So...I've been cheering for Miami since the finals started. I know that I live in Dallas now, but it would have been almost as lame for me to just start being a Mavs fan after being in town for only three weeks, right?
I initially felt bad about this, and felt guilty about my mancrush on D-Wade. But not any more. Because Avery Johnson is now officially the stupidest coach in the history of the NBA.
I don't really care about the timeout--though, why he felt the need to tell his players to call a timeout after the second free throw, risking that one of the brainiacs on the floor might misinterpret his meaning, when it's a safe bet that at least one of them would have called the intended timeout unbidden, is beyond me.
I'm talking about the emmingeffing Hack-a-Shaq.
Stupid #1: Pulling it out at all. For the weakass coach who pulls it, the Hack-a-Shaq is simply a message to your own team, a message that says "I don't think you chuckleheads can play defense." So he sucks for that.
Stupid #2: But why, oh why, did he pull it out in fucking overtime? Once with less than four minutes left and once with less than three minutes left, he has someone foul Shaq off the ball. WTF???? They weren't in the penalty, and they didn't immediately foul him again after the inbound, so there was no way they were actually forcing him to the line. Were they just being lame for the sake of lameness? Or was this another miscommunication problem, because, you know, Avery Johnson's voice is just so hard to pick out from a crowd?
"Well, they were using the fouls they had to give to throw off the Heat's rhythm."
Okay...but how about using those fouls to at least try to accomplish something useful, like going for a steal?
Avery Johnson is a joke. And much like his Spurs, his Mavs are a bitch team. And Dirk Nowitzki is nothing more than a 7-foot-tall shooting guard, a latter-day Matt Bullard who just happens to get the ball a lot, a big silly goatfucker that tried to kick a stationary bike on the way out of the stadium.
But I still wouldn't really put money on Miami being able to win here.
EDIT: I honestly wasn't aware that calling Dirk a "big silly kraut" qualified as a full-blooded ethnic slur. I thought it more of a quaint, throwback sort of slur, like calling someone a "vile, bloodthirsty Hun," a "goddam date-worshipping Hittite," or a "slack-jawed Sumerian lackwit."
But a quick thought experiment involving "throwback" terms for groups more frequently the targets of ethnic slurs quickly brings one to the conclusion that the relative mustiness of a term by no means excuses the singling out of someone on the basis of race, ethnicity, or national origin, no matter how much they suck.
The post has been amended accordingly.