Back again

two-face chad, originally uploaded by Mr. Wright.

Returned from SF this morning and even managed to get a few photos from the trip online already. Many more to come in the days to follow, the great majority from Leslie & Bryan's wedding. Talk about a wedding -- man, one of the best I've been to, and I've been to a lot. Congrats, y'all!

The San Francisco Retreat

danny in a void, originally uploaded by Mr. Wright.

Hot damn, there's like three puns in that one use of retreat.

Obviously, it's been a long week, with the end of the legislative session and all, so I'm really looking forward to my trip tomorrow back to the Bay.

Leslie and Bryan's wedding is the main event, but I'll also be meeting Danny out there so we can keep the 15-year dynamic duo going. I'm especially eager to see Leslie, Clare, and Amy all together in one place for the first time since ... college? Eesh, might be for me. And, of course, I can't wait to hang out with Seemay, Reid, Chad, and the gang. Why did 80 percent of the close friends I made in college move to the Bay Area? I guess once you visit the answer is self-evident.

Anyways, need to cut this short, because I still have an insane amount to do between now and take-off in like 18 hours. I can't believe I'll have to be back in Austin and working again within less than 72 hours of my departure. Isn't a journalist's life grand?

The puns, by the way:
1. Re-treat — as in, to treat myself again.
2. Retreat — as in, I give up trying to understand the Lege and must flee the scene.
3. Retreat — as in, a sojourn to a place of tranquility, peacefulness, and a distinct absence of gavels.

Craddick escapes

craddick escapes, originally uploaded by Mr. Wright.

I've been doing a little shooting for the Texas Observer as part of my blogging duties. Last night I finally got a picture that I think stands out from the usual head-and-shoulders stuff common in covering politics.

Aesthetically, this picture may not be out of the ordinary, but, situationally, it came through in the clutch and captures succinctly the end of the drama in the Texas House last night.. It would take hours to explain what happened, but some specifics are in the blog post where the photo appears.

The topper is that I know I'm the only one who got this shot, since I was the lone photographer camped in this corner anticipating this moment. Luckily, one of my coworkers, Patrick Michels, who's a much better shooter than I am, was covering the general action on the floor, which freed me up to lie in wait.

New lens

danka 1, originally uploaded by Mr. Wright.

To commemorate passing the 60,000 frame mark on my 20d, I present to you shot #60,001. No joke, I've clicked the shutter on my camera 60,000 times in less than three years. Hard to believe.

I also bought myself a new lens (not as a tribute, just by coincidence). It's a 35mm, f/2. Much sturdier than the other low-light lens I'd been using, much better glass, too. Too bad the auto-focus gears whir louder than any lens I've ever had.

Anyways, the point of getting this lens is to mimic Henri Cartier-Bresson. Yes, I'm fully aware that I introduced a post claiming to imitate effing Cartier-Bresson with a picture of my girlfriend's cat. The point is, HCB used a 50mm, f/1.0 super-luminous Leica lens for nearly all of his portraits, and quite possibly, for most of his amazing body of work. It seems to be an ideal lens for creating a noticeable depth of field (hard to do with wide-angle lenses) while still be versatile enough to capture a larger scene with many complementary compositional elements. It's a great lens for just shooting, in the amatuer sense, free from the professional constraints of "getting the shot." There's a certain immediacy to a 50 that's hard to come by anywhere else.

I learned to shoot in high school on an old 50mm, f/1.4, where I found all this out for myself. So one of my first purchases for the 20d was a super-cheap 50mm. But thanks to the "digital zoom" effect, my 50mm performs like a 70-75mm. That's too much zoom.

I made do for a while, but finally had to get the 35. It behaves like a 50, and at f/2, it's not too bad in low light or portraits, like this one that Danka so graciously sat for right after I pulled the lens out of the box. Next stop: international acclaim.

Fire Mike Brown

I don't really have words to describe how awful the second half of that Pistons-Cavs game was tonight. But this much I know: Mike Brown has got to go.

His team:

— Scored 26 points in the second half.

