Heart of a Dragon

For me, the Warriors vs. Rockets series this year was one of the most incredibly dramatic ever.  Every game was ferociously contested, and dramatic elements were abundant.  Steph Curry goes down with a dislocated finger.  James Harden has both eyes injured and bloody.  Both come back, and Harden continues to play brilliantly.  Curry, with injured finger and ankle, has several weak games.

For the first five games, each team holds its own court, with Warriors barely winning game five after their best player, maybe the best player in basketball, Kevin Durant, goes out for the series with a leg injury.

Back to Houston, with its Hall of Fame backcourt of Harden and Chris Paul, ferocious power forward P J Tucker, and deadeye shooter Eric Gordon.  Warrior's Klay Thompson is deadly for the first half.  Rocket James Harden, maybe the most unstoppable offensive player in basketball, matches him.  Curry has his first scoreless playoff half in history.

The final half was an epic see-saw battle, but Curry is back, and deadly, and his 33 points doomed the Rockets.

Really disappointed in Jeff van Gundy's commentary.  He said that the Warriors were lucky to win (True), and that the game had lots of errors (also True), and that the Rockets heroic resistance didn't matter.  The man has no music in his soul.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Anti-Libertarian: re-post

The most pointed critique of social security and liberalism in general is the libertarian critique. The problem with libertarians, for a liberal, is that we have too much in common. We both believe in individual rights, tolerance of individual differences, and dislike government prescription of religion. The basic difference, it seems to me, is the different answers we give to Cain's (with thanks to the Captain - my original version had the corpse asking the question!) famous question: "Am I my brother's keeper?" That's not really my basic bitch against the libertarians though. My real complaint is the same as my complaint against most religion - its premise is a fraud. For those who can't stand to wait for the punchline, I believe that trying to implement libertarian principles leads to tyranny or social disintegration. Demonstrating that takes some historical (and pre-historical) context. For all but the last 15,000 or so of the 100,000 years the human spec
Read more

Uneasy Lies The Head

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown ........... Shakespeare Henry IV, Part II. So it is with us and our slightly distant primate cousins , so it seems. A 9-year study of wild baboons in Kenya by Princeton University and the Institute of Primate Research may turn conventional assumptions of alphas males upside down. The study found that alpha males have high testosterone levels, which allows them to dominate other baboons, get access to more food, and attract better mates. This is expected. Surprisingly, though, the alpha males also have high levels of stress hormone glucocorticoid, which scientists measured from their feces samples. In fact, the stress of alpha baboons was on par with low-ranking baboons. The convention wisdom is that access to food and females provides life security and thus less stress for dominant males. Conversely, weak males who are constantly threatened by starvation and physical violence from stronger males are thought to be more stressed. The st
Read more

We Call it Soccer

The US played its best, and maybe only good game of World Cup, but lost thanks to brilliant goalkeeping by the Swedish keeper and the bizarre method soccer uses to settle ties when three US stars could not put the ball on frame from the 12 yard spot.  At the end it came down to a blocked shot that spun in by maybe a couple of centimeters. Well, that's football - too much like life.   Which brings me to a modest proposal.  Replace the thirty minute overtimes with as many 7-player 15 minute periods as needed to settle it.  Scoring should be much easier with fewer players.
Read more