D's Notebook

Great Eight Comedies

June 18, 2025 /

I’ve been busy trying to finish an amazing book and get some work outside done before storms roll through later. For today’s post I dug into my list of ideas and found this one, which has been sitting there since George Wendt died last month and news broke that there will be a Scrubs revival.

With minimal commentary, here are my favorite TV comedies of all time.

1) Cheers
A few years I went back and watched the early years and was amazed by how well they hold up. Same anytime I come across a clip. A perfect combination of high and low brow comedy.

2) Seinfeld
I used to say this didn’t hold up as well as Cheers because it was, often, so topical. Does “The Non Fat Yogurt” hit as hard now as it did at the time when it pretended to swing the NYC mayoral election? There is also the argument that Curb Your Enthusiasm takes away from Seinfeld’s brilliance. I’ve made that argument myself at times. What defeats that critique, though, is that I can flip on a Seinfeld episode and almost always get sucked in. I feel like Curb isn’t as satisfying in small bites.

3) The Office
There is no comedy I’ve watched more in the last decade. Which is weird because its original run ended in 2013. The first five seasons are so good I don’t mind that I’m not really interested in anything that came after them.

4) Arrested Development
The back half of this list is heavy with shows that were wildly popular amongst critics but rarely got good ratings. This is kind of the originator of that sub-genre.

5) Community
A lot of similarities between this and Arrested Development, in terms of how meta it was, how people who loved it REALLY loved it, etc. Also had a monkey named Annie’s Boobs.

6) Parks & Recreation
Take the bones of The Office, move it to Indiana, and make it 75% sweeter. I still maintain if Comedy Central showed reruns of P&R as often as The Office, it would be just as popular.

7) Scrubs
Where Bill Lawrence began his run of comedies with heart.

8) Curb Your Enthusiasm
Above I said that this is right there with its cousin, Seinfeld. As much as I enjoyed it, I think this is the least universal of the bunch. I know several people who either didn’t find it funny or were put off by it.

There are plenty of other shows I enjoyed, but if you were going to ship me off to an isolated location with only a hard drive that included my favorites for entertainment, these are the eight I would require.

A Bummer Of A Game Five

June 17, 2025 /

After a nearly two-month dream ride, the Pacers run might be over. It wasn’t just that they lost game five in Oklahoma City last night by 11, after trimming an 18-point deficit to two midway through the fourth quarter. It wasn’t just that they routinely threw the ball away. It wasn’t just that they missed open shots when they could hang on to the ball.

It was more that Tyrese Haliburton played most of the game hobbled by whatever lower leg injury he has been dealing with the past couple weeks. It was allegedly an issue late in game two, but in games three and four he showed no ill effects, at least none that were clearly visible on TV. But last night, after slipping and aggravating the injury early, he was never at full strength, and sat out a little longer than he normally would. Fortunately for the Pacers TJ McConnell might have played the best game of his life. That both wasn’t enough and isn’t likely to be repeatable, though.

Haliburton’s game is based on speed and changes of direction and jumping while knifing around defenders. If he is compromised in his ability to do that, the Pacers have no shot.

There is the hope that with two full rest days before game six he can rally and be close to full strength for that elimination contest.

My fear, though, was that each time he grabbed his calf we would see him crumple moments later after his achilles had given way. At this point there’s a part of me that hopes the Pacers get blown out early Thursday so he can sit without suffering a potentially devastating injury that would wipe him out for not just this series but all of next year, too. NBA players love to destroy their achilles in the playoffs. Ask Jason Tatum and Kevin Durant, among others.

Game five was a great, brief explainer of both of these teams to the casual fan. The Thunder are a remarkable collection of young talent. SGA is the current MVP and one of the three or four current best players on the planet. Jalen Williams is too good to be labeled as just a sidekick. Chet Holmgren, if he can stay healthy and get stronger, will likely be one of the 15 best players in the league soon. Yes, Oklahoma City might have three All-NBA caliber players. Then they have a nearly perfect supporting cast around those three. And they have like a billion draft picks in the coming years, so they are perfectly positioned to weather the eventual salary cap hell.[1]

The Thunder are very good, very young, and set up to be that way for a long time. You have to be careful declaring dynasties these days; a year ago at this time we thought there was a new Boston Celtics dynasty. If any team in sports is positioned to dominate for the coming future, though, it is OKC.

Then you have the Pacers who are also built around two remarkable, if slightly less exceptional players than SGA and Williams. There’s no one in the NBA quite like Haliburton. The same can kind of be said for Pascal Siakam. Those two are both in the top 25 players in the league. They also have a fantastic and near-perfectly suited roster built around them. Again, that collection of talent isn’t as exceptional as the Thunder’s, but they work in a way that makes them far better as a sum than you would expect.

The Pacers are also unfazed by falling behind, whether it is because they are playing dumb, out of control, etc or their opponent is just handing it to them. They keep doing their thing knowing eventually it will start working again and they’ll get back into the game. Last night the Pacers were terrible in the first half. Throwing the ball away constantly. Taking bad shots and missing easy ones. Yet the Thunder couldn’t put them away and in the third quarter the inevitable comeback began. They just didn’t have enough, either as a team or from their superstar, to pull off another miracle.