— Got Lebron exactly one shot in the 3rd quarter.

— At one point turned the ball over five straight possessions in the 4th quarter. That's not bad execution. That's something wrong at a fundamental level with the offense.

— Apparently called the play "Lebron tries to dribble through five defenders" the entire last quarter.

— Waited until his entire 12-point lead was shredded before going back to a small line-up.

— Told his team in the huddle that they were never to leak out (because "this is the Eastern Conference Finals"?) when his team scored exactly two baskets running half-court sets in the 3rd quarter.

— Burned through his time-outs too quickly again, leaving him without a shot to tie the game for the second game in a row.

— On the final play, just left Lebron standing out there all by himself again to run the same him-again-the-world play that had produced at most one basket the entire night.

Look, I hate nit-picking every move a coach makes after the fact all the time. But these are not isolated incidents. These are signature Mike Brown moves. He has to go, or this team isn't going anywhere ... except to the lottery when Lebron leaves in 2010.

POSTSCRIPT: Of course if the refs had called the game correctly, the Cavs might have still overcome all this. So to all you stupid-ass pundits who railed on Lebron for the last 3 days for not "getting to the line" down the stretch, tonight was a perfect example of why you don't leave the game in the hands of the refs.

UPDATE: In the Daily Dime, Chris Sheridan writes maybe the first thing I've ever read of his totally agree with. Another section of the Dime contains this Lebron quote: "We haven't been a good third quarter team all year." Hmm, you mean, it's as if your coach wasn't making good half-time adjustments? Who woulda thought?

You can't plan to get lucky

There are probably many more important things in my life I could be writing about, but something the Sports Guy wrote has been sticking in my craw all day. From his pity party column on ESPN bemoaning the Celtics' lack of lottery luck this year:

Ever since the summer of '86, for nearly 21 years and counting, the Celtics have been wildly, comically, irrationally unlucky. ... Maybe we didn't fully realize the ramifications of losing a potential franchise player (Tim Duncan) in '97, but we certainly realize them now. We're back to Square 1. We're sentenced to another decade of quick-fix plans, risky trades and dumb free agent signings.

That final sentence contradicts everything before it. Luck has nothing to do with systemic poor planning. And if you really understood the ramifications of losing Tim Duncan, you wouldn't be repeating the mistakes of the past.

Now, while I enjoy Simmons because he writes about the things fans actually care about*, this time, in his despair, he's taken the lazy journalist's deterministic approach to the draft lottery. I've seen so many damn articles recently look back on the Spurs' titles as foregone conclusions. Duncan = titles. Simple as that. Not only is this incorrect, it's downright foolish as a model for how to construct a better NBA team. It's a common mistake, I guess, to conclude that what eventually did happen was, from the start, pre-destined to happen. We all know this is not true in the dispassionate analysis, but sports is obviously a passionate subject.

Now, of course luck plays a role. The Celtics have had two truly, tragically unlucky things happen to them: the deaths of Len Bias and Reggie Lewis. But Lewis died 14 years ago. And, analyzing it in the coldest terms, losing the productivity of one excellent player 14 years ago is no excuse for a franchise in shambles today.

Consider the Spurs. Consider Duncan the ideal building block for a title team. Now consider all of the things that seem lucky, but were not. It wasn't luck that the Spurs began scouting Europe sooner and better than anyone else, which led to picking Tony Parker at the end of the first round and Manu Ginobili in the second. It isn't luck that they actually manage salary cap space. It isn't luck that they have a system and philosophy for both winning games and putting together a team. It was luck that they got David Robinson. It was luck that they got Tim Duncan. It was also lucky that David Robinson was the kind of guy to convince Duncan to stay in San Antonio even as Orlando nearly lured him away years ago (whereas he might've jumped ship from a poorly run Boston team).

But as GM R.C. Buford recently told USA today, the key is to rely on luck as little as possible:

We know what we are looking for (hard-working, high-character, team-oriented, mentally tough, coachable and unselfish players), and the important component of it is knowing what works and what doesn't work — and that qualifies your risk.

