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…
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…
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…
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…
OMG In MSG
Normally on a day like this, after what happened at Madison Square Garden last night, I would have hopped out of bed early and banged out 25,000 words about the latest inexplicable Pacers, come-from-behind win. Funny thing happened last night, though. If funny is a proper synonym for infuriating. At 7:59 I set aside my small screen where I was…
Pacers-Knicks
The long wait is over: the NBA Eastern Conference finals begin tonight. The Pacers have been sitting around for more than week as the Knicks closed out the Celtics and then the stupid NBA calendar got situated. Somehow the Western Conference finals started before the Eastern, even though the Thunder just finished their series against Denver on Sunday. Dumb. Anyway,…
NBA Notes
Another wild few days in the NBA, on the court and off. Pacers They did it again! Going back to Cleveland for game five Tuesday felt like a sure loss, even with all the Cavs’ injury woes. Take the L on the road, the final punch of the year from the proud-yet-battered #1 seed, and then close out the series…
Never Count Them Out
Good Lord that was a basketball game! The Pacers laid a big, fat egg early, taking nearly seven minutes to score their first six points, blew multiple chances to put the game away in the second half, then somehow managed to come back from being down seven with 40 seconds left in overtime to win game five of their series…
Pacers-Bucks Notes
A few thoughts about game two of the Pacers-Bucks series last night. Once again the Pacers jumped out to a big, early lead. Not as much of an ass-kicking as in game one, but there was never any doubt who the better team was. And that was with Dame Lillard coming back. He actually played remarkably well in the first…
Hoops Chat
A lot of hoops thoughts to work through as the college season has come to a very entertaining end. Women’s Tourney Man, UConn roared through the tournament like they were all mad the program hadn’t won a title in nearly a decade. Their performance in the Final Four was as dominant as I can remember any team, men or women,…