - what's the word? - sucked scum off a pond. Blade Runner is a classic, of course, and The Minority Report was very good, despite tossing aside the coolest plot twist in the story, namely that the main character's receiving information about the future actually changed it, resulting in two futures where he was a murderer and one where he was not (the minority report of the title). All gone in the film, of course.
I'm too lazy to look up names, etc., but Scanner tells the story of an undercover policeman, assigned to sniff out the source of a new drug. As part of his cover he has to ingest the drug himself, which leads to his personality splitting into two different parts. Eventually he watches himself on surveillance tapes and thinks What's this guy up to? Probably Dick's most sympathetic novel, including a heartbreaking afterword in which Dick names his friends and the damage they suffered from drug abuse.
