Saturday, May 09, 2026
Barry Jackson: "Lessons learned" BY Miami from the Nine Teams Who Have Leapt the "Heat" in the Last FOUR YEARS
Q to the Nine Teams: "Why Haven't You Adopted the Miami Way?"
A: "Because we don't want to go 44-38 for twelve fucking years."
That's a point, Barry.
The answers for Barry Jackson are the same no matter who is learning from whom: No "lessons learned" (save a little shuffling)
It was April 10, 2022 — the final day of the NBA’s regular season — that the Heat stood atop the Eastern Conference standings. It hasn’t happened a single day in four seasons since.
[Since then] a bunch of teams jumped the Heat. Nine teams finished ahead of them in this season’s Eastern Conference standings.
Those nine do not include the injury-riddled Pacers...
...
The Heat, frankly, could have schooled many of these teams on roster-building for the first 25 years of the Pat Riley era.
But those teams who jumped Miami didn't want to attend Pat Riley U!
For the Heat, there’s no lesson to be learned from tanking. There’s no lesson to be learned from Cleveland acquiring Donovan Mitchell...
Jackson's (601 Biscayne's) answers become tautological as here. There's no lesson from tanking because we're not tanking.
So I’m not going to sit here and say that most of these teams that jumped the Heat have discovered the magic elixir.
But in our view, there are a few lessons that could be learned — or at least ideas worth considering — from what other teams did the past four years:
▪ Boston: There’s no lesson to be learned from landing generational talents high in the lottery...
Pause: Accepting Beans' offer of multiple draft picks to jump and draft non-generational-non-talent Justise Winslow is a lesson unlearned. Unpause
▪ Indiana and Toronto: We understand the Heat doesn’t like trading a good player for another good player unless it believes the move clearly improves the team.
But sometimes, simply shuffling the pieces can help, in our view.
Lesson 1: learn how to shuffle.
▪ New York: Let’s be real: The Knicks have risen to this spot mostly because they smartly projected that Jalen Brunson would be far better than he was...
MISSED it. Sensitive City (1-2) Tops Zollner 116-109 in Pawn Shop
James Harden hit three clutch shots in the final two minutes...
...
The 17-year veteran hit a 16-foot step-back jumper to extend the lead to 108-104. After a driving dunk by Cunningham, Harden made a floating 7-footer to put the lead back up to four.
Cunningham responded with a 3-pointer before Harden provided the decisive blow with 25 seconds remaining on a step-back 3-pointer while being guarded by Harris to make it 113-109.
Public Occurrences May 9, 2026
Putin Thinks Rus War on Ukraine Ending
“I think that the matter is coming to an end,” Putin told reporters of the Russia-Ukraine war... He also said he would be willing to negotiate new security arrangements for Europe and that his preferred negotiating partner would be Germany’s former Chancellor, Gerhard Schröder.
Viral Occurrences
Hantavirus
Three people are dead, seven others now ill in an outbreak of this rodent-carrying infection. Eight, including the three fatalities, were on board the Dutch luxury cruise ship MV Hondius. Two others, remote from the ship, were reported on Friday.
The mystery here is two-fold: 1) the vector 2) the infection of humans.
The Plague's was rodent-borne too, specifically fleas on rodents. The fleas "jumped ship", off the rats on ships and onto humans. The Plague was in the 14th century. Sanitation, rodent control, hygiene, and medicine have made some progress in seven centuries. Therefore it was surprising that rodents would be aboard a luxury liner like the Hondius. Indeed, this outbreak is "the first of its kind documented on a ship".
Too, Hantavirus has a harder jump to make to humans than the small, hopping fleas of the Plague. Hantavirus needs to make a Great Leap, either by a bite from a rodent or, gross alert, inhalation of aerosolized urine of the rodent. How do either of those happen to six people on a luxury cruise ship in the 21st century? You're thinking six different people did not kiss an infected rodent onboard the Hondius, that the outbreak started with rodent-to-human infection and then spread from human to human. I am too! But...