It’s funny how these series go. I didn’t think the Pacers had much of a chance when it began, knowing how good OKC was. Then Indiana stole game one and seemed to break the Thunder’s collective spirit in game three. Instead of admiring the Thunder I was learning to hate them, from SGA’s constant pushoffs and referee bailouts on touch fouls, to Lu Dort and Alex Caruso manhandling the Pacers in the middle of the court without ever getting called for it, to Holmgren’s constant whining and truly unfortunate aesthetics. This is what is supposed to happen in the NBA Finals: you end up despising the team you are rooting against. Had the Thunder won this thing easily I’m not sure I would have gotten there. But the Pacers made this a series, and if they don’t pull off a massive upset over the final two games, will honestly look back on it as one they let get away, not one where they were hopelessly overmatched.

I’m starting to get into eulogy territory and it’s too soon for that. Hopefully I can put it off one more game and save it for next week. Between Hali’s health and the Thunder starting to feel locked in, things don’t seem promising for Thursday. You just never know with these Pacers. Maybe they have one more amazing game left in them and can send the series back to Oklahoma where anything can happen in game seven.

  1. The Thunder were, in fact, one ping pong ball away from owning the #3 pick in this year’s draft. Kevin Pritchard has done a terrific job building the Pacers, but Sam Presti has done an all-time job turning the Thunder into the franchise with the best and longest path to sustained excellence in the league.  ↩

Weekend Notes

June 16, 2025 /

A full, fun weekend that had healthy doses of sadness and even a little fear.

KC Trip

As mentioned Friday, I headed back to Kansas City for the weekend to attend the memorial service for Jack N, the father of one of my closest friends. We’re at the age where these are happening more frequently, but no matter the circumstances they are never easy. It was a fine service and honored the deceased in a way I think he would have appreciated.

That was the reason for the trip. I obviously did more than just attend the memorial.

I flew in Friday afternoon, my buddy Dave picked me up, and we headed directly to Joe’s Kansas City Barbecue, where I knocked out a jumbo Z-Man, fries, and a frosty Boulevard Unfiltered Wheat. Joe’s never disappoints.

On our way to Dave’s house, which was my home base for the weekend, we stopped at a liquor store. I was thrilled that they still had some Boulevard Irish Ale not only in stock but in the cooler. Where it was once kind of easy to find in Indy before St. Patrick’s Day, it has disappeared in recent years. An unexpected bonus!

That evening Dave and his wife had plans, so I took my Irish Ale to John N’s house. Despite having just returned from an overseas trip and planning for his dad’s services the next day, he was gracious enough to invite me out not just to visit but so I could avoid having to watch the Pacers game in a bar. I figured KC drinking holes would lean heavily towards the Thunder.

Anyway, John and his family and I had a good conversation while watching a little of the Royals game and all of the Pacers game. More on that in a bit.

Dave let me borrow his car, a 2019 Audi Q5. Fitting the theme for the weekend, it was like being with an old friend! I found it interesting that despite being just two years older than my Q5, his drove very differently. I’m no mechanical expert but I think his engine was tuned slightly differently, making it feel smoother than mine had been. However, his media screen was not touch capable, so I drove myself a little crazy trying to tap the screen to have Siri read texts to me without any success. There’s your mini car post for the month.

Saturday morning Dave and Maureen took me to Gram & Dun for brunch. I ate what was, without a doubt, the best breakfast burrito I’ve ever had. It was amazing.

After the service and reception, our friends the Murrays hosted a small gathering, which eventually moved to Waldo Pizza for dinner. I’m almost positive I had not been to Waldo Pizza in 22 years, so that was excellent.

Saturday also just happened to be the 22nd anniversary of the day S and I got married in KC. It was kind of wild to be back there, sadly without her, when that day rolled around. I was pleased to hear the lady who guided us through our pre-marriage classes is still active, and our good friend Ann remains close with her. I was also glad that it wasn’t 102° like it was the day we got married.

Sunday morning Maureen, despite it being her birthday, made sure to send me off with a wonderful breakfast. I was on the mid-morning flight back home. When the weather is right, there may be no easier trip in the world than flying between Indianapolis and Kansas City. Two new airports that are super easy to navigate and don’t get super busy. I was door-to-door in exactly three-and-a-half hours. Had I driven, I wouldn’t have been to St. Louis yet in that time.

One other travel note, the Racing Louisville FC women’s soccer team was on both of my flights. Apparently there are no direct flights between the ‘Ville and KC, so they must have bussed up to Indy. They lost to the KC Current Saturday evening. I did not mention the result to the players who were next to me in the boarding line Sunday.

I know a lot of the people I saw this weekend are readers of this site. It was great to see you all, although sad it took a funeral to get me back there this summer.

Pacers

Man, the NBA Finals were on the Pacers racquet, to use a tennis term. Up 2–1 in the series and leading by 10 points late in the third period, with Obi Toppin going to the line for two free throws. I had a bad feeling when he missed both, which turned out to be a key moment in the Thunder coming back to even the series at two games.

