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Weekend Notes

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

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

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

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.  ↩

Wednesday Links

John Siracusa is one of the most respected members of the Apple blogosphere. In these two pieces he lays the smack down on Tim Cook.

Apple Turnover
Apple Turnaround


Another bonkers and amazing addition to the legacy of the Voyager project: thrusters that had been assumed unusable for over 20 years have been revived. I keep waiting to hear that the minuscule budget line that keeps this project has been X-ed out by you -know-who.

NASA’s Voyager 1 Revives Backup Thrusters Before Command Pause


As lazy as it is to keep rolling out remakes of old stuff, I will give a re-booted Scrubs a shot. Also an excuse to go watch some of the old ones again. Standard def ain’t going to be pretty.

Zach Braff Boards ‘Scrubs’ Reboot at ABC


A moving piece about how music can affect us, and how that changes when the people that make the music are revealed to be (possibly) terrible humans.

I can’t hear those words in the warm, paternal way I once did, knowing that someone else’s daughter claims he damaged her. It’s as simple as that when it comes to these matters of art vs. artist: Can you listen to the music without hearing ghosts in it?

The Arcade Fire Problem


It was inevitable but there seems to be a growing movement to “re-discover” CDs and CD players amongst some music geeks. Which is cool; I don’t judge anyone for diving into the history of physical music formats. A sub-set of that group is interested in Sony MiniDisc players. I never had one, but always thought they were super cool. This article looks back on how they worked and what made them unique.

How MiniDisc Worked

The entire site is a cool reminder of when Sony made the greatest shit.


Finally, a modern review of Fletch.

The Cult Movie Club: Fletch @ 40

Reader’s Notebook, 6/3/25

Taste: My Life Through Food – Stanley Tucci
Coincidentally my hold on this came in just as his latest travel/food show premiered. It is equal parts autobiography and food diary of his entire life. He writes exactly as he speaks on his travel shows, which is either a good, comforting thing or annoying based on what you think of those shows. I read a review of his new show that complained about how into himself he is. If you share that view, you might want to skip this one.


James – Percival Everett
An amazing book. It is framed as a re-telling of Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, but told from the perspective of Jim, the escaped slave that accompanied Huck on his travels. If you know Everett and have read any of his other books, you know this won’t be neither an easy tale, but will be told with tremendous courage and inventiveness.

We quickly learn that most slaves speak and behave much differently when amongst each other in private. Where they act simple and uneducated around whites, when isolated together they speak better English than the white people who subjugate them. They teach their young ones how to behave in public, including lessons in “slave speak” – “Yas massa,” etc – and how to never reveal to white folks their true level of intelligence. If something is missing in the house, you lead them to it while making them think they found it on their own. You never, ever leave the impression that you were responsible for solving these life’s little mysteries.

Jim and Huck fall in together and flee Hannibal, MO down the Mississippi River. They have adventures. They defy death multiple times. But, again, the story is told completely from Jim’s perspective. His mission is to escape capture and find a way to return to Hannibal to buy his wife and daughter’s freedom. Thus he is constantly on the lookout for whites up and down the river who are searching for him. When they enter a town, he must act like he is Huck’s responsibility. When he falls in with other, sympathetic whites, he is forced to behave as if he were their slave. And so on.

The book is split into three sections. The third is pretty intense, and has a monumental surprise reveal in its opening pages. There are a couple clues leading to this moment, but I still had to re-read the passage several times to make sure I understood it correctly. Despite understanding that this book took place in 1861, it was still disturbing and upsetting to get this view of the US during the time when slavery was still legal and how even “kind” whites often treated Blacks like animals rather than humans. We know that the real lives of slaves were far different than what was presented in either contemporary or historical accounts. I like that Everett gives his characters some control over their lives and makes them clearly more enlightened than the people who own them. They don’t just crave freedom. They can make passionate, educated arguments against slavery far more informed than the arguments in favor of slavery.

I know I’ve read Huckleberry Finn as an adult, probably 20–25 years ago, so I just read a quick synopsis of it to remind myself of the gist. I wish I had re-read the entire book to see how Everett’s story lined up with and diverged from Twain’s. Twain was always subtly subversive, so I think he would appreciate what Everett did with the bones of his original.


