Thursday, January 26, 2017

Malaise Days

Doesn't this happen just about every time around this time of year? Wasn't David Blatt fired in January last year? Didn't £ go to Miami to take two weeks off his first year back in the Mistake?

The NBA season is sooo long, suchhh a grind. Isn't this going to happen? Is J.R. Smith done for the season? If he's not done for the season, if he comes back in time for the playoffs, won't that give £ the badly needed extra "body" he and the team need?  The Mistakers are now 2-6 in their last eight. Alright! That blows! Reality check: They are still top of their conference. Lie down and take a powder.

Chi: Look, this is both Chi and Cleve, Dwyane Wade and £ hate to lose worse than any players since Jordan, they hate to lose as badly as Jordan did. As badly as Pat Riley does. DIGRESSION: Riley burned out a team with Magic, Kareem. and Worthy on it. Burned 'em out with his intensity, his hatred of losing. Conducted a practice WITH MAGIC, KAREEM, AND WORTHY in a hotel ballroommmm!) END DIGRESSION. Wade's "I'm not going out like this" will when he brought Miami back from the dead his first championship season there. Hell! Just last year! Against Charlotte in the 'loffs. D-Wade still had such desire tears were streaming down his stoic face during the introductions! FUCKKK. The point is, you can't get twelve guys on the same roster with that intense hatred of losing. You might not get twelve guys on the damn planet with that hatred of losing.

Now, Chi: D-Wade says only he and Jimmy Butler hate losing in the way one should hate losing--not being able to sleep (?); not being able to eat (??). Okay, whatever, that's his standard. When did Jimmy Butler join that company? And the other guys on that roster don't care at that level, they want to eat and sleep. Okay, can they snack and cat nap, at least?  They made the salmon swim all the way to the NBA by being comme ci comme ca about losing?

Whatever, Wade is "pissed." Man, oh man. Irony of ironies. Remember Pat Riley's infamous press conference, the one he started at the end of the last season with the Big Three in Miami? Wade will remember! So will £!  "You want to trend something?" spake Riles. "I'm pissed (palms slapped on table)." Riley said what had come up over and over again in exit interviews with the players--including Wade and £!--was that they were mentally fatigued, burned out. "I understand," Riles spake, but he didn't understand and most assuredly did not sympathize. "Winning championships is hard!" "You can't run out the first door. You stay, if you have the guts."

That'll get 'em. That's the kind of challenge £ will respond to, the kind that will keep him in Miami. Look it up. That's what all the professional pencils wrote (not this amateur pencil).

The point is, since you can't get twelve guys and a head coach who want to play for the Guantanamo "Cigars," should you "motivate" them with a sleep-deprivation-and-half-rations standard of loss hatred? The answer to that question is no.

Chicago had a Pat Riley-lite in Tom Thibodeau. That didn't work. They replaced him with a Mister Rogers, Fred Hoiberg. That isn't working. Maybe Chicago's players aren't good enough? Maybe there aren't any Baby Jordan's on that team just waiting to have the hatred of losing instilled in them before they shoost up and be all that they can be. Plausible?