It's that last phrase that gets right to it. There is luck involved in every decision, but when you have a plan and a system to implement that plan, you quickly reduce your risk of failure.

In this case, Boston planned to rely on luck, so they came into the offseason with a 60 percent chance of failure (as far as the fans are concerned), borne entirely by ping pong balls. It's not smart to against the house. Simmons, as a gambler, knows this.

Now, about those Spurs titles: There's a reason our role players -- a vastly undervalued component of championship NBA teams, just ask the Cavs -- always fit together with the stars like gears in a machine. It's because the Spurs know what they need from each of their parts, and then they go get the players who can fill those roles. And they get them cheap. That, in turn, makes those players easier to move if management miscalculates -- like with Nick Van Exel or Rasho Nesterovic. The system also makes it easier to overcome small strokes of bad luck. Can't get Luis Scola of his Euro-league contract? The Spurs just nab Fabricio Oberto and Francisco Elson for relative pennies.

In the end, this is why the team adapts so well even as the league becomes smaller and faster. It's also why they beat so many different types of teams. They have a system -- on offense and defense and substitution patterns and Popovich's guaranteed time-out at the 6-minute mark of the first quarter, etc. -- that works, and they stick to it. Just like Detroit does. And just like Utah is trying to do.

But, really, the most grating thing about these poor-me discussions is that they ignore every counterexample. For every Tim Duncan, there is a Kevin Garnett -- an ideal building block piled high with shit. For every Tim Duncan, there is also a Steve Nash -- unheralded out of college but hugely effective. There's just no saying how a player would have panned out in a different situation.

The Celtics and their fans, though, have convinced themselves they needed a savior, and only Oden or Durant would do. Just as they convinced themselves that Duncan would have brought several rings to Boston. But there's really no way to say. What we do know is that Boston is a franchise that squandered one entire draft despite having three first-round picks; that passed on Brandon Roy simply to dump a contract; that gave huge money to Antoine Walker and Vin Baker, among others; that did nothing to coherently build around Paul Pierce (not a bad building block, there); and that just extended the contract of a coach who is about as consistent as an Andris Biedrins free throw -- or, in other words, the opposite of Greg Popovich.

Yep, in spite of all that, it's just no good, rotten luck that their team sucks. Forget all the marquee players on the market this summer, all the chances to build anew -- this franchise is toast. Us Spurs fans just don't know how lucky we've got it.

*For instance, he was the only prominent writer who called out the officiating in last year's Miami-Dallas series for the abomination it was. While everyone eles wrote about the Mavs' "collapose" or the majest of D-Wade (at the line), Simmons was the only one not trumpeting the league line, not writing like he was protecting his access to the league.

Ha ha, suck it, Boston

Quick impressions on the NBA before I hit the sack to rest up for another exciting day of sitting around the Lege waiting for stuff to happen:

— For the third game in a row the Spurs were both dominant and ridiculously entertaining, just from a pure basketball standpoint. Their execution has been near flawless, and they're shooting the lights out. That owes a lot to all the lay-ups the Jazz keep giving up, which in turn leads to a ton of wide-open threes. Jazz will be a different animal at home, though.

— Watching the lottery tonight, I realized I somehow came to a conclusion on the Oden/Durant debate despite not really thinking about it for weeks. Oden has to go #1. Maybe it's because I've been watching Tim Duncan so much these last few weeks, or because I saw a ridiculous video of Oden easily doing point-guard ball-handling drills with two basketballs, but I've come around to the irreplaceable value of an anchor in the middle of the floor. If Oden learns to control the court on the offensive end like Duncan does, and he combines that with near-David-Robinson-like athletic ability? Whew, boy, watch out.

— I'm happy for the Blazers. I love Brandon Roy. They've got Lamarcus, who always seemed like a good-natured guy here at UT. And they seem to be putting together the team the right way. Nice reward for what is apparently a great fan base. Too bad their in the West, though.

