Cleveland is playing with a character borne of desperation...

-A team that knows that it has the highest payroll in the NBA;

-A team that knows that its mental and physical toughness have been, rightly, questioned;

-A team that knows that a third straight second round playoff exit will, rightly, be doom for the core players; plausibly doom for head coach Kenny Atkinson; plausibly doom for Drunk Koby Altman, who together with Atkinson, made the boldly reckless decision to ignore results in November and December to be turbocharged for the playoffs.

-A team that knows that it was pushed to seven games in the first round; now at leadt six games in the second.

All of these are rational fears. Dead Dan Gilbert will not run this group of executive, head coach and core players back for a foutth year.

It is the ECF or bust, at least, for this group, and they have played like they know that too in the last three games vs Detroit.

CLEVELAND WINS!!!!!! IT WAS ALL BEARD FOR GOOD AND ILL IN LAST SECS. 111-117 THE FINAL

Cleveland wins for the first time on the road in the playoffs and takes a 3-2 series lead! The undersigned wrote after Cle's 3Q blitz in G4, "That is character." Here in G5 EVEN MORE SO! Fourth quarter El Foldo was in full swing and then a devastating 13-0 run end of regulation into OT won it. Bravo Cleveland!!!!!

111-114, :22.1 OT HUGE FT MISS BY BEARD!

CC 3!!!!!!!! 112-113 NO 2! 111-113, :25.9 OT Full Sensitive Training

109-113, :28.7 OT Zollner FTO (Z shooting two FTs when time in)

109-113, 1:23 OT

109-112, 1:48 OT

MITCHELL 3, TURNOVER, STRUS 2, 105-112!!!!

0-13! 103-107

103-105, 4:15 OT (Cavs 11-0 run)

OVERTIME IN MOTOWN!

THE CAVALRY CAME RUNNING (9-0)! 103-103, :45.2

100-94, 3:29 4Q, Zollner FTO

Zollner (19-7 4th) 97-89, 4:47 left 🙄😂

Zollner 87-89, 8:35 4Q

BIG 3Q for Sensitive City! 80-84, end

Now, my recollection is that Zollner has beaten them in the 4th, at least once down the stretch.

78-81, 1:17 3Q

CLEVELAND LEADS. 79-78, 1:55 3Q

They ARE a good 3Q team.

73-71 (13-19), 4:07 3Q

Z 64 SC 59 (4-7 3rd), 8:51 3Q

I have the impression the the Horsemen are a strong third-quarter team. I may be mistaken.

HT Motown 60 Sensitive City 52

Tin Men led by 15 before Horsemen closed  the half 22-13.

"This hypnotic consistency"

Is it possible to create the perfect basketball ecosystem? If you line everything up just right, personalities and talents and towels and basketballs, will the product on the court inevitably become as pure and consistent as its surroundings?

Thunder center Isaiah Hartenstein and I are having a conversation in the courtside chairs in the practice facility when he notices a basketball on the rack near us as ever-so-slightly off-kilter, its Wilson logo tilted at most 10 degrees. Hartenstein points at the offending ball and says, without a hint of sarcasm, "That'll be fixed before we finish talking." He is nearly right; as he walks across the court toward the locker after we are done, an equipment manager comes by. He tilts the rogue ball back into place by putting a hand on each side, as if cupping an injured bird.

IT SEEMS ALMOST too good to be true, this alternate reality where every piece fits and nobody wants the credit.

...content to sublimate their egos for the betterment of this [team.]

...this team's joyful selflessness...

"There's a standard everybody here conforms to," All-Star center Chet Holmgren...

Games at Paycom Center take place in an atmosphere of extremely loud reverence. The near-continuous "OKC!" chant -- often celebratory, occasionally exhortative, rarely pleading -- seems to rise from the depths, starting innocently and climbing until it feels hallucinatory, almost religious.

Gilgeous-Alexander, the presumptive repeat MVP and someone Daigneault describes as "surgically consistent," tells me he approaches each day with the intent to "be professional, and don't think you're better than somebody because you're better at some thing," [italics in original]

...when reserve guard Isaiah Joe is asked to describe the team's mindset, he says, "One band, one sound, and we all have a like mind like a beehive."

There's a level of maturity at work here that is both admirable and genuinely mystifying among a group of wildly successful young men in their early- to mid-20s.

It's enough to make you wonder what they're hiding.

...this organization is so clinical in its excellence...

###

OK OKC, you are officially my least-favorite franchise.

Tin Men 29 Horsemen 27, end 1Q

Tin Men 9 Horsemen 6, 6:40 1Q

Little creepy

 

Seven days inside the Thunder's basketball utopia

EACH BASKETBALL IS perfectly aligned on each rack in the Oklahoma City Thunder's practice facility, one continuous WilsonWilsonWilsonWilson shelf after shelf. The water bottles and sports drinks in the refrigerators are aligned with the same precision, label out, so straight you can imagine someone standing before them, one eye nearly closed, assessing each one as if judging its moral rectitude.