One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This – Omar El Akkad
This was a difficult book, for many reasons. El Akkad is an Egyptian-born journalist and author who currently lives in the US and has US citizenship. In this he writes mostly about the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict and how, in his view, the coverage of it in the west has been extremely one-sided and how the defense of the Israeli viewpoint has spilled over to many other aspects of our society. You watch the news, you know what he’s talking about.

I’m not going to get into all the details of that conflict. I feel like my views mirror what most people’s are: that the Israelis had an absolute and unquestioned right to defend themselves against the terrorists that attacked on October 7, 2023, but that response has gone well beyond what was proportionate and appropriate and is more focused on wiping out the Palestinian state than securing Israel’s borders.

El Akkad writes about not just the horrors of the war itself, but how it has spilled over to affect politics and society in the western world. Even if you do not have strong feelings about what is going on in Palestine, if you support democracy and free speech, you have to be upset at how those concepts have been set aside within the debate over the war.

More interestingly to me is how El Akkad uses the Israel-Palestine situation as a jumping off point to discuss the many flawed ways we Americans view ourselves, the inconsistencies in our national myths. For example, Americans love to side with the plucky underdog, and often view ourselves as exactly that, a remnant from our Revolutionary War days when we defeated the greatest world power of the era. Never mind that we have been, since World War II, not just the biggest power of the era but the most powerful nation in the history of humanity. Adhering to the idea that we are underdogs absolves us from acknowledging the realities of our place in the world, from taking responsibility for our actions. We are always fighting some greater evil, no matter that there is no power equal to ours.

The title also refers to how so many of us often prefer to stay silent or not take a stand in moments of crisis, but later suddenly find the courage to proclaim our opposition to policies that went awry.

This book made me think more about our country than the Israel-Palestine war. I would imagine because of that it will not appear in many school libraries, and likely be banned from most public libraries at some point. I’m shocked El Akkad hasn’t had his citizenship stripped and he been shipped back to one of the countries he lived in before becoming an American. God forbid we ever question either our national myths or policies. Especially when it a brown, Muslim, born halfway around the world leading the questioning.

Hell Yes ‘Cers!

Holy shit, it happened! The Pacers are in the NBA Finals!

I gotta be honest, I was angry Friday morning. And worried. After the Pacers played like ass in New York Thursday it meant little to me that the series was coming back to Indy for game six. It seemed like the Knicks had figured out how to contain the Pacers offense with backcourt pressure, they were gaining confidence on offense, they were defying all the odds by staying healthy, and most infuriatingly the Knicks bench played better than the Pacers reserves on Thursday.

This did not bode well for Indiana closing out the series Saturday and avoiding what would be a monumentally stressful game seven in New York tonight.

All that stress and worry was silly. The Pacers took care of business and sent the Knicks home with a magnificent, cathartic win Saturday. The Pacers won every quarter, stretching their lead a little further each period. The Knicks made some runs but seemed to whither in the fourth quarter, which set up a glorious last seven minutes or so when the Pacers blew the game open.

Each Pacers win in this series was a specific player’s game. The unlikely, near miracle win in game one will forever be the Aaron Nesmith game. Pascal Siakam dropping 39 points in game two slapped his name on that one. Tyrese Haliburton’s ridiculous boxscore line claimed game four for him. And while the clinching game was a typically balanced effort by one of the most balanced teams in the league, that game will always be the Andrew Nembhard game for the way he made life a living hell for Jalen Brunson on defense and somehow managed to finally find his offensive game in the process.

Nembhard was simply brilliant. The refs let both teams play, so while he was using his entire body to guard Brunson, Brunson was also getting away with his forearm shivers, grabbing of arms, slamming his shoulder into Nembhard’s chest, and even flat-out headbutting Nembhard without getting whistled for a foul.[1] Funny thing happened in that process: I think Brunson wore himself out as much as Nembhard wore him down. Brunson, the league’s reigning Clutch Player of the Year, looked thoroughly wiped and ineffective when the Knicks needed him most. Meanwhile Nembhard was keying the Pacers final surge to put the game away.

This might have been the biggest surprise in a series full of surprises. In last year’s playoffs, Nembhard could not guard Brunson at all. In brief moments on Brunson earlier in the series, he continued to struggle. When Nesmith wasn’t on the court the Pacers resorted to either Bennedict Mathurin or Jarace Walker to try to slow Brunson knowing Nembhard would not be effective. But when Nesmith got two early fouls Saturday, and appeared to be hobbled by the leg he injured in game three, Rick Carlisle had no choice. And Nembhard delivered. It was a season-saving performance.