I watched the entire game, as already noted, at the N’s house. And while I was paying attention, we were also catching up. So my attentions were, at best, split 50–50 all night. For example, the play when SGA pushed off, traveled, and then got an and-one that gave OKC the lead barely registered. Had I been watching that play at home in my normal seat, I would have been screaming and yelling, possibly punching things, and maybe had to take a walk outside. For sure I would not have been able to sleep after the game. I shared this with a non-KC friend and he said, “That might be the healthiest move: force yourself to watch games with people who will make you unfocused on the result and less stressed.” Only took me (almost) 54 years to figure that out!

You hate to say the series is completely over after how good three of the first four games have been, but the Pacers have certainly blown their advantage and put themselves in a tough spot. At least they get to come back home for game six regardless of what happens in Oklahoma tonight. Never count them out, but they are running out of chances.

HS Hoops

It was an open recruiting weekend for high school sports – there were a bunch of college softball coaches on my flight Sunday who had been in Kansas City for a big tournament – and CHS played four games in an annual event here in Indy. Friday they went 2–0, including waxing a team that beat them last year and has one of the best rising juniors in the state. She scored 30+ but our girls kept the rest of the team in check. L didn’t play much in the first game, but got in for most of the fourth quarter of game two. Her travel coach was there and sent me a picture of her inbounding the ball. I shared it with S and she noted that L’s legs are back to being the same size! She’s got her muscle back after the weeks of cast and boot.

Saturday S went to the games and sent me some good updates. That might have been the highlight of the weekend; I’m not sure she’s ever sent me updates before! L played a little more, and a little better in each game. She got to the rim and scored while faking a defender in one. In the other, she scored, got fouled, and swished the free throw.

They beat a good team in the morning game, and then played the team they lost to in sudden death overtime a week ago in game two. We were waxing them, up almost 20, when things got bad. Like seriously bad.

S sent me a message saying our best player had suffered a “devastating” knee injury, probably tearing her ACL. S said the girl was screaming, other players were looking away, and it was just a terrible situation all around. A little later she updated me that it seemed like she had actually dislocated her knee, and the on-site trainer had popped it back into place. OK, 😱🤮

Then another five minutes went by and S texted me that one of L’s best friends had just broken her finger and left the game.

Obviously our girls were a little shook by all this, and tried their hardest to blow all of that lead. L got a lot more minutes and admitted to me later she was not ready to handle the ball against pressure yet. Glad I missed all of that.

But our girls hung on to go 4–0 for the weekend.

We don’t have an update on our star. S was concerned that despite just being a dislocation she could have also torn ligaments as well. I guess we’ll find out soon. That’s a serious bummer for her and our team. And our other injured girl will have surgery on her finger and be out the rest of the summer. The girls have 10 games this week and just eight healthy players, one of whom is still rehabbing her dumb foot and not in full basketball shape yet.

I thought summer was supposed to be fun.

Oh, and L was up in the air trying to block a shot when she got sideswiped by a teammate and knocked to the floor. She has a massive bruise on her hip and actually got some whiplash when she hit the ground and her head snapped back, so her neck is super sore and tight.

It might be time to get her some golf clubs.

US Open

With the travel I did not watch as much of the US Open as I normally would. I was home in time to see the wild final three or four hours Sunday, which included a long weather delay, a moment late in the tournament when six guys were tied for the lead, some epic meltdowns and classic US Open destroying the best golfers in the world stuff, and then JJ Spaun rolling in a ridiculous 60-foot putt to ice his first major victory. Conditions had eliminated most of the best and best known golfers, but the final two hours were a lot of fun to watch.

Royals

They stink.

I’ve not written much about them this year. I’m not watching them as closely as I did the back half of last season, but I am tracking scores each night. There have been a lot of bad Royals teams over the years. This one may well be the most frustrating because they get good-to-great starting pitching almost every night and just cannot hit the ball. It doesn’t matter whether I check the score early or late, I’m almost certain the Royals will have no more than two runs, and most likely none. It’s really uncanny how poor they are at scoring. I guess this is balancing how great they were last year at getting runners in scoring position home.

Friday Playlist

June 13, 2025 /

Well this has turned into quite a significant playlist. We lost two absolute musical giants over the past week. I found an incredible live performance from an artist we lost nearly 30 years ago. I am also headed back to Kansas City for the weekend, so I have to throw something from the (old) KC scene in there. And then I still continue to have tons of new music that’s worth sharing. Strap in for a long one.

“Hot Fun In The Summertime” – Sly & The Family Stone
Sly Stone was the first legend of the week to die. His peak was cut short by issues with drugs and mental health and the resulting chaos those caused in his personal and music lives, but Sly was one of the towering figures in music when the 1960s turned into the 1970s. As a DJ, he played The Beatles on Black stations in the Bay Area, spreading their reach. His band broke all kinds of barriers of race and gender. Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye were already headed towards more thoughtful, political writing, but Sly opened the door for that to be commercially viable. There is zero doubt that every funk artist that came later in the Seventies was indebted to him. And while Prince was inevitable, I’m not sure he would have been the same artist he was had Sly not paved the way. Oh, and Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation and sooooo much of sample-era hip hop would sound completely different without Sly.