— I'm not so pleased about Durant to the Sonics, mainly because I think Ray Allen plays like a whiny little twit. Although, given the other sad sacks in the lottery, this is probably the least bad scenario. Long's super-pumped about the Durant-to-Collison possibilities, so there's that, too.

— It gives me great satisfaction to see none of the tanking teams, Milwaukee, Memphis, or Boston, in the top three. I'm especially tired of the woe-is-me routine from Boston fans. Seriously, it's getting old, doubly so since this is same horse shit you pulled with the Red Sox forever. It helps none how disgracefully your team has handled the situation. Losing the Duncan lottery didn't doom your team to failure; the loads of incompetent moves after that did. The Celtics were not putting the complementary talent around Timmy that the Spurs have. It's very likely that Duncan would've jumped ship years ago, probably to the Magic, considering how close he came to leaving the Spurs in the mid-'90s (when Doc Rivers coached Orlando, no less, I think). Furthermore, all this crying about injuries is worthless blubbering: compare it to the Bobcats, who this season made a serious playoff run down the stretch despite having just as many injury problems and being just as young. They also actually seem to be attempting to put together a real team instead of an amalgam of mismatched, albeit promising, parts awaiting a savior (i.e., the next Basketball Jesus). Shut up, trade Pierce, draft the Chinese guy, and put together a real team.

— Contrary to what all these idiot experts say, Lebron James made the right play in passing to a wide open Donyell Marshall for the win the other night. Lebron James is not now, and will never be, the next Michael Jordan, so people really need to stop trying force him to play like Michael Jordan circa the best years of Michael's career.

— Damn, this is a lot longer than I intended.

'Tis the season

the glamour of getting married, originally uploaded by Mr. Wright.

Weddings, weddings, weddings. Trying to finish this wedding from months ago, which I'm basically doing for free, so I can have a clean slate for Leslie and Bryan's in — wow — one week!

Some of you — like two people who read this blog, maybe — will remember Hugh from high school. The photos from the the first part of his wedding are now on Flickr. Photographically, these were bad, bad times. The light in the chapel was atrocious, easily the worst I've ever shot in. So very yellow, yet so dark. The crappy old hand-me-down flash I had at the time just didn't have the reach, so I tried to fudge by shooting at ISO 1600. Didn't really work. At least I got the kiss.

Anyways, thankfully the reception was in a room with a much lower ceiling, so I could flash away. While the service was one of the worst I've ever shot, the reception might've been the best. And that's where all the fun is, right?

Great.

Not the damn asterisk again. Thanks, David Stern. The Spurs played one hell of a game last night, and I couldn't even enjoy it. Wonderful job pissing off the entire basketball-watching public.

And while we're here, can you please hurry up and rig the draft to do something about the black cloud of boredom known as the Eastern Conference? It's starting to get embarrassing.

More music from the '60s

After having "Working in a Coalmine" stuck in my head the other day, I was at the Chili Parlor for lunch this afternoon and heard a contemporary song that has to rank among the creepiest of all time.

Behold, "Young Girl"



How does a song with the lyrics "So hurry home to your Mama, I'm sure she wonders where you are, Get out of here, Before I have the time, To change my mind, 'Cause I'm afraid we'll go too far" become a classic?

Thanks, NBA!

I'm watching the exciting conclusion of the Golden State-Utah series in a riveting hail of free throws by the Jazz. This is really great. Fond memories of last year's Finals. I love free throws. Almost as exciting as a pitching change!

Woo boy, I just can't wait for tomorrow's Spurs-Suns game without two of Phoenix's best players. Really giving the fans what they want there. And — bonus! — it gives everyone not from S.A. an easy excuse to dismiss the Spurs. Sweet. Thanks, Stu Jackson! You guys and your incompetent refs have been doing a great job all playoffs of letting things get out of hand through horribly inconsistent officiating. It's been really satisfying. Die-hard fans like myself love watching the games turn into a joke.

Geez.