Siakam was, again, great. Hali took some time to get going, but dished out over 10 assists and cracked the Knicks defense in the closing run. Thomas Bryant, who had been benched earlier, hit the first three 3’s he took.

Hey, big props to Carlisle. He made terrific adjustments during the series, both in scheme and personnel. More importantly, after the Pacers traded for Haliburton during the ’22-’23 season, he focused on building around Hali’s skills first, embracing the chaos that the point guard’s unorthodox style lends itself to. That produced an incredibly fun team on the offense, but one that also rarely put in any effort on the defensive end. Winning 140–138 is fun during the regular season but not a recipe for advancing deep into the playoffs. Only they did last year, benefiting from injuries to opponents in the first two rounds before Haliburton himself was injured and the Celtics swept the Pacers out of the conference finals.

I’m not sure how he did it, but somehow this year Carlisle turned them into a better-than-average defensive team. The offense wasn’t quite as efficient, but the improvement on the other end made them a better team, a tougher team to match up with, and better suited to win in the postseason.

Carlisle also deserves series credit for trusting his players to fill their roles. I hadn’t really noticed this until a national writer mentioned it, but Carlisle is fine with mistakes, as long as they are made with maximum effort and within the team concept. Sometimes it drives me crazy when TJ McConnell overdrives, like he did often this series as the Knicks refused to collapse on him with help, or when Bennedict Mathurin forgets he has teammates and goes one-on-one. Carlisle is fine with that because he knows giving players the opportunity to fail, again within the system, means they will play with confidence and be effective more often than not. McConnell might turn it over a couple times, but that is made up for when he finally gets the defense to overcommit and three teammates are open or he gets a wide-open layup when help does not come. Mathurin can be maddening when his ego makes him ignore/forget that he has four teammates on the court with him. But he’s the best “get the fuck out of my way I’m scoring no matter what” player on the team, and sometimes they need that in the moments the starters are resting.

I kept waiting for an injury or two to destroy the Knicks. Other than Karl-Anthony Towns acting like his knee had just blown apart every time he fell down, they somehow got through the series unscathed. Thank goodness the series didn’t go to a seventh game, because the Pacers were the team that seemed injury-struck. Nesmith was never 100% after his injury. I don’t know how effective he would have been in game seven. Walker might have done something very bad to his ankle Saturday. Tony Bradley, who went from unknown bench player to logging serious minutes early in the series, suffered an injury in game five that opened the door for Bryant to play again. Even with those injuries, the Pacers still played 11 guys before they cleared the bench late. Again, that’s all from the trust Carlisle has in his guys and the depth that Kevin Pritchard and Chad Buchanan built.

And now the Pacers are on to the NBA Finals for the second time in franchise history and the first time in 25 years.[2] As with last year’s run to the conference finals, there will be some critics who claim the Pacers had an easy road to the Finals. Dame Lillard crashed out of the Bucks series. Cleveland was battling several injuries in the second round. And the Knicks knocked out defending champs Boston before the Pacers had to play them.

That talk was valid last year, but is nonsense this year. The Bucks were a mess before Dame got hurt. Yes, Cleveland had injuries, but the Pacers took the #1 seed to the woodshed in the games the Cavs were 100%. And the Knicks were up on the Celtics 2–1 and leading by 9 points in game four when Jason Tatum blew out his achilles. They were winning that series whether he stayed healthy or not. The Pacers got a few breaks along the way, as every team that wins three series does. There’s no doubting, though, that they were the best team in the Eastern Conference over the last six weeks. Which is all that matters.

Now it’s on to the Finals, where we have two fun-to-watch, built via drafts and smart trades teams from the Heartland. Prepare for grousing by the coastal elites and casual fans about how Indy vs OKC is boring. Those people who focus on geography will miss that these are two of the most entertaining teams in the league, and if the exact same rosters were located in Boston and LA, folks would be salivating over this matchup.

I’ve been cautiously optimistic through every round so far, but it is tough to stretch that confidence to the next series. Oklahoma City is the best and deepest team in the league. They have this year’s MVP. They are the best defensive team in the league and a matchup nightmare for the Pacers. To me the only hope for Indiana is if Shai Gilgeous-Alexander were to get injured, something you can never rule out when playing Indiana in the playoffs,[3] or if the Thunder crack under the pressure. As good as they are, this is the first year they had advanced to even the conference finals with this roster, so this is as new to them as the Pacers.

