Ibaka Calls Out LeBron. His Mistake

“LeBron is not a good defender.”

That is quite the insight there, Serge Ibaka.  But we are talking about the same LeBron James, right?

The same one that matches up with the opposing teams best player night in and out.  The same who has a PER against of 10.6.  The same who has made 4 All-NBA Defensive First Teams.

I guess he is talking about the same one.  If that is the case, I would love for him to enlighten me on this belief.  Granted, he is the best weak-side shot blocker in the league due to his Stretch Armstrong arms so he does get some leeway when he talks about defense.

But to call LeBron a bad defender is just plain stupid.  His physicality, athleticism, and quick hands make him one of the best defenders in the league.  Don’t forget that his 6’ 9”, 260 pound frame allows him to guard four positions easily.

To me, this is just a sound clip that he hopes gets back to LeBron to get in his head.  But why would he go after the one area where LeBron has total control of his performance?

My dad always taught me that when you can’t score or play well on offense, you could always play good defense and rebound.  It won’t matter what is happening on the defensive end, because you control how much effort you put forth.

It would have made more sense for Ibaka to continue on the LeBron isn’t clutch motif, or that he whines about every call.  But instead he went with the one area where LeBron can, and will, give 100% every night.

Don’t be surprised if we see LeBron grab 12-15 rebounds and rack up a couple of steals and blocks after hearing about this.

And one thing that Ibaka seemed to forget: his team is down 2-1 with two more games to go in Miami.  Maybe the smartest thing to do wasn’t give LeBron great motivation when the Heat could have played complacent tonight due to that lead .  Don’t count on it now. 

Why I No Longer Hate The Heat

The Decision.  The championship-like celebration they threw announcing Bosh and Lebron’s arrival.  The endless and nauseating coverage from ESPN.  Lebron’s reminder that we will all, in fact, wake up to worse lives than him every day after the Heat lost in the finals.

Chris Bosh appeared in Entourage for God’s sake.

Man, the Heat sure gave us a lot of reasons to hate them.  And I can safely say I indulged in all of the opportunities I had to rip on Lebron, Wade, Bosh, and pretty much the entire Heat organization.

But here is the thing: I just don’t care about hating the Heat anymore.  I am by no means rooting for them; but I am over rooting against them.

Let’s examine some of the reasons why people hate the Heat and why these things just don’t bother me anymore.

The Decision

Over it.  Lebron certainly showed an incredible lack of judgment, yes, but what NBA player hasn’t?  At this point he has more than made up for that display of immaturity.  He is definitely more focused, clear-headed, and committed to playing basketball rather than being the center of the universe.

The Media’s Coverage

I am supposed to hate the Heat because ESPN doesn’t have even a modicum of decent journalism left in them?  It isn’t the Heat’s fault that Sportscenter dedicates seemingly 99% of its time to them.   Bad sports coverage is to blame, not the Heat.

They Whine and Complain About Every Call

Who the hell doesn’t in the NBA?  The only reason the public sees it more is because the Heat have more nationally televised games than other teams, which is what happens when you are one of the best teams in the league.  Every team has a player that bitches and moans the way the Heat do. Celtics: Pierce and Rondo. Thunder: Westbrook.  Spurs: Duncan and Parker.  Lakers: Kobe.  Stars get to have their way with the refs, get over it.

They Haven’t Won a Title

People love to hate the Heat because of their lack of success.  This seems a bit like backwards logic to me.  How can you hate a team that hasn’t had any lasting success?  That is what made Jordan and the Bulls so easy to hate.  They were dominant and made you feel like your team stood no chance.  The Heat are competitive, but you don’t fear them like you did the Bulls or Lakers dynasty.  Damned if they do win, damned if they don’t.  Hardly seems fair.

People have become so blinded by their own hatred of the Heat that they lost track of why they did at all.  The Heat are hardly villains at this point.

The Heat are flawed which actually makes them that much more interesting.  People hated them because they figured Bosh, Wade and Lebron would roll through teams to consecutive championships.  But that hasn’t been the case yet.  If anything, that makes me more intrigued and inclined to watch.  They aren’t a juggernaut.  They’re just a good team with a chance to win their first championship, just like the Thunder.

