Sunday, March 05, 2023
The Kyle Lowry Defect
@flasportsbuzz
Spoelstra declines to answer when asked if there is expectation that Lowry will return to team this season
6:20 PM · Mar 4, 2023
Footy
Important match for the Tricky Trees right now. It’s 2-2 in the 87’ versus Everton on the City Ground. Forest should win this match, Everton is 18th, in the relegation zone, but it looks likelier they will get just a point.
A decade or so ago I discovered those enchanting things, the flash mobs: spontaneous (to onlookers) break-outs of music in public squares. Wonder is near the very top of sublime human emotions and the flash mobs were wondrous surprises when and where people least expected them. I saw a flash mob surprise birthday party. I thought of throwing one for my enchanted son. But surprise birthday parties are tired, transparent affairs that drain the surprise. A random day, not a birthday, I thought.
My daughter makes fashion videos and a recurring theme is to indulge for one day or one night your fantasies through dress. It’s Cinderella and it’s doable and can be pulled off. So Dion’s fashion vids reinforced the enchantment of—“For once in your life…”
As I got deeper into the autumn of my life people I knew were dying and there were the de rigueur funeral “celebrations of life” which were anything but celebratory and then the dearly departed was planted or cremated and forgotten by all but their closest relations. The vast, vast majority of us die uncelebrated in anonymity. For the desired effect on the honoree the flash mob celebration should not be on the deathbed but while (s)he is fully sentient and healthy.
I came to think that I wanted a flash mob. I fantasized about it. I fantasized about being my curmudgeonly self in my everyday wear, tee shirt and boxers on some random day and hearing music and voices down in my building’s parking lot; rising in curmudgeonly irritation at the racket and opening my door to see wth was going on. There they were, all of my few friends current and from decades long gone and forgotten serenading and celebrating me for no reason other than I was me. It would happen and then they would disappear. It would be a transcendent experience that I would remember for the rest of my life.
And I got it. I got it when I least suspected it, at a funeral that I attended January 10th through 14th. People, family members, I hadn’t seen in 30, 40, or 50 years, who I scarcely knew, others who I had never known, greeted me with unbounded love, love that I never expected, love that was exquisitely genuine and startling in its emotion. The poignant, longing “Ahh’s” of my Big Brother when I arrived, his tight, never-let-go hugs, our just-us-two outings, the “stay right next to me” during the services for his wife of sixty years--It was surreal, uncomfortable to the sensibilities of others a couple of times, but in overwhelming whole the greatest outpouring of needed, wanted, poignantly cloying, unconditional love that I have ever received in my life. And I received it from the man who has been the longest important person in my life, and from three of his children.
A funeral is an irreplicable event, I have written about that trip. So is a flash mob celebration I got the flash mob celebration of me simply for who I was. It will never be replicated, could not be replicated and I had it, “Once in my life.”
Good night pageviewers. I love you.
Trump Bomb Russia With Jets Painted With Chinese Flag Day!
the United States should label its F-22 planes with the Chinese flag and,
“bomb the shit out of Russia. And then we say, China did it, we didn’t do it, China did it, and then they start fighting with each other and we sit back and watch.”
Gala One Year Anniversary!
Run Trump Run!
Saturday, March 04, 2023
Excremento is the ultimate bracket-buster in the Association. They're 37-25 (!) but who knew? They might as well be playing in the West Coast Conference with St. Mary's and Gonzaga. Nobody knows and tonight is another instance of why they're bored and ignored. They trail Minnehaha (33-32) 99-85 late in the turd. Maybe they'll come back and win who cares.
Wow
Beer, who are a good team--best in the East--led the 7-foot-sixers by 14 at the end of 3 tonight. Phila quaffed them in the 4th 48-31 :o to win 133-130! Beer had won 16 straight! SpecTACular win by Phila. away. Atlanta, you're no Phila.
80-59, 4:46 3Q
There are teams in this Association that can come back from this deficit, larger ones than this, against better teams than Miami. But the Atlanta "Hawks" are not one of them. I've seen enough and so has she.