“Good Vibrations” – The Beach Boys
I was never a Beach Boys fan. That mostly comes from their schlocky, late 70s revival when I was first discovering them and then how Mike Love turned them into a conservative, money making machine in the 80s. In time I learned to appreciate how good and inventive much of their early music was, and the impact it had on so many bands, most notably The Beatles. Especially this song.

All the good Beach Boys music came from the mind of Brian Wilson, who passed on Wednesday. He may have been the ultimate tortured genius, forever chasing the sounds he had in his head and never quite capturing them in the studio. Another talent who was derailed by mental health illness and resulting drug use. It’s kind of amazing he and Sly both made it to their 80s. RIP to each of them.

“Say Goodbye, Tell No One” – Kathleen Edwards
My favorite new song of the past week or so.

“East London Hotel” – Broken Fires
My second favorite new song of the past week or so. These lads are from Wales. This weekend I’m traveling to celebrate the life of a great Welsh American.

“Deep End” – The Lemonheads
“Hot Roy” – Peter Murphy
Two brand new songs by artists that were huge 30-ish years ago but have been quiet for a long time. Both of these are fine.

“Glad” – Saint Etienne
I’m not going to pretend I’m a big SE fan, but they deserve respect for hanging around for 35 years. They just announced their final album will come out this fall. The lead single features both Tom Rowlands of The Chemical Brothers and Jez Williams of Doves. Not bad partners.

“Inept Apollo” – Nation of Language
This is some good, mid–80s synthpop, made in 2025.

“Hope I Die Tonight” – Paw
Man, we are about to hit the 30th anniversary of Paw’s second album, Death To Traitors, being released. That was the one that was supposed to launch them into the stratosphere. Only their record label was merging and melting down and they lost their marketing support and it hardly sold at all despite getting terrific reviews. Still one of the best concerts I ever went to was in late July, 1995, when Paw played The Bottleneck in Lawrence. They were a lean, mean rocking machine that night.

“Summer Breeze” – Seals & Crofts
We’ve had those good summer breezes this week.

“Grace” – Jeff Buckley
My God is this an incredible performance. I discovered this on a Bluesky thread. I’m not even sure how that thread landed on this song, but the person who posted it said “GodDAMN he didn’t phone in one single performance.” Buckley really should have been a giant, but the Mississippi River claimed him on May 29, 1997.

A Night Of Hoops

June 12, 2025 /

A full evening of basketball with some big moments worth sharing.

Pacers

WOW! Up 2–1 on the massive favorites thanks to two amazing quarters.

Oklahoma City was the better team for two periods Wednesday, the first and third. Sadly for them, the Pacers were even better in the second and fourth and now lead the NBA Finals.

I only saw the second half – more on that momentarily – but that was a fantastic game. The teams made runs at each other all night, neither able to land a knockout punch until the closing five minutes or so when the Pacers strung together makes and stops while the Thunder all seemed to whither under the pressure of the pace, moment, and crowd.

Bennedict Mathurin has driven me crazy this postseason. It has often seemed like he’s trying to do too much, and he’s had several moments (especially in the Cleveland series) when he let his emotions get the best of him. He was magnificent Wednesday. 27 points, from every part of the floor, and always within the offense. He’s the only guy on the Pacers roster who can play the way he does, getting his shot when the offense breaks down, so it is a massive bonus that he seems to be locked in for the moment. Now we just need him not to try to force things Friday night.

TJ McConnell did TJ McConnell things. In one sequence he got two steals and accounted for four points in about 15 seconds. Those four points tied the game before the Pacers took over. Obi Toppin had some more rough moments early, but he was fantastic in the closing run. So good that Rick Carlisle sat Pascal Siakam for the final four minutes, not because Pascal wasn’t playing well but because Toppin was so good.

It was a mature, big boy, classic NBA Finals win. It may not mean a thing in the end, but if the Pacers win this series, standing up to the Thunder in game three will be as important as their game one comeback.

It was so fun seeing the NBA Finals played here in Indy. The crowd seemed lit, and the parts of podcasts I’ve been able to listen to so far raved about how great the environment was. There’s been grousing from some about two small market teams playing each other in the final. That ignores both that these are two of the most fun and interesting teams to watch – way more fun than the Knicks, Lakers, or Celtics – and that these are two super passionate fanbases in insanely loud arenas. Everyone worried about the names on the fronts of the jerseys and airport codes is missing a series that is everything you can ask for on every other level.

High School Ball

I missed the first half of the game because it was week two of high school summer ball. And the most important aspect of that is that L was back on the court last night for the first time in nearly five months.

She was not cleared to play a week ago, so sat out a close loss to the defending 4A champs and a nice win against another 4A team on Wednesday, then a 2–1 trip to a shootout in Lafayette last Friday.

But this week she was cleared to play 10–15 minutes. She ended up playing the lower side of that across two games, partially because that’s how the rotations worked and partially because they practiced and then lifted weights in the morning so she was sore all over.

She did ok.

In the first game she played the last four minutes of the first half. For her only shot attempt she found herself open on the wing, stepped into a long–2, and drained it. Her only other scorebook entry for that game was a turnover when she waited a little too long to pitch it ahead on the break and a girl made a fantastic play to pick her pass off.

