This is the End

Not realizing the irony until this moment, my lovely wife and I decided to see the new Seth Rogen movie “This Is the End” tonight.  This is also the first night of the “no more NBA hoops” wasteland that is summer and fall.  It is also the end of the fake NBA Finals blog I have been writing for this season.  Thanks to all of you who took the time to read it.  I enjoyed writing it – I even found that writing about Game Six was somehow cathartic and made that game a bit less painful.

Special thanks to those who found the time to comment on the fake blog.  For instance, leader of men and future senior tour golfer Tim Hayes had this to say in response to my comment wondering why we care about strangers playing a game 3000 miles from L.A.:

“I can remember the Celtics beating the Lakes for the title, one year during the 80's and doing the same thing...going for a walk and looking at the stars, trying to think of all the reasons why it didn't matter. But there were no reasons...because it does matter. We humans are passionate about all kinds of things...it's what makes life livable...I believe those who don't lose sleep when their passions take a beating (or, God forbid, have no passions worth losing sleep over) are missing out on an important piece of life. Just think, if we didn't feel that way, we wouldn’t be able to 'feel the pain' for others...now that would be terrible.”

Similarly, former Princeton play by play master Glenn Dryfoos reminded me of all the great things that led up to the Finals:

“I love all this overheated talk of legacies and heroes and goats….so much of the outcome just comes down to dumb luck….in this case, the 2 long rebounds that led to the LeBron and Ray 3’s….they just took crazy bounces…any normal rebound would have ended up in the hands of a Spur or a surrounded Heat player….

Really a fun playoffs….besides a great Finals, we had nice runs from the Warriors (remember when Stef and Jack through a legitimate scare into the Spurs?...seems like a long time ago), and the Griz, and Pacers (just played their guts out against Miami and introduced Paul George John Ringo to the world)….and the whole Danny Green thing….much better than the NCAA’s…..”

As a former college hoops coach who loves March Madness, and having attended 8 Final 4s, it would have been sacrilege before these playoffs to describe any NBA playoffs as better than March Madness – this year Glenn was right.

Thanks also to those of you who took the time to read whatever stuff I threw out there, decided to like it, and more importantly to me, told me about it.  Even a friend who is generally more like Mikey in the old Life Cereal ad “Give it to Mikey, he never likes anything” but liked the fake blog enough to stun me by saying:

“I hope at least one person besides me tells you how well written, entertaining, informative,  and just plain outstanding these commentaries are!!!”

As the Cowardly Lion so eloquently said – Ah, shucks.  

So thanks again to all – and I just decided this one won’t be the end.  I need to have the catharsis of some actual analysis of the playoffs, more than I can supply at the moment.  You know, I need to let stuff percolate a bit.  Sometime next week, after I have recovered from the Game Six and Game Seven defeats, I will try to throw something together for the actual end:  The actual last fake blog of the season.  

This isn’t it.