Call me crazy, but that hardly seems like a good reason to hate a team.

Did Lance Dope? Wait, would I even care?

Yesterday, news broke that the United States Anti-Doping Agency would investigate Lance Armstrong for the use of performance-enhancing drugs.

This is the same man who has produced clean urine for as long as he has been on Earth.  He has successfully fought off every attacker, accuser, and the hordes of anti-doping agencies across Europe, particularly France (gee, I wonder why that is), who have fought tooth and nail to prove his accomplishments are tainted.

My guess is he didn’t simply get lucky every time he peed in one of those cups.

But Lance’s story is so incredible that it would actually be more of a surprise if he didn’t dope at any point during his career. That is what makes his seven career Tour victories that much more impressive.

He did it cleanly.

He is no Alberto Cantador.  Floyd Landis.  Or the hundreds of other cyclists who have tried to circumvent the rules and use PED’s.

He took his success and his story and transformed it into the Livestrong Foundation and has since raised millions of dollars in an effort to find a cure for cancer.

And that, in my mind, would exonerate him in the event that he did cheat.  Look past the fact that the entire sport of cycling is dirtier than the underside of a street sweeper.  Ignore the fact that it would completely ruin the “he fought cancer, beat it, and then pissed on its grave” storyline of winning seven straight Tour de Frances.  Hell, ignore the schedenfreude that many of you would feel watching the self-centered sycophant athlete in him fail.

Once you have looked that far in the distance, you will see that this man took his success and actually did something significant with it.  He decided to keep fighting against the disease that nearly took his life.  How many athletes have an opportunity to give back so immensely and instead choose to blow their money on Siberian tigers and an 85-man entourage (see: Tyson, Mike and Walker, Antoine)?

This one didn’t.  This narcissistic, self-serving, backstabbing athlete chose to use his fame for positive.  It doesn’t matter that as an athlete and a spouse, Armstrong is a deplorable individual.  He is helping people who are desperate for a cure.

And that’s why it makes no difference to me if he cheated or not.

People will scream bloody murder for a few weeks if it turns out Lance was actually doping.  But my suggestion is this: shrug it off and skip the whole grieving stage.  Because whether he used all the PED’s in the world to win those Tour de Frances doesn’t matter to me.  And it shouldn’t matter to you either.

At the end of the day it is still a sport and it is the victims’ lives.  Ask yourself what’s more important: that he cheated or that he is still trying to give more days to those who really need it?

Miami Misses Freight Train; Hit Instead

Uh oh, Miami.  You just might be in a little deeper than you thought.

You limped into the Finals after having to beat an old, broken-down Celtics team in seven games.  Meanwhile, after a game one sucker punch by the Spurs, the Thunder barely lost game two, stepped on the accelerator of their F-16 style offense and bombarded the Spurs for four straight victories.

Oklahoma City was the favorite coming into this series.  They certainly proved why last night.  But I don’t think anyone saw them outplaying the Heat as much as they did in the second half.  This Heat team had the number two defense in the league.

Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook turned that defense inside out.  The Heat were going left when they needed to go right.  Right when they needed to go left.

The Thunder’s dynamic duo punished the Heat with an array of slashes, passes, jumpers, and drives.  When the final buzzer sounded, that one-two punch outscored the entire Heat team in the second half.

Erik Spoelstra inexplicably changed defenses in the second half, opting to switch all screens rather than hedge them and allow defenders to recover.  The result?  Constant mismatches for Westbrook and Durant.  And they made Miami pay.

Boy, did they make them pay.

Sure, particularly in the first half, the Thunder struggled on defense.  But what does it matter if the Thunder give up 100+ points?  They have more weapons in their arsenal than the United States Army.

The offensive blitzkrieg last night resulted in twenty-one scores in their final twenty-nine possessions.  No other team in the league can keep up with that kind of output.

The size, speed, and athleticism of this team are unmatched.  And they will go zero to sixty in the blink of an eye, leaving you so far in the dust that you will think they’ve vanished.

So be careful Miami.  Because if you aren’t, this series will be over in that same blink.