UPDATE: Sarcasm aside, why in God's name was Don Nelson playing Stephen Jackson in the fourth quarter? At that point, he was 7 for 30 for the series on three-pointers, yet he refused to stop shooting them. His decision-making and concentration were obviously shot after that retarded flagrant-technical combo at the end of the 3rd. What positive contribution was he making that warranted playing him over Monta Ellis??? ARRRG!

Entry #444 in an ongoing series

splat, originally uploaded by Mr. Wright.

Campaigning against any restrictions on non-flash photography in museums. There were some cool sculptures in another part of the Blanton, but whoops, private collection — no pics allowed.

Working in a high-rise, going downtown...

spring at 1005, originally uploaded by Mr. Wright.

...whoop, I wanna get down.

Anyone know the name of that old song, about working in a goldmine or something? Anyways, got a couple post ideas in the works, but writing for the Observer got in the way. Hopefully tomorrow.

Another great, but frustrating, game in Utah tonight, huh?

UPDATE: Coal mine! Duh. Thanks, Tom.

The actual lyrics, which I'd never looked up: Workin' in a coal mine / Goin' down down down / Workin' in a coal mine / Whop! about to slip down

Suggestions like Clare's are also welcome: "Working on a sex farm / Trying to raise some hard love"

Drive-by lightning

drive by lightning 1, originally uploaded by Mr. Wright.

Got a whole slew of random photos that I edited this weekend. This is what lightning looks like when shot out of a moving car window — note the apparent double strike, evidence of the so-slight parallax shift. The week itself has been madness, with a couple of the best NBA playoffs games I've ever seen coupled with a total meltdown in the Texas House. Wild times in Mattyland.

Slovenian phenom

I wonder what it's like to be Beno Udrih. On the one hand, you're a millionaire. On the other, you're relegated to the very end of the Spurs bench. Back on the first hand, you have your own uniquely awesome fansite that even features a headshot that kiiiinda makes you look like you aspire to be Keith Urban. (Seriously, click the link.) Back on the bad hand, your celebrity is limited enough that there are only two photos of you on Flickr, one of them mine, and the other by distinguished photog Tigole Bitties.

In the end, though, if he had invested just $2 million of his multi-million dollar rookie contract, I think he could live off the interest (at about $60K/yr) without working for the rest of his life. Decided: it must be good to be Beno Udrih.

Little big men

Recently read a post on TrueHoop that looked at all the centers who've been knocked out of the playoffs already — Shaq, Yao, Dwight Howard, et al. — and asks why draft experts continue to say Oden over Durant. I think I've already said my piece about Durant — I'd take the versatile kid with all the drive over the defensive specialist who wishes he could be an accountant — so leave that aside. TrueHoop does note all the exceptions to the "speed kills" theory: Duncan, 'Sheed, Carlos Boozer (although obviously either Yao or Boozer had to move on, so it's not a perfect sample, of course.)

Anyways, my first thought was, "What about the point guards?" Maybe it's not that the centers are hurting their teams as much as great point guards lessening their importance.

Consider round one, match up by match up:

Dallas-GS
Baron Davis. Nuff said. (OK, maybe not. It's worth mentioning that Jason Terry played terribly except for game 2. His series assist-to-TO ratio was close to 1:1. Ouch.)
Phoenix-LA
Steve Nash embarrassed the Lakers PG circus.
SA-Denver
Tony Parker wasn't dominating, but he runs the offense very well, takes smart jumpers in the flow of sets, and knows when he needs make something happen at the rim (tear drop!). By contrast, Iverson, who was effectively Denver's distributor, killed his team with poor shot selection.
Utah-Houston
Deron Williams played great in game seven. Rafer's biggest shot was a banked in 3.

Detroit-Orlando
Jameer Nelson could learn a lot from Chuancey. In fact, I wish he would, since he's on my keeper-league fantasy team.
Cleveland-Washington
Probably the one exception of the first round, and Washington was a special case.
Toronto-NJ
I loved the way Calderon/Ford played this series, but Kidd doesn't leave that crucial lob pass to Bosh just short.
Chicago-Miami
I think I read on TrueHoop that a PG is already Miami's announced top priority. Kirk Hinrich is underappreciated, too.