My heart tells me OKC in six, but my mind says the Thunder will take care of the Pacers fairly easily in five. Like I said two weeks ago, if the Pacers can steal one of the first two games, they have a chance…


I stayed up late to watch all the postgame coverage on TNT. It sure was refreshing for a network to hang around for well over an hour after the final buzzer, showing all the on-court activities, interviewing players on the court and then on the TNT set, and letting the Pacers fans who hung around all that time to celebrate on camera.

It was, of course, a strange and surreal postgame show, being the final edition ever of Inside the NBA on TNT, a nearly 30-year-old institution..

If you don’t follow sports and/or sports media, this was strange because Ernie Johnson, Kenny Smith, Shaq, and Charles Barkley, along with most of their support crew, are taking their show to ESPN next year. They’ll even be in the same studio. Why are people noting the switch if the only thing that will be different is what channel you select to watch them? The fear by people who love the show, and clearly the cast as well, is that ESPN will find a way to destroy the best show in sports TV. I loved Shaq throwing down the gauntlet warning ESPN that they were not coming to fuck around. I wish I had any confidence that ESPN won’t mess up a perfect show pretty quickly.

And can someone please hire Kevin Harlan? I’m sure it will get done; it would be insane not to. Perhaps there is already something in place but he and/or ESPN or Amazon wanted to wait until his Turner obligations were complete before announcing it.


  1. On the other end of the court, Mikal Bridges was also allowed to mug Haliburton constantly. It wasn’t aesthetically pleasing basketball, but at least it was called evenly, I guess.  ↩
  2. S and I started dating the week after the Pacers lost to the Lakers.  ↩
  3. I am NOT wishing an injury on him.  ↩

May Media

Movies, Shows, etc

Confess, Fletch
There’s a reason it took over 30 years to make the next Fletch film. No matter who filled the title role, no matter how talented they were, they would be compared to Chevy Chase at the absolute apex of his comedic powers. After years of rumors and starts and stops and so many rumored actors as Fletch, it finally happened. And somehow I totally missed it? I had no memory of this coming out three years ago, so was surprised to see it when scrolling around. And it went about as I expected.

Jon Hamm is great, has all kinds of comedic chops. But he’s not Chevy, or at least he’s not 1984/5 Chevy. I laughed, but not nearly as hard as I would if I rewatched the original Fletch immediately after. I wondered if I would have reacted differently/more strongly if the name Fletch wasn’t involved, and it was just a comedy with no baggage. Maybe being 53 instead of 13 made a big difference in how I viewed it? I think it might still have been a little too subtle. I skimmed a few reviews after watching and the one criticism that stuck out to me was that this movie needed to be sillier and closer in tone to the original. I agree.

Anyway, this wasn’t a bad film at all. I enjoyed it. I laughed. I liked some of the repeating jokes (“Five stars!”). The cast was generally quite good (John Slattery and Jon Hamm together again!). There was a callback to the climax of the original film that was nice. I wanted it to be more, though.

Alas, as this movie didn’t do much business, the plan for another Hamm-led entry in the series has been scrapped. Maybe in another 30 years some other actor will take on the role, and by then we’ll be far enough removed from the original that it will work better.

B

American Psycho
One of my favorite movies of this era, a wicked satire on the Wall Street culture of the late Eighties. It forever changed how I think about Phil Collins/Genesis, Huey Lewis and the News, and Whitney Houston. Also wild to see Christian Bale strolling through the dark streets of New York in an overcoat when a few years later he would do a similar walk in Batman’s cape. Shame so many of the young people chose to meme the hell out of this movie without understanding what it was truly about.

A

Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol
I had never watched any of these other than the very first one. I think mostly because the series really got rolling in the years I thought Tom Cruise was a total nutter and I didn’t have a ton of interest in his work. Figured I would give them a shot, starting with this one, which is where the online reviews say the series got good. Agreed, this was pretty solid. Funny that Leá Seydoux was a villain here and a few years later James Bond’s lover. I didn’t get around to watching the rest before our Paramount + sub expired, but some of them are on Prime so I’ll get to them at some point.

B+

Airplane!
My first complete re-watch in who knows how long, after reading the oral history of the film. Still as funny as ever. So many subtle jokes in between all the big laughs.

