You might be the only day-to-day bandwagon fan I know of. I've never encountered anyone who gives up on their own team as hard as you do, then turns around and shamelessly gloats. I mean, you own it well, but goddamn. As a Knicks fan, I have it on good authority to say that I'm a bigger believer of the Bulls than you are, even without Rose and their Monstars center.
The streak is whatever, but I think the bigger story comes from some of the signs that Lebron is still at the same (low) level of mental toughness he was at in Cleveland. I feel like part of the reason they called that foul a flagrant was just how stupid it was given the situation. He still doesn't respond terribly well when things aren't going his way. If Chicago or Indiana can get into his head, they might just be able to squeak by in a series.
How about that post game quote: "I believe and I know that a lot of my fouls are not basketball plays." He was specifically bitching about bout being brought down by Kirk fucking Hinrich. Dude, you're 6'9 250+. You're huge, simple "basketball fouls" aren't going to slow you down. Heaven forbid someone tries to actually wrap you up. Nothing I saw last night was overly aggressive or flagrant...except his cheap shot. Grow the fuck up dude and stop complaining. At least Wade lost with some class in his interview.
Agreed. Hinrich basically said he was terrified after the last charge he tried to take: "The play before, there was a play earlier in the game where he was barreling down on me, I got the foul but he almost made it so I kind of ... you don't realize how strong that guy is and you forget sometimes, but with his speed and strength, you can't take anything for granted, so I still feel like I got the worst of it, obviously. But it was just one of those plays. I knew I was going to try to take a foul and then I just started going backwards and pulled him with me." You shouldn't complain when someone a half foot shorter and 60 odd pounds lighter doesn't just dive out of the way.
This is such cherry picking bullshit. The guy loses one game out of 30 and all of a sudden he has a fragile psyche like he's a character in Girl Interrupted.
Look, the reverse jinx comment was partially a joke. I didn't expect the Bulls to win that game. Not because I wasn't a believe in the Bulls, or I'm a day to day band wagon fan. I'm a huge Bulls fan, but let's break this down from a basketball standpoint. Let's look at starters: Derrick Rose has been out, Rip Hamilton was out, Marco Belineli was injured, Joakim Noah was injured with Taj Gibson coming back from a CL tear. Our starting five was Kirk Hinrich (good but coming back from an injury), Jimmy Butler***, Luol Deng, Carlos Boozer (revolving door defense guarding a scoring PF) and Nazr Mohammad (averaging less than 6 minutes per game and even fewer points). We had to play Daquan Cook, who is fucking terrible along with Malcom Thomas who I don't even know who the fuck he is. Do you know who the fuck he is? I don't. What I know is he's averaged 4 minutes per game during his 9 games played in his career. I say that to say... Fuck you (gently and sweetly of course), if that was your team going against the perfectly healthy streaking Heat with a reinvigorated Dwayne Wade, LeBron James playing with a hate everyone has been waiting for him to acquire, and the rest of the squad doing their job. you'd be hoping for a good game but expect a loss. And you can't tell me differently. It's like if JR Smith, Carmelo, Tyson Chandler and Iman Shumpert were out, you weren't expecting that to be a win at all. I'd toss in Amar'e on the injured list, but that's a given. (HA! BURN!) So you can take bullshit and shove it up in there until it tickles your prostate. That quickly changed inside the stadium. Gone were the cute intro videos that show the players doing silly sketches and wearing costumes. Gone were the early T-shirt boys running around getting people to cheer for a $1 shirt covered in advertising. Gone were the kiss cams. Gone was the extra Benny the Bull Segments and additional audience on the floor antics. They only did 1 singing competition in the first half that obviously had to be done due to sponsor obligations. The only real joke to come out was Benny the Bull coming out with a yellow traffic sign that said "No Streaking Allowed" wearing a trench coat. We were up 2-11 and at that point I was completely locked in as was the rest of the crowd. Then Kirk Hinrich took that charge and the entire stadium revved up, then LBJ missed one of the FTs and shit was in a frenzy. Also, I'm not going to say LeBron James was a bitch or sissy, but he did lose his cool. Which was awesome to see. He was getting hit, but come on the guy is fucking huge. Not only did he run over a dude 50 lbs smaller, AND a foot shorter, he was white! A white guy wearing glasses! Come on LeBron, you're a machine, quit crying and bully it in. There was some diva behavior, but he's been ref coddled most his life. His flagrant was a flagrant. The hit on him wasn't anything, he was already coming back down to the ground at that point anyway. But I will say Fuck LeBron and his tears (real or imagined) were sweet. That game was definitely the best game I've ever been to. It was great. That energy was insane. And I'm going to eat my first Big Mac in years because of it. One fact I need to post somewhere. Shane Battier does not do the fancy handshake. EVERYONE else has a fancy handshake with the Mike Miller or Norris Cole. Shane Battier does the forearm grabshake. I feel like this must be noted. Also only guy on the floor that did not have 50 pieces of armor on. No knee brace, no elbow sleeve, or anything. I like that for some odd reason. ***JIMMY FUCKING BUTLER! JIMMY BUCKETS! Holy hell. 30th pick in the draft, can we just label him a steal now? Bill Simmons awhile ago called him a "revelation" fuck yeah he is. God I love that guy, the entire city loves him. If he keeps getting better, we'll have something to be excited about when Rose gets in. Only two problems with him, 1) His haircut. Commit to the high top fade or move on. 2) He's so scared of Thibs, he doesn't take jumpers even when he's hot. There are split second plays where he can punish rotations and he doesn't, but that alley-oop wasn't the prettiest, but it was effective.
