Forty-eight minutes simply wasn’t enough time to contain all the excitement last night at the Q as Baron Davis and the Cavaliers (minus Baron Davis) battled Deron Williams and the Nets (minus Deron Williams) in an overtime thriller. Well, “Thriller” might be an exaggeration. On the Michael Jackson scale, it’d probably rate closer to “Remember the Time”—you know, that less-than-memorable 1992 song with the weird Egyptian video where Jacko morphed into a cat, Eddie Murphy was a pharaoh or something, and Magic Johnson inexplicably showed up and hit a gong with a mallet? This game was like that, except there were no great basketball players involved—just Kim Kardashian’s boyfriend… and he may as well have morphed into a cat, because the Cavs certainly weren’t interested in blocking the dude out. Nets 98, Cavs 94.

Coming into the game, New Jersey (23-47) had dropped their last four games in ugly fashion, while the Cavaliers (13-57) had their own solid 3-game losing streak, topped perhaps by a streak of six straight setbacks on their home floor. Once it became clear that both lottery-balling squads would also be without their trade-deadline acquired point guards (Williams with a sprained wrist*, Davis with back spasms**), the game’s lone, meager point of interest was washed away, leaving us only with Byron Scott’s threatened “line-up shake-up” to prevent the rampant spread of instant-onset narcolepsy.

Read more...

If you're jaded with the Cleveland Cavaliers' season at this point, it's understandable.  With everything Cavaliers' fans have been through in the past 12 months, simply still identifying yourself as a Cavs fan says quite a bit.

But for those of you who are still around for the blow-by-blow (literally), the Cavs gave you a nice, unexpected surprise at the end of Monday night's game against the Orlando Magic:  Competitiveness.

And it was the upper tier level of comepetitiveness;  that being "creating opporunities and taking advantage of them," as opposed to merely "taking advantage of opportunities."

The Cavs have displayed this level of competitiveness this season, but it's been very rare, obviously.

However, at this point in the season, against a quality opponent like the Magic, competitiveness made it seem like a freakin' miracle was happening.

So what exactly constitutes as a "miracle" for Cavs fans these days?  Cutting a 26-point deficit to single-digits, even with no realistic hope of actually winning the game.  That's exactly what happened, and if you were watching the game . . . it was pretty awesome, wasn't it?

With just over two minutes remaining in the third quarter, the Cavs were down 77-51.

Read more...

As the world of respectable professional journalism slowly fades away like a diseased, dying rat, it’s fascinating to see what takes its place.

Trained, seasoned reporters are substituted for “citizen journalists,” another term for primates with opposable thumbs who can summarize the French Revolution in less than 140 characters. Thought-provoking programs focused on intelligent debate are replaced by “personalities” screaming at each other while spewing rage and rhetoric.

And investigative reporting, made famous by Woodward and Bernstein in their historic coverage of the Watergate scandal in the early 1970s, has been replaced by a much prettier and easier-to-understand aspect of our culture: “movies.”

ESPN, always a leader in the field (except when it comes to March Madness – oopsy, Bristol, didn’t see much of you last week), eagerly jumped on board this gravy train, turning itself into a bona fide Universal Studios of the 1930s over the past few years, even adopting the subsidiary “ESPN Films.” (For just a second, consider the news equivalent of “CNN Films” and you’ll begin to conceptualize the potential conflicts.)

Read more...

On Saturday night, the Cleveland Cavaliers lost to the Los Angeles Clippers, 100-82, in L.A.

It avenged the Clippers' loss to the Cavs in overtime on February 11th, which infamously snapped Cleveland's historially bad 26-game losing streak.  A lot has changed since then, and some has stayed the same.

Obviously, the biggest change - aside from Cleveland no longer being in an unprecedented slump - is the trade between the two teams that sent Mo Williams and Jamario Moon to L.A., in exchange for the Clippers' unprotected first round draft pick this coming June, and Baron Davis.

For the Cavs, the trade was made predominantly (if not exclusively) for the pick, which barring hell freezing over, will be a lottery pick.  (Right now, the Clippers have the 8th worst record in the NBA . . . and are 6-4 in their last 10.  Obviously, the more they fall, the better off the Cavs are, since they own that pick.  That's why everyone wanted the Cavs to win on Saturday night, even those of us who want the Cavs to lose enough games to stay at the bottom to maintain the biggest shot at the #1 pick.)

For the Clippers, the trade was made predominantly (if not exclusively) to get rid of Baron Davis and/or Baron Davis' contract.  But they did get Mo too, and he was the only one of the traded players that appeared in Saturday's game.

Read more...