A

30 Rock, season 2
The show really hit its stride this season, only to be shortened because of a writer’s strike. It’s interesting to read back on the history of the show, and how the critics were crazy about it while the ratings were never there. Even being a part of NBC’s comedy night. Somehow this was one of the least watched shows on TV. America is dumb.

A-

Tucci In Italy
Thank goodness someone gave Stanley Tucci some money to continue his culinary travels through his ancestral homeland. If you’ve ever been to Italy, this show will make you want to go back.

A


Shorts, YouTubes, etc

Will Ferrell Takes The Colbert Questionert
Not the locked-in, late night Ferrell of 10–15 years ago, but still fun.

Why did Communist Vietnam invade Communist Cambodia?
Because people are people?

Why Nobody Uses Boats Between the Hawaiian Islands
Interesting question which seems like a no-brainer to us mainlanders until you see there are some serious reasons why before you even get to the economics of it.

Meet Henry, the world’s oldest crocodile
I did some more reading about Henry after watching this. He’s sired around 10,000 offspring with six different partners. It’s good to be king.

Cheers | Every Time Norm Peterson Enters the Bar
RIP to George Wendt.

Jon Hamm Replies To Fans Online | Actually Me
Hi-larious!

The world’s oldest river has a big problem
As much as I enjoy Beau Miles’ usual bullshit, when he is serious his videos are very well done and quite moving.

Roberto Baggio | FIFA World Cup Goals
Hell yeah! I can still hear Bob Ley’s call of the goal against Bulgaria as he worked his way through the defense: “Roberto Baggio. Roberto Baggio! ROBERTO BAGGIO!!!!!”

The Loneliest Flight in The World
Stuff like this kind of freaks me out. We put A LOT of trust in our technology.

The Untold Story of Jordan’s Pre-Game Bar Adventure
Yikes!

Why wasn’t Portugal Conquered by Spain?
Added to my Portugal file in advance of next year.

Christian Bale Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters | GQ
Legend.

Why Lawrence of Arabia Still Looks Like a Billion Bucks
A little too technical at times but still interesting.

The Patagonia You Don’t See
Gorgeous. But the title is kind of a lie, since he clearly took a cruise ship to these areas “you don’t see.” Dummy.

Inside the Arnett, OK tornado – May 18, 2025
This is wild, and apparently now a thing. I immediately found other videos where drones were flown into twisters.

Worst bomb: Eddie Murphy, Norm Macdonald, John Oliver, and Jerry Seinfeld
A lot of good moments in here.

Vaer Presents North Shore Lifeguards Association – A Story of Purpose and Protection
I’m fine with commercials that are this cool.

The Most Naughty Innuendos Of All Time | This Morning
Gino’s Most Iconic Moments Ever | This Morning
So apparently British morning TV is way better than ours. I might watch the Today Show again if it was like this. The sausage in the hole bit is amazing.

Incredible Hiking in the Canadian Rockies
Finding a Hidden Gem in the Middle of Nowhere
My standard comment that it sure would be cool to live like this.

How We Made the Best Adventure Travel Show on the Internet | Huckberry’s DIRT Origin Story
Cool inside baseball details.

Exploring NOMOS – finally!
Adding this to the long list of watches I will never be able to afford but can still lust after.

Caine’s Arcade
What a wonderful, heart-warming, soul-filling video. Obviously it is 13 years old, because nice things like this don’t happen anymore.


Car Content

The Zeekr 007 GT Is A Cool Electric Wagon I Wish We Got In The USA
The American auto industry will never go away. It’s too important in too many ways. And no matter who is president we will be more interested in protective tarrifs than incentivizing American companies via the same kinds of subsidies the Chinese used to build their industry. But its influence in the rest of the world is rapidly waning because of vehicles like this. GM and Ford are going to be niche manufacturers before we know it.

You could wait for the Rivian R3X or…
This was intriguing until I saw how little legroom there is in the backseat.

Everything I Love & Hate About Our New Rivian R1S After Driving It 1,000 Miles Home
Still #1 on my list for my next vehicle, but in addition to getting the R2 onto roads next year, Rivian really needs to solve their service problem if they want to become legit players.


