Letdown of an ending

The Los Angeles Lakers narrowly escaped with a victory over the San Antonio Spurs in Game Four of the Western Conference Finals tonight, and by "narrowly escaped" I mean that they did everything they could think of to blow the game.

I tuned in during the fourth quarter, a period in which L.A. had semi-sizeable leads (seven to nine points), but couldn't make them stick.

The Lakers took a final seven-point lead with just under a minute remaining, but Manu Ginobili hit a three, Kobe Bryant forced a shot (believe it or not), and then Tim Duncan found Tony Parker downcourt for a breakaway lay-up, or technically a breakaway goaltending call on Lamar Odom. Anyway, the Lakers missed a couple of shots on their next trip but wisely used up most of the shotclock, leaving the Spurs down two with about two seconds left.

Brent Barry caught the ball, then took a long and lame three-point attempt to lose the game. Afterwards he lifted his hands up in shock that the foul wasn't called and for a second, I could understand why people say the Spurs are babies.

Except Barry was completely right. He had caught the ball and pump-faked, drawing Derek Fisher off his feet. Fisher came back down on Barry's shoulder, and Barry fired up the long shot in hopes of earning some free throw attempts.

Some people say refs should swallow their whistles at the end of a game and let players decide the outcome. These people are frigtards. Fisher's landing wasn't incidental contact (no way Barry could have taken a normal shot with that going on). Even if you believe in ignoring contact like that normally (and again, why would you?), letting a defender foul like that with so little time left clearly gives the defense a nigh-insurmountable advantage. It's really dumb that Fisher got away with it. (Yeah, I know, I missed it the first time too, but I was nine hundred miles away.)

I don't know that the Spurs can really complain, though. Well, sure, they can complain all they want. But if they can't defend their championship, they should at least be able to defend their home court. The game was disappointing because the Spurs' comeback was very impressive right up until the end. They weren't really getting a majority of the bounces or calls or anything; they just kept playing solid D and getting just enough opportunistic baskets to keep it interesting.

Hopefully the Spurs can turn things around on the road, but their previous road performances this playoffs don't leave much room for that hope. I still have some, though it's fading. And as a Nuggets fan, of course I still hate the Lakers for now, but does anyone out there really want to see Kobe win the title and get some measure of vindication for chasing Shaq out of town? (I call it just a measure, though I don't expect ESPN to.)

If you're short on Kobe-hatred, you should do what I did this morning and read the SI.com piece about how much he likes to win. While it's billed as an eye-opener as to how much this particular star athlete enjoys victory, the article merely reminded me how annoying the man is in the first place. Wow, Kobe likes to win how much? (So much!) that in high school he once chased a teammate into the hallway to yell at him for missing a shot in a drill. What leadership! What competitive drive! What an egomaniacal buffoon?

Give me a break!

I originally intended to post this under a more innocuous title like "Programming Note" or something...more on that in a second.

Yesterday at work I was watching TV when I stumbled upon SportsCenter, a popular athletic highlights show that is not so well-known that my computer thinks I've spelled it correctly. Anyway, one anchor, Mike Greenberg, asked baseball analyst and former New York Mets general manager Steve Phillips his opinion on Alex Rodriguez's return to the Yankees' lineup. (Rodriguez had missed three weeks with a strained quad.)

Seconds later, my jaw dropped. I don't remember Phillips' exact response. But I do know he said something along the lines of us having a situation here where the greatest player ever was returning to a team.

Immediately I had two thoughts: first, I have to blog about this, and second, he didn't really just say that, did he?

It's so dumb that I seriously did sit and wonder. Because the greatest player ever was Babe Ruth, and every kid in America who likes baseball knows this. Ruth could hit, field, and run. Let's take hitting: Rodriguez is 141st all-time in batting average, 108th in on-base percentage, and 12th in slugging percentage. Ruth? Ninth, second, and first.

Almost forgot. He could pitch, too. Ruth won 94 regular-season games with a career ERA of 2.28, and was 3-0, 0.87 in three World Series games. What does that give him, like six tools?

More to the point for Yankees fans, Ruth won the World Series seven times (four with New York). Rodriguez has never won a championship.

But forget all that. A-Rod will probably go down as the best player of this era, now that Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens have fallen so far out of public favor, and since other competitors for that title, like Greg Maddux, Ken Griffey, Jr., and Albert Pujols, never played for the Yankees. (I know Rodriguez looks a lot better than Maddux and Griffey right now, but let's see how things wind down for him.)