Sure enough, a great PG is a better indicator of first round success than a dominant post-up center is of failure. No exceptions needed for the Duncans and 'Sheeds of the league.

In terms of the draft, maybe players like Mike Conley and Acie Law should be valued a little higher then? Not sure what their ceilings are, but at least if teams valued PGs more instead of size and scoring, someone like the Hawks wouldn't have passed on Chris Paul, Deron Williams, and Brandon Roy (for effin' Shelden Williams, no less).

This is how we do it in Texas

Got to go to the Spurs game last week when they closed out the Nuggets. The game was like the series and the season really: methodical at the start, a lull in the middle, a burst down the stretch. In the end, they knocked of the Nuggets in five, just like they should have. Now we're in the second round, just like we're supposed to be.

The only notable thing going forward is the play of Finley and Horry, who apparently did take the regular season off, and for good reason.The game was funny because the crowd was much more subdued than I expected, like they were waiting on the inevitable close out. Right on cue, the only time it really loud was when it became obvious the game was in hand.

So that was the Spurs season, in a nutshell, which is why I haven't written about it much. Even from the diehard's standpoint, it went same old, same old. I can understand why everyone not from San Antonio will be rooting for the Suns in this series.

Anyways, after missing on nearly half my first round predictions — Toronto let me down, man — let's try the second, even though this is party cheating because it's already started:

East
— Chicago over Detroit in 7. (Probably picking with my hopes here, again, like I did with the Raps.)
— Cleveland over New Jersey in 6.

West
— Golden State over Utah in 6.
— San Antonio over Phoenix in 7.

That's not how we do it in Texas

Well, I guess that's what I get for going out of my way to defend a Mav. Dirk: 2-13 for 8 points. Get ready for a huge round of over-the-top (and probably uncalled for) evisceration of the big German.

But, in defense of what I said earlier: Only two Mavericks shot above 50 percent last game, Dasagna Diop and Maurice Ager. Only Dirk had double digit rebounds (three Warriors got as high). And Dallas' starting point guard had more TO's than assists.

Some other fun facts for the series...

Jason Terry: shot .281 from behind the arc for the series, down from .438 during the season. Went from an assist-to-TO ratio of near 3:1 to close to 1:1.

Even after a scorching first half, Jerry Stackhouse finished the series shooting 35 percent.

Devean George finished 5-25, despite most of his shots being wide open looks.

And I'm still not sure how to explain the Mavericks giving up 100+ points in five out of six games, except to point to the hot shooting of the Warriors. I wish more people would tip their hat to Golden State instead of just lambasting the Mavs. Give it a couple weeks. This won't look so embarrassing after Golden State romps all over Houston/Utah.

(And, yes, that picture is a shout-out to Mark Cuban, who for all his passion, got too smart for his own good with the Steve Nash fiasco. Imagine if Phoenix somehow beats San Antonio and it's a Suns-Warriors conference final? He'll be the unhappiest billionaire on the planet.)

Lazy journalism follow-up

Over at TrueHoop they're having a much less verbose discussion of what I talked about last post.

This all reminds me of the debate on process vs. results. Does anyone remember seeing some expert talk about that? The gist, as I remember it, is that people — journalists, politicians, businessfolk, etc. — overvalue the result of a single action when evaluating, say, the final shot in a basketball game. They ignore the process before the shot and fail to factor in probability and uncertainty. That is, if Dirk (or Vince Carter in the TrueHoop post) passes to an open teammate and they miss, it's a bad play and a sign that the player is weak, unwilling to step up and play like a star, blah, blah, blah. But if the player makes it, the superstar made an amazing play in trusting his teammates, a la Michael Jordan's numerous assists in huge games (Steve Kerr!).

I wish I could remember where I read that. It sounds like something Malcolm Gladwell would talk about. Anyone?

Lazy journalism

This may be a bit of a stretch, but stick with me. My cousin, who's a bit older, a bit wiser, has been emailing with me lately about jobs and so forth. This advice, in particular, keeps bouncing around my head:

Do what you got to do, but my advice is shoot for a place that allows you to build your ideas not talk about them. That’s why I didn’t like journalism (tearing down ideas) or politics (manipulating others’ ideas).