Photography

The Magic of Spring in the Columbia River Gorge
Travel Photography in the Columbia River Gorge // Fuji X-T5
Photography Report: Key West, Florida with the Mamiya 7ii
TTArtisan AF 27mm f2.8 vs Fujifilm 27mm f2.8 WR
I Took My Leica M11-P to Italy for a Week
Shooting a New Film Stock on the Bronica SQ & Contax T2
It makes photography easier, instantly.
one camera. no plan. in London
From Lisbon to Nazare | Fuji X100VI Cinematic
The Fujifilm X half is Just Plain FUN!
Fujifilm Colors | Are You Getting the Most Out of Your Camera?
How to use the 50mm like the masters, and why?
Film Photography in the San Juan Islands

Friday Playlist

This came together surprisingly well for it being a short, busy week. It helps that we are in Summer Music season.

“Constructive Summer” – The Hold Steady
Always good advice to build something in the summer.

“Andromeda” – Preoccupations
Not a bad song on the latest Preoccupations album.

“One Million” – Rocket
Other than “Cherub Rock,” I was never a Smashing Pumpkins fan, so it’s kind of weird I enjoy so many new bands, like this one, that mimic their sound. A lot of it has to do with the lead singer not being Billy Corgan. These kids will actually open up for the Pumpkins on their upcoming tour.

“Chemicals” – Split System
Good, old-fashioned, Aussie punk rock.

“Pacemaker” – Georgie & Joe
Am I hearing the early 90s in this jam?

“The Line” – Trace Mountains
As much as I like it when Trace Mountains leans into War on Drugs adjacent sounds, I also enjoy when they make music that sounds different and stands on its own.

“Get Out My Face AKA Bad Kitty” – Garbage
I liked Garbage’s first comeback a lot. This one lacks the energy and urgency of their best work. Still worth sharing.

“Summertime Is Coming” – Paul Banks
No lies told here.

“Fall Down” – Toad The Wet Sprocket
This week’s Alternative Number Ones entry. A nice change-of-pace by TTWS from the songs that first made them stars. Funny to read through their history and realize although they broke out right as the Alternative Music Revolution was beginning, their early, mellower singles were much bigger hits on the mainstream chart than the alternative one.

Weekend Notes, Part 2: Sports

Continuing our look back at last weekend (and slightly beyond), let’s get into the sports.


PACERS!!!!

Quite the swing of emotions, this Eastern Conference Finals series.

Game one was the Pacers’ legendary comeback and overtime win.

Game two Friday was a Big Brother game for them, getting another win in Madison Square Garden by controlling the game from start-to-finish and keeping the Knicks at an arm’s length every time they made a run.

Sunday’s game three seemed to be the perfect cap on one of the great sports days in Indianapolis history. Coming a few hours after the Indy 500, the Pacers were red-hot to start. Late in the second quarter Tyrese Haliburton flipped a wonderful pass backwards over a defender that Obi Toppin caught one-handed and threw down. On the next possession Haliburton hit a long 3. Then he got a steal and breakaway dunk to put the Pacers up by 20.

Gainbridge was deafening. The Knicks were reeling. The series was over.

Only the Pacers got sloppy, the Knicks found something with their bench unit, and slowly whittled the margin until they took the lead midway through the fourth quarter and never gave it up. Indiana went from being on the verge of the NBA Finals to facing some serious questions and pressure in the span of about 75 minutes.

Worse than the loss was the lower leg injury Aaron Nesmith suffered late in the first half. He came back and played some second half minutes, but for a guy who missed 35 games with a similar injury earlier this year and is the Pacers most effective defender on Jalen Brunson, it was super worrisome.

I think it’s a measure of how engaged I am with this team that I couldn’t sleep after Sunday’s collapse. Normally only KU basketball can have that effect on me.

Which took us to last night’s game four. It was playing out like a combination of games two and three, the Pacers again getting out early and controlling the game. Their leads weren’t quite as big as they had been Sunday and the Knicks runs sooner. New York tied the game just before halftime but a 14–0 Pacers run that bridged halftime gave them control that they never relinquished.

There were some dicey moments late. The Pacers seemed to go braindead a couple times on offense, by either being passive and one-dimensional or just plain sloppy and throwing the ball away. The Knicks never completely took advantage, though. It went down to the final minute until Toppin splashed a 3 as the shot clock expired with 46 seconds left to clinch it.

The Pacers are a game away from the NBA Finals.