But best player ever? A-Rod wouldn't just have to beat Ruth for that title; he'd also have to be better than guys like Williams, Mays, Aaron, Mantle, DiMaggio, and Wagner, for starters. Since they play the same sport and therefore count, don't forget Cy Young and Walter Johnson. As baseball talks about its own history so much, you can't say all these guys just slipped Phillips' mind.

About the best that could have been said about A-Rod is that he was going to be the best shortstop ever before he moved to the Yankees and switched to third baseperson. I think I agree with this line of reasoning, and I've always thought he was a better fielder at short than Derek Jeter. I certainly thought he was going to surpass Honus Wagner or whoever else at short. But greatest player ever? That's just stupid.

Oh, and the reason I'm more sure now that Phillips said this is another reason I love the Internet. I Googled to see if anyone else heard what I did, and at least one guy did. I'm serious, it was so bad that I really wasn't sure, which is why I was going to de-sensationalize the headline, but this is good enough for me.

Catching up

So, it's been a few weeks. What I've missed:

1. Jay Cutler has diabetes. Articles list several prominent athletes who've had the disease and been successful, including guys like Bobby Clarke, Jackie Robinson, and Gary Hall, Jr., who I liked a lot even though I only saw him compete in sprints once every four years.

From the USA Today article:

CBS4 in Denver caught up with the Denver Broncos quarterback, and was told the disease has affected him for 'at least six months.'

'I was losing weight, didn't have a lot of strength,' Cutler said. 'You could tell, just the way I played. Some of the throws that I made didn't have a lot behind them.'

That sort of makes it sound like he'll be much better this year now that he's healthy. And that makes sense if the disease held him back down the stretch. The thing is his game-by-game statistics don't paint the picture of someone who was worn down at the end of the season; instead, he had some of his best (and worst) games then. No doubt it must have been hard on him, but statistically, he wasn't a trainwreck because of the illness. So who knows. Of course, I expect him to be better this year (and statistically, he was way better last year than I give him credit for), but mostly just as a natural result of experience and growth.

2. Troy Tulowitzki tore a tendon in his left quad after starting the season in a serious slump. He's out for a few more weeks but the Rockies still haven't recovered from a slow start. I feel bad that I haven't watched them this year, but not that bad.

3. Kobe Bryant won the NBA's regular-season MVP award. Many have referred to it as a lifetime achievement award, that Kobe just got the trophy because he's been the best player in the league for so long.

This is ridiculous on many levels. First, Kobe has not been the best player in the league for as long as people have said he is, and I'm not sure he ever has been. Second, there were many qualified candidates, and Kobe was definitely one of them. Did someone clearly deserve the award over him? LeBron James had better, almost beautiful numbers (30 points, 7.9 boards, 7.2 assists), but his team won only 45 games. Kevin Garnett's team won 66, but Garnett was 45th in points per game and 22nd in rebounds: not even close to typical MVP-caliber. Chris Paul's team finished just one game behind the Lakers, and he brings a ton to the table, but does any sane person really take him over Kobe in a must-win game? (I think this is important in basketball, where one player can have a bigger impact than in, say, football.) Paul scored much less than Kobe and piled up assists, which are a stat I consider kind of lame. So it's not like he was obviously better, especially when you consider Bryant's versatility. (Also, if Garnett and Paul are in the mix, I'm not sure why Tim Duncan isn't, but no one even mentions him.)

Compare this to, say, Karl Malone's MVP award after the 1996-97 season. Malone had good numbers, over 27 points and nearly 10 rebounds per game. But Michael Jordan was ridiculous that season, winning the scoring title once again with 29.6 points per game, grabbing almost half-a-dozen rebounds per game, and remaining clearly the most-feared player in the league, especially in pressure situations. Jordan's Bulls team won 69 games, which would have tied the record for most wins in a season had the Bulls not broken the old record one year before with 72. Jordan was obviously the class of the world, but Malone got his first MVP trophy. Now THAT was a lifetime achievement award.

However, the idea of a lifetime achievement award isn't anathema to me, at least not entirely. I mean, if the race was really too close to call between Kobe and Chris Paul, I don't have any problem with the tie going to Kobe since we already know he'll go down in history, and because he's already gotten it done for a few years. I like looking at lists of past winners and seeing names like Abdul-Jabber, Chamberlain and Bird as award winners. I don't feel the same way about Dirk Nowitzki, Steve Nash, and maybe even KG winning it the past few years.

4. Man, am I glad the Spurs have fought their way out of that 0-2 deficit. I was feeling pretty awkward there for a sec.