Human-to-human transmission is extremely rare. There was like one reported case before the Hondius. World Health Organization testing has determined that the hantavirus onboard the ship is the Andes variant, "the only hantavirus species known to be capable of limited transmission between humans, through close and prolonged contact, according to the WHO." Thus, "WHO officials have repeatedly said the risk to the public at large is not high and the virus is not transmitted easily."
Easier than WHO thinks! In the two cases reported Friday, one was a woman who became ill after sitting "near" (not "next to") one of the infected cruise passengers on a plane flight.
Viruses are a bitch, as we all know from our experience with COVID-19. Viruses mutate so frequently that human virus hunters are always a step behind. The behavior of this hantavirus, whether the Andes variant or a sub-variant of the Andes, or a completely different variant, is unique or extremely unusual.
One can only hope that this hantavirus does not spread to the U.S., or that if it does it infects only MAGAts because WHO "puts the fatality rates among infected people in the United States at up to 50%."
Ice shooting ice cold. 105-111, :30.8. Just about over.
Reid, McDaniels, Dosunmu and Edwards all missed threes in the last couple mins.
Friday, May 08, 2026
Alamo has led 84% of this game--in Ice--and there have been only 6 lead changes.
Poor Philadelphia
I mean the franchise and the fans, hell, the entire city.
Associated Press writeup:
"...With 2016 and 2018 Villanova national championship banners hanging in the rafters, the so-called Nova Knicks all took turns taking the fight out of the Sixers in the fourth quarter...The familiar faces in Philly -- Brunson, Hart and Bridges all played for Villanova -- seized control of the game.
The Sixers tried to pull off the win in front of A-list Knicks fans and thousands from the five boroughs and beyond who circumvented Philadelphia's ticket-buying tricks and filled the arena with "Let's go Knicks!" chants...Celebrity Row regulars at Madison Square Garden, Spike Lee, Timothée Chalamet, Tracy Morgan and Ben Stiller all made the trip to Philadelphia -- along with thousands of less famous Knicks fans -- and the split crowd erupted in cheers, boos and the occasional middle finger on just about every basket.
I lived in Philly for four years, coming immediately after one year in Boston. The contrast was shocking. I won't get into it all here, but "Puritan Boston and Quaker Philadelphia" is a 1980 book that tries to explain how these two most important cities in colonial America took such divergent life paths after independence. Philly people have an exquisitely sensitive inferior complex to Boston, New York, and D.C. It infects every individual Philadelphian and the city as a collective. It's a shame, really. I hated Philadelphia, but it's a real shame.
51-51 in the Land of 10,000 Lakes and no "Lakers"
Ant
Rudy Gobert
Jaden McDaniels
Julius Randle
Naz Reid and Ayo Dosunmu off the BENCH. Are you fucking kidding me! You move Minnehaha to the Least (as is predicted when Seattle and Vegas are added) right now and they'd be Least leaders. In the West, how they gonna beat 1) OKC 2) Wemby and the Hotspurs 3) Denver when Jokic is healthy 4) La-La Lake-Lake when Luka is healthy? You put Naz Reid and Dosunmu on the "Heat" and they'd be starters, part of the "core", and Pat Riley would make them untouchable in trades.
The NBA has listed heavily westward for 20 years. It is a shame that OKC and San Antone, the two most fearsome teams in the Association have to play an elimination series for the right to meet Zollner or Mamdani City in the Finals. It is rank injustice that Denver, the "Lakers", and Minnesota have NO SHOT realistically of reaching the Finals. smh.
Man, if you told me a cigar-shaped UFO was seen above treetops in September 2023...
Man, you lose a G3 at home by 2 TDs when you're down 2-0 and you start Paul George John Ringo...
...Joel, ⌁Maxey and VJ Edgecombe, you gotta examine your life.