Nesmith played and was again brilliant on defense. He really may be the most important player on the roster in this series, as no one else can guard Brunson as well as he can. Brunson was nearly perfect when matched with any other defender, hitting every shot and getting to the free throw line often. When matched with Nesmith, though, he was a mess. The dirty secret of this series is that the Knicks have played their best ball of the series when Brunson sits. I think it’s because the ball moves so much more and better when he’s not dominating it. Also he has been truly horrific on defense and whoever replaces him can at least pretend to guard someone.

Bennedict Mathurin finally had a positive game after looking overmatched and unplayable through the first three games. He scored 20 points in the fewest minutes played of any player in playoff game in NBA history. He still had some shaky moments and I worry that he’s going to get ejected because he thinks he needs to respond to every cheap shot Brunson and Josh Hart level on Haliburton. The Pacers wouldn’t have won without him Tuesday.

Pascal Siakam was, again, brilliant, hunting mismatches and punishing them when he found them.

And Hali, of course, was spectacular. In 38 minutes he scored 32 points, had 12 rebounds, 15 assists, 4 steals and ZERO turnovers. It’s one thing to have a line like that in the regular season, which he often does. But to do it against an intense, physical team like the Knicks in late May? That was one of the greatest playoff games in Pacers history.

Now it’s back to New York for game five. Logic would suggest that the Knicks get their shit together, ride the emotion of the home crowd, and grab that one, sending the series back to Indy. However, they seemed a little broken late Tuesday. Karl-Anthony Towns was grabbing his knee after every play. But he’s such a weird dude I don’t know what to make of that. We might hear today he’s out for the series or he may play with zero limp Thursday and continue to torch the Pacers D. Seriously, if one of your best players can barely walk and it’s a 10 point game in the final minute, how do you not sit him down? That makes me think he’s picked up the embellishment gene from his Villanova grad teammates.

Brunson is actually taking heat from Knicks fans he’s been so bad on D. Something tells me he’s going to be even more physical Thursday, and will get away with it since the game is in New York.

I think these teams are very close, but as I said a week ago, the Pacers are the more coherent team. They can plug their holes easier. When they get locked in their style is more punishing than the Knicks. They have three chances to win one game to end the series. I don’t think they are going to need all three.


Jacque?!?!?

I’ve been deep in the message board rumor mongering about how KU is filling out their roster for next year since the Jayhawks’ season came to an inglorious end back in March. Last week was a tough week, losing two big recruits that KU seemed to, at one point or another, have the inside track on. Recruiting in the NIL era is a different beast.

Along with those roster rumors was the bombshell that Bill Self was talking to KU legend Jacque Vaughn about joining his staff as an assistant. Rumors that were confirmed last week when Vaughn was officially hired.

That news brought all kinds of mixed emotions and thoughts. On the one hand JV is young (but not super young) and could sprinkle some life into a coaching staff that is filled with guys in their 60s who have been together for ages. He has been a head coach in the NBA twice, and while the results weren’t great, he comes from the San Antonio coaching tree which is the best in the pro game. He coached some difficult players in New Jersey and they always seemed to like playing for him even if the wins didn’t come often enough. With the college game getting more like the NBA every day, his addition could help update Self’s offense for the modern era. And, hell, he’s one of the most beloved KU players of all time. Both an on-the-court All American and an Academic All American, the engine that ran one of the great KU squads of all time. If you polled KU fans of what team that didn’t win a national title they loved the most, that 1997 team would almost certainly top the list.[1]

There was some weirdness to the rumors, though. There was chatter that Self was being forced to bring in a young assistant with KU ties by big money donors. I have no idea if this was true or not, but the talk was out there. I don’t love the thought of Self being told he won’t get the money he wants for his roster unless he hires an assistant donors approve of.

What I worried about more was how, if you’ve been an NBA coach twice, you settle in as an assistant at the college level? Even if you’re joining the staff of one of the greatest coaches of his era at your alma mater, there are some strange optics there.

There was immediate speculation that Vaughn would join as a dreaded “coach-in-waiting,” which would fit the persistent rumors that Self has told people close to him he will only coach one or two more seasons. If that’s the case, it makes sense to give JV the chance to come in, learn the college game, especially recruiting, with a buffer of being an assistant for a year or two before he formally takes over.

These coach-in-waiting deals can get messy, though, if not handled right. Especially if Self isn’t 100% sure of his plan. The last thing you want to do is have the greatest coach in program history leave on bad terms because you forced his successor into the mix too early. What if their styles, either basketball or personality, don’t mesh? Or what if Self has indeed told AD Travis Goff he will retire next spring, but is reinvigorated by a young, exciting team and changes his mind?

