Still Shinin'. NBA Playoffs Preview Pt. 1

Since for some reason most of my life is prosecuted in the company of people who wouldn't dribble a basketball to spit on it, I've had to resort to novel and inventive ways of showing that just like all of life, basketball is best experienced not by actually getting out and living it, but internalizing it into a series of stories or narratives.

Well, in Spring 2011, even the eye candy is always a debatable experience for value if you can wait long enough for a screener, but the immediacy of the NBA Playoffs is still a time-binding experience the likes of which Hollywood wishes it still got the point of. As the Houston Rockets failed to launch in a timely fashion, my 'official' fandom* has been eliminated from the playoffs, so who's left to pick my pique? The Lig playoffs are a font of April showers what continue to flow on into June. Long? Sure, and even as we speak, the 82 'regular' games are not yet burnt, but nevertheless, positions have been established, so I'll set this off right now. To help you slap a GUI onto the world of all these tall black men you'd normally give not a shit about (HEYO!), I've broken the first round (of CONFLICTS) down into cinematic tropes:

SUMMER BLOCKBUSTERS:

Third Seed Versus Sixth Seed

Boston (55-26) vs New York (42-38)- AKA “The Bucket List” vs. “Melo, STAT, and The Expendables”

The Celtics' “Big Three” as a storyline has long since given way to a three headed dragon comprised of “This Is Really Rajon Rondo's Team Now”, “Can They Survive Without Perk?”, and “Would Anyone Named O'Neal Necessarily Go Gimpy If He Wore Gang Green?”

Physically, the Knicks should match up well. Mr. Big Shot is certainly not going to be cowed by Rondo or Sweet Ray, Extra P will have his hands full with Melo, and I reckon a win for KG over Amare is KG playing his game and STAT only getting off ten shots and a look in his eyes that bespeaks detachment what got nothing to do with his surgically reattached retinas. At center, it's a push, the battle of the benches equally so. What this really boils down to is not just synergy, but identity. The Celtics have an identity: long after Tom Thibodeaux is gone, the belief that they can lock down as a defense and do the non-athletic things to make that happen (communication, basic conditioning)- is still there. The Knicks have the identity of a Trump-commissioned Brett Easton Ellis novel about Sarah Lawrence's first fundamentalist Christian teeny bop rock star. The coach is known to run. The first star was enjoying a run as the Man, the new star cannot be anyone BUT the Man, and running is something that happens to other people. Players come, names stay. Love and Rockets breaks up. The Posies reunite. They breakup. Bauhaus reunites.

Second Seed Versus Seventh Seed: The Miami (57-24) Clown Machine's “Fatigable Dud Torpedo Of Uncomfortable Realizations/Tears Are Totally An Option” vs I Am A Lesbian Art Film Called The Philadelphia 76ers (41-40)

We know the Damned Heat at this point. And we know that the damned DO cry. Sorry, couldn't resist.

No, seriously, the Heat are a preposterous excuse made flesh:

“a team with Dwayne Wade, LeBron James, Chris Bosh and 9 also-rans & C-list All Stars could win 70 games...provided they're not victimized and abused with a little footspeed at the 1 and bulk up the middle. YOU KNOW, LIKE ANY TEAM, AT ANY LEVEL, OF BASKETBALL.”

To take nothing from the Sixers, who have lost all their meetings with the Heap this year, the Playoffs are the time for Third Rate Peasant Armies everywhere to rise up and take down helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft:

OH, AND:

But while I ride for the Phour Aces in baseball, I'm not drinking any kind of Illadell-kool aid, even if it means getting with Sweet Dee. This is the perfect matchup for Los Bleeps to demonstrate their cherished overmatching situational superiority- the 76ers are wing-like, not single-minded of purpose at the 5 or the 1 with the likes of Jrue and Sweet Lou. And thus will the Heat advance to the 2^nd round with all manner of overmessianic folderol from CaBron. You've been great, and we've all been waiting. Stay tuned for Part 2: Critical Acclaim (The Beats Talk Like Mike Ladd, But It Won't Get You Laid)

*a concept roughly equivalent to a bid in the French Foreign Legion- 'Screwston/Clutch City- we'll take anyone if you recognize the primacy of the Dream, peace be unto his name'