We won that game, against the team that lost in the 3A state title game last season (we would have played them to go to state had we won our first semi-state game), in overtime. That team immediately played again and lost that game in overtime as well. Their best player is this amazing junior. She scored 18 in the first half against us. I didn’t see the official book from either game, but she had to have scored close to 60 points for the night. And these are 40 minute games with running clocks.

In our second game L played the first six minutes of the fourth quarter. She had a rebound and nothing else. She and one of her travel teammates were battling for a loose ball and apparently she cussed, sending them both into giggling fits. After the game I mock yelled at them both for not taking the game seriously.

She looked slow, sore, and out of shape. While she’s been watching practice the past two weeks, she wasn’t a full participant until Monday, so she still needs to integrate into what her teammates are doing. I told her not to push things, not to get frustrated when things are hard, and not to worry when she fails. Rehab is a long process and we’re not to the end yet. The important thing is to get back on the court, start getting her body back in basketball shape, and give us a base to work over the second half of summer. The goal is that she’s back to 100% and ready to fight for minutes in October.

Reaching For The Stars, Vol. 112

June 10, 2025 /

Chart Week: June 5, 1976
Song: “Love Really Hurts Without You” – Billy Ocean
Chart Position: #36, 10th week on the chart. Peaked at #22 for two weeks in May.

It’s always fun to be surprised when listening to old American Top 40’s. As I worked my way through this countdown, and glanced ahead at the list of songs on Top 40 Weekly, I did a double take when I saw Billy Ocean’s name.

Really?!?! Billy Ocean in a countdown from 1976?!?! I had no idea! I thought he was just an Eighties act. Even more of a surprise was that his first hit song was excellent.

Leslie Sebastian Charles began his recording career in 1969. For most of the early Seventies he recorded music and performed in clubs without much success. During the day he would hammer out demos in studios. At night, he worked a variety of jobs, including on the assembly line at the Ford Motor plant in Dagenham, East London. By 1975 Charles had adopted the stage name Billy Ocean, partially taken from a soccer team called Ocean’s 11 in his homeland of Trinidad.[1] Ocean’s debut album, called Billy Ocean, came out a year later.

One night while working at the Ford plant, Ocean heard “Love Really Hurts Without You” on a radio someone had tuned to Radio Luxembourg. He walked out of the plant as soon as he heard it, knowing that if his song was on the radio, his days of toiling to make ends meet were over. It was time to focus full-time on being a performer.

That move had mixed results. “Love Really Hurts Without You” reached #2 in the UK, #22 in the US. Ocean’s next two singles reached the top 20 in the UK, and 1977’s “Red Light Spells Danger” also peaked at #2. However none of those singles hit at all in the States. In fact, Ocean would not have a Top 40 American record again until 1984, when, out of nowhere, he hit #1 with “Caribbean Queen (No More Love On The Run).” Over the next four years he had two more #1 hits, two #2s, a #4, a #10, and two other top 20 singles in the US. An impressive, borderline legendary run.[2]

The roots of that stretch were in this song.

There is a heavy, classic Motown influence on “Love Really Hurts Without You.” Almost too much, to be honest. This could easily be a Four Tops song. Fortunately Ocean throws everything he has into his performance, which keeps it from sounding like just another Motown ripoff.

There’s an economy to the piece, how it quickly falls into a rhythm and nothing deviates from that even as progressive instruments, and eventually Ocean, join it. It grabs you right away and doesn’t let up until the final fade out.

Ocean is singing about a woman who breaks his heart by turning him on then leaving him alone as she goes home with someone else. Nothing about this song makes me think of a broken heart, though. There is some pain in Ocean’s voice, certainly some longing, but more than anything else, I hear a sunny smile. There’s an infectious joy to his voice that makes you focus on the general vibe of this tune. It swings. It is, as he describes his lady friend in the opening line, groovy. All that combines to make the song seem more like a shrug that acknowledges a missed chance at love that will be soon replaced by another opportunity. There are plenty of fish in the sea, good things come to those who wait, etc.

Maybe “Love Really Hurts Without You” was a little out of time in 1976, better suited to the Sixties. But hearing it for the first time in 2025, there ain’t nothing wrong with it. 7/10

  1. Yes, the soccer team was named after the old Frank Sinatra movie. Which, of course, has been remade and turned into a series since.  ↩

  2. The biggest of those were: “Loverboy,” #2; “Suddenly,” #4; “When The Going Gets Tough The Tough Get Going,” #2; “There’ll Be Sad Songs (To Make You Cry),” #1; and “Get Outta My Dreams, Get Into My Car,” #1.  ↩

Weekend Notes

June 9, 2025 /

Pacers

Well, the Thunder showed up Sunday evening. As has been routine in these playoffs, the Pacers missed a ton of open looks early as they fell behind. The difference in game two was that I don’t think it would have mattered. OKC was absolutely locked in from the beginning and once they took the lead on a 10–0 run the result was never in doubt. The 42–21 run in the second quarter was too much for the Pacers Devil Magic to overcome.

