Halftime of the Lakers/Nuggets...

Commentators Missing the Ball

We're at half-time of the Laker/Nugget game, where Denver ended on a flurry to trim a 13-pt deficit down to a single point. All the commentators talked about "energy", "effort", and a bunch of generalities and platitudes when discussing their opinion of what went wrong for the Lakers during the run.

They all completely missed the obvious. Andrew Bynum went to the bench, after playing well and having all the announcers praise his play. Lamar Odom came in. in the first half, Bynum was +8, Lamar was -5. Linus Kleiza from of the Nuggets also hit 3 shots from beyond the arc and had a +10 during his time on the court. All the other big-minute players were essentially even.

It's not rocket science people. Can we point out the obvious? And try to give Bynum a little bit of credit? Lord knows we've heaped criticism and/or repeatedly pointed out when he hasn't played near his best.


The Fight Over Superman

OK, this has gone on long enough. Spurned out by the increasingly-curmudgeonly Shaq O'Neil, people (read: ESPN's knuckleheads like Stewart Scott) is going out of their way to bring up the Shaq/Howard Superman co-claim. Having been knocked out of the playoffs over 5 weeks ago, Shaq's relevance to the current NBA final four is completely nil. Yet Stewie felt the need to remind us for the umpteenth time that there was a Superman prior to Dwight's current incarnation.

People, give me a break. Did George Reeves sit around dissing Christopher Reeve to the media in 1978? Did the Daily Bugle print stories about Christopher being an also-ran? Did Dean Cain have to defend himself against barbs from Reeve and Reeves? Do interviewers ask Brandon Routh if he thinks he's the real Superman?

Naturally, no. Shaq, no disrespect boss, but you are yesterday, Dwight is today. That is the beauty of the Superman moniker, because it's following the same history of the Superman character we've already seen. One Superman has his day and then makes his way for an update. Every bit like how George Reeves had to make way for Christopher.

And being that I am the same age as Shaq, I feel fully qualified to point out that he needs to make way for the young fella. And since we're on the subject -- since you like to point out that Dwight isn't doing anything you haven't already done -- would you mind telling the world exactly when you donned a cape and flew thru the air in a dunk contest? Or could you point out the year you won the Defensive POY award? I must've missed that while watching cartoons or something.