It's not just this one game, he has a history of pouting and checking out when the going gets tough. They probably wouldn't have come back against the Cavs if Battier and Allen wouldn't have gotten them going. The two things at the end that bothered me were the flagrant and the play where he grabbed the rim on that really difficult Nate Robinson shot that wasn't guaranteed to go in. Those two plays were pretty important in such a close game and both had to do with Lebron losing his cool. The Heat are still probably going to blow through the east, but if they do lose, I'm willing to bet it has to do with Lebron losing his cool. I'm not saying that he's Ron Artest, just that his mental toughness is the weakest part of his game.
Maybe, with a little luck, the Pacers fans will be able to goad him into the stands. Pacers advance and people forget about the time Jermaine O'Neal punched out Jerry Ferrara. Perfect little scenario right there.
The best part of the flagrant reviews were the replays where in slow motion, you saw the Taj Gibson foul, it looked soft and LBJ looked to be falling before he was hit. For the LBJ flagrant, you saw him turn is eyes to Carlos Boozer THEN move the weight into his forearm and push off. It looked hard even in slow motion. I'm glad no one is bitching about the refs, because even though they didn't get every call right, they were on point with the make-up calls once they realized it later. They also could give Thibs a tech every other play and they didn't do that either. I wish all the refs were like that crew last night.
And is there a reason why the LBJ-fueled 17-point comeback against the Celtics isn't a counter example? Because that was pretty damn impressive, and I say that as a Celtics fan. I don't know why pulling someone down with a closeline around the neck, with no ball play whatsoever, is soft. It's not like these things are unprecedented in the NBA. Obviously they're not. But fundamentally, James is right. The NBA would be a better league were defenders required to actually play real defense rather than engaging in this kind of bullshit. You saw the same thing when Shaq was in his prime: people's response to not being good enough to defend him was to engage in stupid thuggery. You're right about the elbow, though. He could have accomplished everything he wanted to do there without committing a flagrant foul: just continue hard into the pick, and it's a perfectly legitimate basketball play that makes Boozer pay for setting the pick. Instead, he makes a shitty decision and throws out the arm.
Rob4Broncos repped me "Enjoy it while you can; he'll have plenty more reasons to dish it back in June." Look here buddy. I came into this season after we traded away our Bench Mob and signed Nate Robinson (which I didn't emotionally accept until January) that this year was going to be a rebuilding year. Then I heard the podcast I keep talking about with Ric Bucher dropping a very solemn "He's not coming back" in regards to Rose in an unshakable tone. I don't give two shits if they go on to win the championship. Every year someone gets a championship, not every year does someone end a 27 game winning streak. That shit stopped in Chicago last night. That was pretty much our Championship with d a depleted fucking team anything else is just icing on the cake. And MC, Clutch isn't saying that LeBron has NO mental toughness, he's saying its the weakest part of the game. Who is LeBron James? Why only the best player in the League. Simmons keeps calling him the best player in the last 10 years. Okay cool. Why the fuck are you leading your team in points at 26, down 8, with 4 minutes left and you're passing to Chris Bosh who is standing at the top of the key and has missed 3 of those this game? He was off his mental game. I can't say he was soft, but that wasn't how his mind should have been framed. Chris Bosh wasn't hot, he was. Chris Bosh isn't a 3pt shooter, ESPECIALLY WHEN YOU HAVE RAY ALLEN AND SHANE I FOUND A 3 BATTIER. He was obviously rattled in the Bulls game because he wasn't getting his Superstar treatment, it was underscored in the interview, you can't read that any other way. Boston wasn't getting into his head and bumping him around like the Bulls were. Simple as that. It wasn't a flagrant because he went for the ball, was falling, and there was no wind-up or preparation. The replay show the contact with James was not hooking. By the time Taj made real contact with James they were both going in the same direction. "Hook around the neck" is an exaggeration of the play and everyone from the ESPN retired referee to the talking heads have said the same.
Holy shit, LeBron gets crazy hate. Wins 27 in a row, playing basketball quite possibly better than anybody ever has, loses a game and all of a sudden he's Winona Ryder.
There is no hate. Everyone respects his game, but he's not putting wins in my teams column so he can fuck off on a cactus. Jesus, I thought this was "Murrika where fans could be fans.
I was talking about Clutch, or whoever claimed that he wasn't mentally tough or w/e. If D-Rose comes back healthy, he has a decent shot at being the next John Wall...
Or people are annoyed because he's won 27 in a row playing out of his mind, and they finally lose, and he has to bitch about not getting calls or that he's being treated roughly and unfairly. Again, like I said before, grow the fuck up Lebron.
Derrick Rose will never be able to dance that well. Doesn't have the charisma. But he will come back and win some games.
Like I said before, I'm not saying Lebron is a wimp. You don't get to where he is without being in the top percentile. I'm just saying that he showed some cracks in the invincible armor that physical teams like the Bulls or Pacers could exploit. When he's on and engaged, he's the greatest player in the world, but he still doesn't handle getting hit in the mouth very well. It isn't as bad in Miami because Wade and Bosh are there to get him going again, but when he did it in Cleveland the Cavs would lose. Look at the Boston series last year. Rondo has no business guarding Lebron, but did a passable job because the extra contact the refs were letting him get away with rattled him. Eventually, Lebron pulled his head out of his ass and crushed them to close it out. The same sort of thing happened with Granger in the Indiana series, and it's why Durant can't stop him despite being better than those other guys.