What amazes me most about the Thunder’s D is how it is actually good defense. With one exception, they don’t foul a ton. They are just in your shirt through effort, speed, and talent. They refuse to let you get by, doing so because they move their feet faster than you move yours. They get their chests into you and leave their hands off, saving those to swipe at the ball rather than grab and hold like so many other teams do. Which makes it even tougher because you can’t complain to the refs in hopes of getting some calls to ease their pressure.

As I said, there’s one exception, and that is Alex Caruso. That dude fouls 15 times on every play. His hands are always on whoever he is guarding, wrapping them up, pulling them, etc. The Thunder might not be in the Finals had the refs called him even occasionally for how he beat up Nikola Jokic in the Denver series.[1]

That wouldn’t have made a difference last night, either. The Thunder were better and more focused while the Pacers missed their chance to stay close early then let OKC’s pressure get most of them sped up.

Tyrese Haliburton was a little passive early. Which brings me to my complaint about the announcers, especially Richard Jefferson. He kept ranting about how Hali needed to be more aggressive, take more shots, insert himself into the action. Which I agree with a little bit. At the same time I wondered if Jefferson had watched the Pacers/Hali at all during the regular season. That is never their game. Hali gets on hot streaks but it almost always happens in the second half. Not because he’s passive, but more because he’s a pass-first point guard and the Pacers spend first halves spreading the ball, getting everyone involved, breaking down the defense, and then Hali pounces when they get tired and either over-help or get lazy. I agree the Pacers need to play a little out of character if they want to win this series. But you can’t be something you’re not. Hali taking 35 shots is not a recipe for winning in OKC. Still, he probably needs to take more than three shots by the mid-point of the second quarter.

The Pacers lost far more because most of the other players stunk Sunday, regardless of what Hali did.

My other big takeaway: SGA is incredible. That dude hits shots that just don’t make sense all night long. Like from a physics standpoint. He’s not a small dude at 6’6”, but he is so wiry you don’t expect him to have the strength to hit turn-around, fade-away jumpers from 20-feet after putting three moves on his defender. It’s outrageous.

Thankfully the refs have yet to bail him out with the weak calls he tends to draw in the regular season. The Pacers have also done a nice job of being physical with him up until he throws his foul-drawing moves at them. I like that they’ve let both teams be physical without it ever getting out of hand. Let’s hope that continues and SGA isn’t shooting 15 free throws a night the rest of the series.

Bummer of a game, but the series is tied coming back to Indy, which is the best the Pacers could have hoped for. Just as the Thunder have bounced back from each of their playoff losses, so too have the Pacers. They’ll have the crowd the next two games, along with the comforts of home. They need to find a way to better attack the Thunder and withstand their pressure if they want to go back to Oklahoma with a chance to still win the title.

French Open

I was an occasional watcher of the French Open over the past two weeks, but Saturday I watched every minute of the fantastic Coco Gauff – Aryna Sabalenka final. It was an intense and entertaining match. Just like when they played in the US Open final two years ago, Sabalenka was dominant early before Coco righted herself and stole the match. One of the things I found most fascinating about the match was that the older, more experienced player was the one who lost her shit while the younger one played almost without emotion. It’s like Coco knew Sabalenka would crack if she could stay in the match long enough. She just keeps living up to the crazy hype that accompanied her arrival on the scene seven years ago.

I was in-and-out for the mens match Sunday. I was passing through the room when Jannik Sinner was sitting on three match points, so I turned the TV off and went outside to deal with a pool issue. Several hours later when I glanced at ESPN I was amazed to see that Carlos Alcaraz had come back and won. HOW?!?!?! And he won the closing tiebreak 10–2??? Holy shit! An NBA writer said that was like opening an overtime period with seven straight alley-oop dunks.

Pool

I thought I was having one pool issue late last week. It turned out to not be an issue, but rather a sign that a much bigger one was slowly presenting itself.

The bottom of our pool started looking green last week. Slowly, in the corners of the deep end, but getting bigger each day, and spreading to an area in the shallow end, too. I assumed it was green algae, something I’ve never had, so took a water sample to the pool store and got a diagnosis. They put me on a 36-hour schedule of intense sanitization to kill off the algae.

By Sunday the green was still there, but seemed contained a bit. So I decided to vacuum all the crap on the bottom of the pool out into the yard, bypassing the filter in hopes I could kick it back on and the water would return to normal quickly. As I vacuumed I thought it was strange the “algae” seemed very thick and heavy. And still very green. Shouldn’t all those chemicals have killed it, and shouldn’t it be kind of light and amorphous? I vacuumed it all out, backwashed my filter, and kicked things back on. Green material immediately started pouring out of the return jets. There were already large deposits on the pool floor. WTF???

I killed the system and decided to scoop out whatever was in the bottom of the pool for a closer look. That wasn’t algae. Instead it was the glass media we use in our filter. I had no idea it was green. Had I known that I would have realized a week earlier something in our filter was slowly failing and allowing the glass to return to the pool with the filtered water. And that failure was getting bigger each day. And I shot a couple hundred bucks of brand new filtering media into our grass.

It also should have been a clue that despite these fields of green on the pool floor getting larger, the water was remaining clear.

