Be A Witness
It's no surprise to see college basketball enthusiast Jason Zengerle full of hand-wringing about the Washington Wizards' successful strategy of making sure LeBron James got a good hard foul or two during his efforts to take it to the hoop last night. I'm not sure I quite see what the problem is here. James is a highly paid professional, as are his opponents, and their job is to win games the best way they know how. As Jeff Van Gundy remarked after Brendan Haywood delivered the first hard hit -- "welcome to the playoffs, kid." And, in the spirit of "all's fair in love and elimination tournaments," Anderson Varejao did slam Wizards star Gilbert Arenas a couple of possessions later. No doubt James will figure out how to deal with it one of these days . . . I'm just hoping that won't be this year.
Matt, when you turned your personal blog into a basketball blog I thought, that's fine, lots of guys like to talk b-ball, I'll just stop reading that one and read the TPM one. But if there's another Wizards sportstalk post here, then you've lost me for good. This a politics site.
April 26, 2006 10:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
I for one welcome a physical game, so long as the refs are good enough to distinguish accident from intent. But I'm afraid the arrogant, biased group of weasels currently running the floor with the athletes won't.
April 26, 2006 10:52 AM | Reply | Permalink
Please, spare us your tsk, tsking superior than thou attitude. Matt has made what 3 posts about the playoffs? And they are easily avoided if you aren't interested.
April 26, 2006 11:11 AM | Reply | Permalink
Meh. If you don't like hoops, just ignore the post. If your time were so valuable you wouldn't be killing it on Teh Intarnets.
I think Caron's ridonkulous baseline dunk deserves a post of its own...
April 26, 2006 11:49 AM | Reply | Permalink
> Chaney, as Wilbon surely remembers, is the guy who last year sent in the seldom-used Nehemiah Ingram--a player Chaney himself labeled a "goon"--to commit some hard fouls on St. Joe's star player John Bryant. Thanks to Ingram's handiwork, Bryant wound up with a fractured arm.
Fracturing LeBron James's arm sounds like winning strategy.
April 27, 2006 1:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
What Lebron got at the hands of the Wizards is nothing next to the beating Michael Jordan routinely experienced during the playoffs, particularly from the Knicks. It signifies you cannot be stopped without being fouled or the defender coming right up to the line of fouling. Shall we even talk about the beating Shaq gets every single game because no one can defend him. Jordan and Kobe got stronger, physically and mentally from the experience, so will Lebron. The league today is far less physical than it used to be. The Refs will make sure a star like him doesn't get anything too nasty.
April 27, 2006 8:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah,
As a life long Sonics fan and someone old enough to remember the late 70s, I'll chime in with go back and watch replays of the 2 Bullets-Sonics championship series; we're talking borderline pro-wrestling or Hockey.
April 27, 2006 10:53 AM | Reply | Permalink