But the sweat towels hit the hardest. The towels are where metaphor begins to blur and a mission statement comes into focus. Each towel has eight blue stripes along one side, and each towel is folded identically and stacked on a shelf with those eight blue stripes lined up like battle-ready battalions. Their utility is so pragmatic and yet the display speaks to something far more important.

...The world outside is unpredictable, tenuous, fraught. The ground shifts without warning. Truth has become subjective, reality distorted...

Inside this cocoon...the chaos of the world has been engineered out of existence. For seven straight days in mid-April, through 85-degree days and days with sheets of rain and days with breathless tornado warnings, I made a note that the lush, weedless lawn that surrounds the parking lot remained the exact same length, as if a crew arrived late at night armed with rulers and scissors to trim each blade individually. Every player arrived on the court with his shirt tucked and left the same way. The overall vibe was high-end Stockholm showroom...

Tim Keown, ESPN

Or Stockholm syndrome. It's Orwellian. It reminds me of the paragon of Cultural Revolution China, Lei Feng, the "rustless bolt". All Chinese were to aspire to be "rustless bolts" in the gigantic machine of state. Very mechanical. The "Thunder" have seemed machine-like to me. Thunder Bolts. "Chaos" is the worst word in the CCP's lexicon. This is creepy.

Motown (2-2) -3.5 vs Sensitive City, 8 bells

Ira Winderman: Tyler Herro Likely Gone

"I think Tyler Herro thinks he has, [played his last game for "Heat"]. I think it’s just been too much. It’s been nonstop, it’s been incessant that you can say, ‘Hey, you only showed up in 33 games this season, you have no right in that.'

“When you hear every single year you’re going to be moved somewhere else, I think it wears on you. I don’t think Tyler Herro can be his best self in Miami. I think he’s been knocked down too many times.

“Remember, the Heat told Tyler that if they move him, it’ll be for a Hall of Famer? They’re trying to do the same right now. They’re trying to do it for Giannis; they might do it for Durant, I have a feeling it could be for Lauri Markkanen.

“I think Tyler needs a fresh start, and the Heat need a fresh start, and we can’t be bringing back the same thing and calling it something different.”

Ira on Hoch, Crowder, and Solano Radio show via fadeawayworld.

This is the Minnesota Timberwolves

SAN ANTONIO -- Despite getting blown out on the road for the second time in this second-round series, Minnesota Timberwolves star Anthony Edwards exuded a level of unwavering confidence with his season on the brink against the 62-win San Antonio Spurs.

"I don't see nobody in our locker room that's too worried," Edwards said. "There's another basketball game. Come out, put your boots on and get ready to go to war."

Andy Elisburg

We have a right not to be unloved in America. The double negative is inelegant but it is the most accurate formulation. We are not compelled to be around those who unlove or dislike us. We can retreat further and further away from such people. The right not to be compelled to be around those who do not like us is found within the right to privacy, itself not a recognized right by that name, but undoubtedly, a right not to be unloved would be found in a case of compelled association without legal exception with those who dislike us. 

That is mere predicate. For if there were a positive right to be loved, the subject of this post, the "Heat" vice president for basketball operations and general manager, could assign his right to be loved to one in more need. For Andy Elisburg is that rare individual who is liked and beloved by all those who are touched by him. I do not know Elisburg personally but I know this. When he passes, and if there is a God, She will grant him many more than his current 58 years, for Elisburg has improved everything in Her creation that he has touched.

You can look at scores of photos of Andy with other people, some with his ultimate boss, Mickey Arison. Arison rarely smiles. Yet everytime he is around Andy he can't help but curl his lips up. 

You see Andy telling "Heat" superfan Jimmy Buffett he has to leave after a referee ejected Buffett. Andy is gentle and wry with his hand on Jimmy's shoulder. 

You see him in his ultra-competitive business making a scout for the Washington Wizards laugh, you hear of the early morning phone call that he placed from his car to his counterpart in Cleveland the day after LeBron James left to take his talents to Tinseltown. "Did the sun rise today?" "Yes." "It will rise every day." You see him renewing old acquaintances with then 76'er, ex-Heater, Josh Richardson laughing and finishing off with a hug (a bear hug is the only kind Andy gives).

I am willing to bet you that there is not a single person in the NBA who dislikes Andy. I am willing to bet a WHOLE lot more that no one detests or hates him. It would be like hating Santa Claus or Mother Teresa. 

Everyone who Andy has touched in his 37 years with the "Heat", he was an original employee at age 21, is better, more joyful, laughs more, and has an incrementally better life for the golden touch of Andy Elisburg.

Why am I writing this out of the blue now? Well, because a year ago Andy was seriously, I mean seriously, ill. It is not exaggeration that his life was in some jeopardy. He had part of his foot removed and has been wheelchair bound since. So...you know. So that's why I am writing this now. Were it not so late I would post the photos that I have referred to so that you can see the undeniable, that there is no better person than Andy Elisburg, no person who brings more light to others lives.