Game 24 at New Orleans/Oklahoma City: Spurs 103, Hornets 77
I haven’t written here for a while. In my defense I’m tremendously lazy. Also, I think I almost had a heart attack a week ago. I had already been up 32 consecutive hours between 9 AM Thursday and 5 PM Friday, writing two term papers, having lunch with my newspaper editor and working before I discovered that I still wasn’t quite sleepy enough to go back to my shitty apartment, so I decided that I might as well start making the long drive home to the bay area and see how far I can go before I had to pull over and sleep. I was determined to be home in time to watch Spurs-Sixers the next day no matter what, and I figured this would cinch it for sure, as long as I didn’t kill myself on the road.
To help me on my journey I took four No-Doz and drank a Red Bull. Neither of these close relatives to crank is a part of my usual pharmacuetical repertoire by the way. In retrospect, eating some food might have been a good idea before I pumped this stuff into my bloodstream. Also, I came up with the bright idea of playing my I-Pod in the car and playing my mix of 50 songs whose lyrics I know by heart. If my mouth was moving and my brain was being active, thinking of what the next lyric was going to be, I figured it’d be a good way to stay awake.
Anyway, for the first five or six hours everything was going swimmingly, except for the two hours I spent on Highway 5 going nowhere because of the state government’s genius decision to start roadwork there at 7 pm. A four lane highway road was haphazardly converted to a one lane highway road and that wasn’t pleasant.
Where was I? Oh yeah, I was on the road for like six hours before I felt weird. Then my heart started beating rather loudly. My body started to shake. As I was singing 80’s pop songs, everything coming out of mouth was a loud, babbling, incoherent, trite cliché. A troubled thought occured to me – is that what it’s like to be Stuart Scott?
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As for the game itself, well they’re getting a bit monotonous.
In case you’re scoring at home – and I know you’re not – this was our fifth blowout in the last seven games. However, unlike the other four, this one was preordained to be lopsided before the game even started. With the Warriors, we didn’t even know that Manu would play until tip-off and Biedrins and Richardson kicked our asses in Oakland. At Charlotte, not had the Bobcats already smacked us in San Antone, but we were playing the second night of a back-to-back. Versus the Clips, who’d have thunk that was going to happen? I thought those guys would win the Pacific this year for crying out loud and they were healthy and fully rested. And we blew them out again in LA, again on a back-to-back.
Howevuh, in the case of the unfortunately-named New Orleans/Oklahoma City Hornets (aka The NOOCH) nothing short of a natural disaster or act of God (take your pick, America) was going to prevent the Spurs from beatin’ the holy hell out of them.
And this time, they can’t blame it on Brownie.
If the Nooch were at full strength I would’ve expected the game to be quite competitive actually and there’s an excellent chance we would’ve lost, mainly thanks to the edge they’d have had at small forward and point guard, but they were missing their second, third, fourth and fifth best players in David West, Peja Stojakovich, Tyson Chandler and Bobby Jackson, so the game was over before it began.
Also, I think the Nooch’s ghastly uniforms, which I can only describe as banana-slug yellow,
inspired Pop to give the troops the Cobra Kai speech.
I mean really, what kind of deep meaning do you want from this trainwreck? We outscored them in all four quarters, outshot them from the field, from outside and from the stripe, outrebounded them both offensively and overall, and had way more assisteseses. Nobody played poorly enough for me to rip. Well, maybe Finley did. But I rip him almost every night as it is. The bottom line is that it was our least interesting game of the season thus far. These things happen when you root for the best, so you just gotta deal. I don’t know about you, but the lack of drama didn’t bother me all that much. I had papers to write. It’s December dammit, leave me alone.
Sweep the leg Timmy.
Your 3 Stars!
3) Matt Bonner – A tip of the cap to the red rocket here. Not only did he garner five rebounds in 21 minutes, but he hit four of his six shots. Most surprising of all was that he only attempted one three. Is it me or could he be more useful than Horry in any game that’s not on national TV?
2) Tony Parker – Methinks that Le Trou Noir was on the recieving end of a lecture from Coach after the starting shooting guard got only 8 FGA in 34 minutes vs. Minny. Parker looked for Manu early and often this time around and had an excellent overall game with 19 and 8, shooting 60% from the field and harassing Paul into a 2 of 11 night on the other end.
1) Manu Ginobili – The Hustlemaker’s 11 1st quarter points took all the intrigue out of this one pretty quickly, and his behind the back number in the 3rd quarter was a thing of beauty. Does it concern me that 12 of Manu’s last 24 field goal attempts are from three? Absolutely. But it’s the only way he gets the ball when he plays off Tony. He only drives when he starts the play or when he’s working a give and go with Tim. Maybe Pop likes this Steve Kerr shit. I’m trying to get used to it. It’s like we have two Brent Barrys now. One that plays D and one that doesn’t. God, I’m such a dick.
Record: 18-6 Streak: W-3
Up Next: Vs. Philadelphia 76ers
The Answer won’t be playing in this one, so one would think it’ll be another lopsided runaway. Or…
Very unfortunate theme for an essay. Very bad taste. The destruction of the gulf south is real. It is no TV show and not to be taken lightly. Americans are suffering. I guess that doesn’t matter because it is not part of your world, but it is all of mine.
I didn’t take it lightly and you don’t know anything about me, what I do, what I write elsewhere, or how I feel about any of it. If I were taking it lightly I’d have never mentioned it. I think most people are trying to forget it ever happened or ignore it or pretend everything is all better now. Should I have done that instead?
If you just stopped to read the thing carefully you’d understand that I wasn’t bashing New Orleans and that I was satirizing both the government and Jerry Falwell, who said Katrina was God’s punishment against sinners. You really think he’s the only person who felt that way?
Thanks for the feedback, doctorj2u.
Bad taste? Maybe, but in Michael’s defense, it didn’t extend beyond the title of his post.
That being said, I was saddened and disgusted by our government’s failure to protect and assist the people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast when Katrina hit. I’ve always wondered why FEMA’s response to the major hurricanes that hit Florida in 2004 was so much more competent.
For anyone who hasn’t seen it, I highly recommend Spike Lee’s heartbreaking documentary, “When the Levees Broke.”