So that was on my mind when I was trying to figure out why the media were just relentlessly haranguing Dirk Nowitzki, blaming him for all of the Mavs' ills in this series with Golden State when it had been, until last night's close win, a total team failure. As I mentioned a couple posts ago, the world is gushing and gushing about Baron Davis as he passes to one-time no names like Matt Barnes, who's been knocking down threes all series. Then they turn around and just kill Dirk for passing out of double- and triple-teams to proven veterans like Jerry Stackhouse, who's shooting around 30 percent for the series. This is Dirk's fault?

But if you think, like most everyone does, that Dirk is the MVP, then it all makes sense. The idea of Dirk-as-MVP is an easy idea to latch on to and tear down (or it was easy until his heroics last night).

Just check out these quotes, not just from hacks on Around the Horn (except you, Michael Smith), but from some of the better reporters in the sports biz.

From the AP:

For the first 236 minutes of the playoffs, Dirk Nowitzki was little more than a bit player for the Dallas Mavericks.

Then he made his presence felt in a big way -- the way the league's likely MVP is supposed to do.

From Mark Stein: "Yet it turns out that three minutes, for the likely MVP-to-be, is still a lot of time, even after roughly 237 minutes of misery, confusion and frustration in his Round 1 nightmare."

And, in typical overblown fashion, Bill Simmons (hiding behind a fake David Stern voice):

You (Dirk) didn't just fail to step up like an MVP should, you whined and complained the entire series, disgraced your teammates and embarrassed your fans. ... I don't know whether to hand you this trophy or smash it over your head. Lucky for you, this is being televised, so I can only hand you the trophy and congratulate you on the 2006-07 Most Valuable Player Award. I'm going to leave now so I can throw up.

Look, Dirk was not dominating like I expected him to either. But these are guys who get paid to observe and analyze this sport, so I thought maybe they would entertain the argument that Dirk was making the right basketball plays. If you've ever played the sport, it was easy to see that Dirk made the right passes just about all series. If his teammates had hit their shots (like they did all season), Dallas might have won this series already. Then we'd hear non-stop about how Nowitzki changed his game to help his team win. But his teammates didn't, and tearing down Dirk's MVP award is the easiest and most obvious story line to latch on to as a way of explaining the Mavs's loss.

(An aside: If that's the definition of MVP — best player at single-handedly creating and making his own ridiculously tough shot in the clutch — let's just give the award to Kobe every year and forget about it. I’d rather play with the guy who passes.)

Not to mention, the writers could talk how the Warriors are playing on a different plane right now. Not even Phoenix can boast an eight-man rotation with seven legitimate three-point threats. Coupled with the Warriors newfound ability to defend, they've been incredible to watch. My friend Tom described it best: "They're like a pack of wolves." Never mind all that, though, let’s criticize Dirk.

Last night he found himself single-covered down the stretch, and he scored like 12 of the Mavs' final 15 points. Nellie's not going to let that happen again in Oakland. And when he makes the right pass, it's going to come down to whether his teammates come through. Maybe that's not an MVP, I dunno. But it's worked pretty well for Tim Duncan and his three rings.

(All that said, I think the energy in in Oakland is too high for the Mavs right now. Golden State will move on and sweep Houston.)

Game, blouses

prince singalong, originally uploaded by Mr. Wright.

So here's a picture from the grand finale of the Prince singalong we went to for Amanda's birthday. Highly recommended, by the way. Not just the Prince one, but any of them. I've never heard of anyone not having tons of fun. Or some double negative like that.

Anyways, this one was especially raucous, with several songs bringing the entire crowd to their dancing feet. In the shuffle, I never noticed what Long pointed out on Flickr: "Wearing a Tayshaun Prince jersey to a Prince Singalong is too awesome for words." Sure enough, there it is on the left, just below the streamer. Shoot the J. Shoot it!