I also worry about deciding who your next coach is without a formal, open interview process. Maybe Vaughn is the best person to be the next KU coach. I hate not seeing if there’s someone better “outside the family” available when Self does retire, though.

As far as we know, there is no formal language in Vaughn’s contract stating he will be the next KU coach. Assuming he and Self are on the same page, I think this is a good opportunity for him to test the college game and see if that is where he wants to spend the next part of his career. Maybe he does it for a year and realizes he hates recruiting, or the difference in talent and commitment between college kids and NBA pros is too great, or in the NIL era it is too easy to get out-bid on a recruit you’ve spent two years cultivating and Vaughn decides he’d rather go work in an NBA front office. Better, I suppose, for him to figure that out while sitting to Bill Self’s left than bringing him in after after Self retires and realizing then that his heart and skills aren’t fit for the college game.

That said, come on, if Self retires in the next couple years, JV will absolutely get the job next if he wants it. You don’t bring someone with his background in and then hire someone else.

I have no idea if JV will be a good college coach or not. I kind of hate the coach-in-waiting concept. But if you’re going to take that path, I think he’s as good a candidate as anyone. He’s smart. He knows ball. Has had success and failure in life, so arrives humbled. He loves KU. My hope is that everyone involved has open minds, are clearly communicating, and if it doesn’t work it fails because he’s a bad fit, he decides the job isn’t for him, etc and not because of a power struggle or whatever between him and Self. I’m pretty sure they both want what is best for KU and the long-term health of the program. I would bet that’s the reason it took nearly two weeks to get the deal done as they hammered out those secondary details that may not get written into a contract.


Jim Irsay

Slightly lost in the Pacers fever was the death of Colts owner Jim Irsay last Wednesday. While his death was sudden and unexpected, with him you could never say it was a surprise. Irsay battled a lot of demons and had a couple public brushes with death in recent years.[2] He has genuinely looked awful when appearing in public for nearly a decade. I’ve not seen a formal cause of death released, but, honestly, nothing would surprise me.

To his credit, he was open about his issues with substance abuse and mental illness. He is given much of the credit for the NFL’s public campaign to de-stigmatize mental health issues. He kept the team in Indianapolis even when the LA market was wide open and begging for a new franchise. He did a lot of good things with his money.

He was also kind of a kook, in both the best and worst ways. We don’t need to get into any more of that. All humans are complex.

I had to roll my eyes at the stories of his career that were bandied about last week. “From ballboy to team owner!” His fucking dad owned the team when he was a “ballboy.” It’s not like he rode his bike to old Municipal Stadium in Baltimore and lined up with other kids from the area to help out on gamedays.

His kids will take the franchise over now. There are plenty of examples of that going sideways in other cities. But the Colts haven’t exactly been a model franchise for the past decade. Erratic is probably the kindest way to describe Irsay’s stewardship. Perhaps the team will be steadier now, whether his kids have the football knowledge he possessed or not.


Fever

Hey, guess what? There’s already an exhausting, manufactured controversy that involves Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese, and race. It only took two games into the new WNBA season for all the disingenuous commentators to crawl out from under their rocks and start lobbing takes. My favorites are all these anti-woke talking heads who whined when Colin Kaepernick took a knee to protest Black people being killed. “KEEP POLITICS OUT OF SPORTS!!!11!!!” they shouted. That “outrage” at their sports being polluted by “angry” Black men has been cultivated into a new branch of the media that is focused on exactly what they complained about: injecting politics into every aspect of sports. You know the people and the forums, and they never miss an opportunity to blame a loss or failure on wokeness, DEI, and all the familiar right wing hits instead of a player just sucking or a team not being good enough. According to them, Clark is now the most discriminated against player in professional sports. I try to avoid these fools, but their nonsense inevitably infects the rest of sports talk and I eventually read their idiocy.

Clark is now injured and will miss at least a couple weeks. That’s bad for the Fever but maybe it will calm down the rhetoric. At least until she comes back and a Black player has the nerve to foul her, which will get the dog whistlers whistling again.


  1. 1986 and 2003 would also get a lot of votes.  ↩
  2. Or at least became public. News only trickled out well after they happened.  ↩
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