HT Carnival 66 ATL 49
Miami's last two games would take your soul. Tonight so far, they are showing they still have it. Biggie: How will the teams come out in the 3rd?
58-44, 2:48 2Q
The “Heat” showed resolve from the tip off and led by 3 after 1Q and have kept that killer instinct. Atlanta doesn’t know they can beat us. They have stubbed their toes repeatedly against us. A big concern for Carnival: we’re shooting 56.8%.
Oh the pain
FT Blowhards 78 "Panthers" 76. That concludes Pitt's regular season and it concludes with two straight losses. Need to win at least two games in the ACC tournament to get an invite to the Big Dance.
Footy
Arsie 3 Bourne-Cum-In-My-Mouth 2.
Emiratis 2 Saudi Sovereign Wealth 0.
Villains 1 Child Porn 0.
Brighton and Hove Albinos 4 Hammerheads 0
Swine Chelsea 1 Leeds 0.
Wolves 1 Hotsy Totsy 0.
Southie 1 Lester 0.
After last year’s exit in the Eastern Conference Finals, Pat Riley challenged Lowry to get in “world class shape.” [Asked about Riley’s comments] At the opening of training camp this year, Lowry said [only that “he has his opinion.”] And his play continued to plummet.
The 2019 NBA champion hasn’t had a great tenure with Miami. He admitted a personal issue that caused him to miss 13 games during the 2021-22 season “kind of derailed my whole season.” He suffered a hamstring injury in the first round of the playoffs and never delivered as the third star the Heat hoped he could be.
…
Fans have soured on Lowry. Going back to him being tagged as “questionable” earlier this week, some speculated that Lowry lied to the team about his willingness to play to see his family in his hometown of Philadelphia. Zaslow said it feels like Lowry “duped the franchise.”
The Commonest Man in Festo
@hottakeharry
Lowry lied to the Heat and said he would come off the bench, even though he was never coming back. They believed him, and decided they didn’t need another PG. Then, he told them he was close to playing for a plane ride to Philly to see family. They still owe him close to $30M.
7:11 PM · Mar 2, 2023
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48.4K Views
The Heat signed Lowry to a three-year, $85 million contract for him to buttress a team around Jimmy Butler and Bam Adebayo to win a championship. But it now seems like it wasn’t the right move to trade Goran Dragic for Lowry two seasons ago.
“Let’s Go Knicks”
Heat falls to 0-2 on important homestand with painful loss to Knicks.
As if suffering back-to-back losses to open the most important homestand of its season wasn’t bad enough, “Let’s Go Knicks” chants filled the Miami Heat’s home arena at one point during its latest defeat.
"Heat" Soul/Culture. “LET’S GO KNICKS!”
It was not a smattering, it dominated the sound in the whole arena. It sounded like the entire crowd, “Knicks” fans and “Heat” season ticket holders were chanting together, as if Miami fans had switched sides not just switched channels, like “Heat” fans had turned against this team and this franchise.
“This is a point in the year where we can either come together or we can go away and split.”-Tyler Herro after the Charlotte loss.
It seems to me with this stretch, down the stretch, that this team has come apart, this franchise has come apart. That is how it seems to me anyway.
Tough D, that is the soul of this franchise. The Culture insists upon it. In these last seven games,
Denver shot 57.9% in Miami in a "Heat" loss on Feb. 13.
Brooklyn shot 53.2% in Brooklyn in a "Heat" loss Feb. 15.
Milwaukee shot 48% in Milwaukee in a "Heat" blowout loss Feb. 24.
Charlotte shot 43.2% in Charlotte in a "Heat" loss Feb. 25.
Philadelphia shot 43.8% in Phila. in a "Heat" win on Feb. 27.
Philadelphia shot 49.4% in Miami in a "Heat" blowout loss March 1.
New York shot 58% in Miami in a "Heat" loss on March 3.
"Heat" offensive ineptitude cost us the game against Chazz. The "Heat" defense, the soul of the franchise, was responsible for the stellar win in Philadelphia. In the five other games the soul was taken: 57.9%, 53.2%, 48%, 49.4%, 58%. It is a crisis of the franchise’s soul.