I texted back-and-forth with our pool guy, who seemed confused by what was going on until I sent him pictures of the glass I had removed from the pool. That’s when he confirmed something in the filter has failed. He’s going to do his best to get here today to take a look, then hopefully it’s a quick/easy/cheap fix that doesn’t involve ordering parts that take a week to get here or, God forbid, replacing the entire filter.

We’ve been pretty lucky with our pool over the six seasons we’ve had it. Eventually, though, they are like boats and become money pits. We already knew this was likely the last season for our current liner. Looks like that won’t be the only cash we’ll be pouring into the system this year.

Grad Parties

Saturday was C’s biggest day of grad parties of the year. She had seven on her calendar.

She began the day heading 45 minutes south to a co-party by two of her closest friends. When she returned home S and I joined her for the next four. The first was 35 minutes east of our house. The second 10 minutes west of that one. The third 15 minutes back east. Then the fourth was back near our home. We did quick pop-ins at the first two. We aimed to do the same at the third, but as there weren’t many people there we felt kind of bad and spent more time chatting with the parents than we expected to. They are nice, that was fine, but it meant we only had 15 minutes or so at our last one, which was the one S and I wanted to go to most. We hustled home and then C realized she didn’t have time to make the next one, so we called it a night and ordered sushi. Had we known that was the case, we would have stayed longer at that last party. There were a bunch of families we love from St P’s there, all of whom sent their kids to different high schools so we don’t get to see them very much.

After dinner C was off to one more grad party and then a normal party. She has one or two more on her calendar later this month, but the bulk of her friends are now out of the way.

  1. Listening to Bill Simmons’ pod while taking L to the dentist this morning, he made this same point: Caruso is a hack and it is inexplicable how/why he gets away with it.  ↩

Playoff Miracle, Vol. 186

June 6, 2025 /

I have a very busy day, but still want to squeeze in some quick words about game one of the NBA Finals.

It started about how I expected: the Pacers were sped up and nervous and when they could get shots, were missing thoroughly makable ones. The Thunder were also nervy at the beginning, but their defense found its footing and began shutting down everything the Pacers wanted to do. At times it looked like a mismatched college game, where the Pacers had three guys standing 40 feet from the basket trying to figure out how to even begin the offense, let alone get decent looks. Obi Toppin was truly awful. Myles Turner only marginally better. Tyrese Haliburton quiet. The only good thing was that the Thunder were also missing shots, otherwise the margin could have easily been 20+ at halftime.

I wasn’t worried, though. I didn’t think the Pacers had much of a chance to steal a game in OKC to begin with. I expected game one to be rough. I just wanted to see if they could settle and find something in the second half to build on going forward.

Boy did they!

It was the same playbook we’ve seen over-and-over from this team since Christmas. Trailing by 15 early in the fourth quarter, the Pacers finally found some comfort on offense. They never had that quick, 10–0 in 30 seconds run that flipped the game. The Thunder hit at least three shots that seemed to have wiped out any Pacers momentum. Turner missed a wide-open 3 that would have cut it to one with around 4:00 left and that seemed like it might be the ballgame as the Thunder stretched it back out to a 9-point lead.

And then Aaron Nesmith and Andrew Nembhard hit consecutive 3’s to make it a 3-point game. Nembhard hit two free throws and Pascal Siakam got an offensive rebound and scored to cut it to one. Could the Pacers get a stop? Well, they got two, sandwiched around a dead ball rebound for the Thunder. And then it was Tyrese Time (Tyme?).

 

They freaking did it again. The only lead of the night, coming on their last shot attempt of the game, a cold-blooded, pull up J over one of the best defenders on the planet.

Pacers up 1–0.

Crazy stuff. This Team of Destiny shit is getting hard to ignore.

This might have been a massive outlier, the game one upset that wakes up the Thunder before they win the next four to claim the title. For one night, though, that Pacers Devil Magic worked again and turned a blowout into an instant classic.

Friday Playlist

June 6, 2025 /

After a slight lull, the music has really started to pile up again, so we are back to the thick and juicy playlists.

“Celebrated Summer” – Hüsker Dü
(Nods head.) Yeah, this is the good shit.

“Did I Say Too Much” – The Beaches
Serious Song Of The Summer vibes here.

“Inland Ocean” – Matt Berninger
With the NBA Finals featuring two teams from the middle part of the county, it seems like a no brainer to include this song. Especially since Indiana is right there in the lyrics. OMEN?!?!

“Not In Surrender” – Obongjayar
All kinds of goodness in this track. His voice reminds me a little of Sananda Maitreya’s (FKA Terrence Trent D’Arby).

“Chemical Reaction” – Debbii Dawson
Stereogum described this song as if “…a mad scientist blended a bit of ABBA, Dolly Parton, and a sprinkle of Queen.” You can’t go wrong with that combo!

“I Don’t Want To Die” – Good Looks
GL just released a Deluxe Edition of last year’s Lived Here For A While album. No surprise that every new song is exceptionally solid.

“Don’t Want To Know” – World News
This sounds like the result of combining a jam band with U2.

“Real Power” – Golomb
Dumb band name. Nothing wrong with this song, though. Yo La Tengo + Izzy Pop, maybe?

“That Summer Feeling” – Jonathan Richman
A summer classic.

