BITS AND PIECES

There's only 7 games left in our regular season and it’s hard to fathom.  The season's gone by faster than any I can remember and that’s a lot.  It may have something to do with keeping this online journal of sorts - Searching for Slava’s not your traditional sports blog but I’ve had fun doing it - sections of basketball lumped together with other bits and pieces. Then again, the ever quickening passage of time may be just that.

I wrote about the distractions back in January and they can work the same with lowly mortals as with NBA stars - forces of everyday life seemed destined to keep me from scrolling every blog, devouring articles and games in whole.  It's come in odd parts as of late but this final stretch drive will push it all to the side. The Lakers have been on an epic tear since the All-Star break - 17 wins and 1 loss as of this typing and the rest of the games come fast and furious - plenty of back-to-backs, away and at home.

It would have been absurd only a week ago, to contemplate taking the top seed in the west. That was before a six-game skid from the Spurs - their worst in 15 years. It’s still a Silky Sullivan longshot - the Spurs magic number is 5 - any combination of their wins and our losses. Still, at the Lakers current win streak pace, that could mean 5 out of 6 wins for the Spurs and it’s certainly not how they’ve been playing lately.  Someone please correct me if my math is corrupt - I keep puzzling it and it's giving me a headache.

The brouhaha Thursday night was entertaining - many saying Dallas was punked but it's also worth noting that they were simply outmatched.  Our bigs are bigger than  their bigs and they play even larger.  Andrew's been a monster as of late, Pau's scoring at will and Lamar's making an unbreakable case for 6th man of the year.  I can't believe I just wrote that tripe - as if L.O. hasn't already strip-mined his unisex flower juice to death.  Phil Jackson chided Dallas’s Terry Stotts for his bear-hug of Barnes. He’s right of course - if an opposing coach had done that to Phil back in the day, there would have been a backwards elbow and a broken nose.  Stotts got off easy, Barnes merely dumped him onto the bench - a one-game suspension followed.

The Lakers sallied forth to Utah on a Friday night back-to-back.  The Jazz are decimated by injuries right now but still jumped out to a sizable lead - the Lakers didn't bother to flip the switch until late in the 2nd quarter. Kirlenko was out and we weren't treated to the usual display of  his shimmery locks solidarity with Martin Short  Gordan Hayward.  Fesenko started for the first time all season - he's a real big kid and laid some serious hits on Kobe.  Jerry Sloan would have been proud .  Utah battled back periodically in the second half but the Lakers machine took over - they won by 11 but it felt like more.

Sunday brings a 12:30 game against Denver and it'll be a challenge - the ink-squad's been impressive since shedding Melo and the early hour interferes with brunch.  Then again, the playoffs are in sight and surprisingly, so is San Antonio.   My laptop's been a black hole all night, I'm posting this while I still can.

DANCING DOWN THE SIDEBOARDS

Last night felt gray and cold and inhospitable. Not sure how or why a pitch-black night would feel gray but at the very least I was in a funk, one of those off-balance places where the throat’s scratchy and the world moves haltingly and the skin feels paper thin.  Beware of darkness. The State of the Union was on and while I freely admit to being a fan of presidents who play basketball, the speech didn’t do much for me. It just seemed like a lot of peace-making talk about growing the economy, with marginal enthusiasm from either side. At this point in the life of American democracy the same pleas for compromise feel stale and tired, I can’t honestly recall a united congress during my lifetime and the most winning moments on a national scale usually come from trench warfare.

The night turned on a dime as it sometimes does, listening to a radio feed when alerted via tweet that the Lakers/Jazz were on NBA TV as the fan favorite pick of the week or some such. I caught hold of this unexpected bonanza late in the first period and rode with ever increasing contentment, though the entire lopsided train wreck - a 29-point margin and it didn’t feel that close. It’s not a good time to be the Jazz right now, it was their 5th loss in a row and would be followed by tonight’s loss at home to the Spurs. I wasn’t paying much attention to this particular debacle as I typed, figuring some things to simply be preordained but the Jazz did manage a late flurry that brought them momentarily close. I got distracted, burning a batch of chocolate chip cookies and catching up on important internet news items. Did you know that Dennis Kucinich is suing some restaurant for $150,000 because they put an un-pitted olive in his sandwich?

Last night's major deconstuction happened in the first half, a rending of stripped gears as Kobe fed the beast inside - Andrew Bynum turned  in another man-sized performance at both ends of the floor.  The hopelessness around you.  Steve Blake also did damage early, short minutes providing points, boards, dimes, a steal and easily controlling a jump ball against Andrei Kiilenko and it wasn't even close. Artest played tenacious perimeter defense and Lamar Odom scored 17 off the bench, including a stunning behind the backboard floater as he sailed out of bounds. The fourth quarter was occasion for quality garbage minutes, the mood was so resolutely awesome that Shannon Brown’s butchered (and uncontested) dunk was cause for joyous brotherhood. 

Not much to say about the Jazz in all of this. Kirilenko and Hayward each ran up and down the floor with their long locks shimmering in the lights like a Breck commercial, accomplishing little else. Some other guys also played, if you’d call it that. Jerry Sloan deserves better. I wasn’t thinking of it though, instead caught up in the transcendent stretches, the celebration of basketball, the visceral joy of an us-against-them beat-down that at least for me, gives way to quiet, more reflective moments, when once again it’s much too late, when the television goes off and the keyboard’s abandoned and duty calls to take the dog out one last time, shivering against the cold and willing him to hurry, when a warm bed beckons and morning will come too soon, when solitary thoughts can linger and surround in the dead of the night, kept away by the links inside our heads. And rocked to sleep with a great version of a song.