“Come Out And Play (Keep ‘Em Separated)” – The Offspring
This week’s Alternative Number One, an absolute ripper that still rips now, no matter how silly and regrettable The Offspring eventually became.

NBA Final Preview

June 5, 2025 /

The NBA Finals have arrived. I’ve been listening to podcasts previewing the series all week, and reading everything The Ringer has posted on the topic. Since I know most of you are 1) far busier than me and 2) don’t care as much about the result as I do, allow me to offer a summarization of all that content: the Pacers are a very good, super entertaining, resilient team that plays a style that is tough defend and absolutely deserves the full respect of every basketball fan and analyst. BUT, Oklahoma City has a historically stout defense that seems designed to offer matchup nightmares at every position for the Pacers (and just about any team) and will have the best player in the series, thus the Pacers have almost no chance.

It’s been funny to hear all these talking (and writing) heads repeat almost the same message, being very careful to make sure people understand they really like the Pacers.

I get it.

Even wearing my Gold-colored glasses it’s hard to find an angle that makes this series work for the Pacers. Not just because of the pure matchups between these two teams, but because true upsets are rare in the NBA Finals. The closest thing we’ve had to an upset in the past 20 years was when Toronto beat Golden State in 2019. The Raptors actually won more games than the Warriors that year, but were viewed as underdogs because, well, they weren’t the Warriors. And in that series it took Kevin Durant only playing limited minutes because of an earlier injury then blowing out his achilles and Klay Thompson blowing his ACL to clear the path for the Raptors title.

Before that you have to go back to 2004 when the Pistons knocked off the Lakers, in truly the biggest NBA Finals upset of my life. Those Lakers were heavily favored but were also getting old and dysfunctional and the Pistons were uniquely positioned to give them fits.

So we have one upset, that really wasn’t an upset, that came about because two of the best players of their generation suffered season ending injuries during the series, and the other was because a team was old and hated each other.

Sadly for the Pacers, the Thunder have neither of these issues. They seem to be completely healthy at the moment and are super young and project an image of everyone being on the same page. Maybe there’s an injury during the series that shifts things, but the Thunder aren’t the Knicks, seemingly always teetering on the edge of losing all their best players because of overuse. And the Pacers are the team that is more banged up at the moment.

Several folks have used last year’s Eastern Conference Finals as a model for this series. The Celtics swept the Pacers in four games, but the Pacers easily could have been ahead 3–1 rather than going home. It was a deserved sweep by a better team, but three of the games were decided in the last 10–15 seconds, one going to overtime. The Pacers battled, but they either weren’t good enough or made too many errors in the game’s biggest moments.

I’m not sure this series will be as exciting and tense as that one. It’s hard to look at the individual matchups and find paths for where the Pacers can keep games basically even until the closing minutes, when their crazy, late-game, devil magic can take over. I don’t think it will be a game of blowouts, but also I’m not sure the final result will be in doubt as long in each contest as it was in the Celtics series.

For the Pacers to have a chance their big two can have no slippage. Tyrese Haliburton can’t have the games where he’s passive and lets the Thunder dictate his pace or decisions on offense. He can’t have either bad shooting games, or games where he simply doesn’t shoot, something that has happened once in each of the Pacers first three playoff series. Pascal Siakam, quite simply, has to be exceptional every night. He has to get behind the Thunder defense for easy baskets like he’s done all year. He has to be efficient hunting mismatches and then punishing them in the half court. He has to stay on the court by not picking up cheap fouls.

Even if those two can stay locked in for every game, there can be no slippage by the supporting cast. Myles Turner will get open looks in this series; the Thunder’s defense is designed to allow those because of how they close off the paint. He needs to knock those down. Andrew Nembhard and Aaron Nesmith can’t get suckered into forcing things when the ball ends up in their hands late in the shot clock. Both tend to get into trouble when they have to drive and have limited options. The Thunder defense is set up to force exactly those situations, and then kill players who make bad decisions when faced with swarming defenders from all angles.

There aren’t a lot of weaknesses on the Thunder for the Pacers to attack. I think the biggest Pacers advantage will be forcing the pace, but the Thunder are fine playing fast. In fact, they play faster than the Pacers by some measures. The key will be to get the Thunder’s D overreacting to pressure and finding ways to get wide open looks in the secondary break, or in the early opportunities out of the half court when the Thunder snuff out Pacers breaks.

One other small measure of hope for Indiana fans is that Rick Carlisle and his staff are excellent tacticians. Each series they’ve found a new way to attack their opponent that was different from how the Pacers played during the regular season. The Thunder don’t have many flaws, but I’m confident Carlisle has found some and designed new ways to attack them. Are those series swinging adjustments or ones that will simply win a few possessions before the Thunder counter and regain their advantages? We’ll start to find out tonight.

My prediction has not changed: heart Thunder in six, mind Thunder in five. Which aligns exactly with almost every podcaster I’ve listened to. For the record, I had that locked in before I listened to any of them. So they’re copying me, not the other way around.[1] There aren’t many reasons to be confident the Pacers will capture their first NBA championship over the next couple weeks. At least they have the chance.

  1. I’m sure Bill Simmons, Zach Lowe, and all the other NBA guys at The Ringer checked into my site before going public with their own picks.  ↩

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