Lou Pickney's Online Commentary
Late Night Thriller
Wednesday
May 17, 2006
Game 5 of the Clippers/Suns series, which took place last night in Phoenix, was a double OT thriller that was one of the most exciting NBA games I've seen in a long time. But, wow, did that go into the early AM for people on the east coast.
For me, I was tired today after staying up until almost 1 AM Central; that's nearly 2 AM Eastern for the 2 OT thriller. The game itself was a showdown of two tired but excited competitors. While it had sloppiness uncharacteristic of the highest level of basketball (turnovers by MVP Steve Nash in crunch time, an 8 second violation by "ET" Sam Cassell, etc.), the drama of the critical Game 5 (with the series tied 2-2) more than made up for it. There was something extra there.
Maybe it was the way guys stayed down on the court after fouls a little longer than normal, or the way it looked like a walking infirmary at times, with guys like Shawn Marion looking like someone at the end of two weeks on an All Japan Pro Wrestling tour, beaten and bandages and bruised. And then there was the way the emotion in the building kept tilting back and forth, which came across even on my non-HDTV television, with the Suns fans holding their hands by their mouths in nervous, rapt attention, and the Clippers fans (and bizarro Los Angeles celebs who made the trip), going from dejection down 18 to hope during that second half run to jubilation when Los Angeles went up by three late in the first overtime.
It was winnable for the Clippers, the second winnable game of the series that they let slip away (the first being game three), but when Phoenix has Raja Bell hitting a three pointer to tie it at the end of OT, and then the Suns managed to use a double-team to curtail Elton Brand in double OT (with Tim Thomas having fouled out), you have to hand it to the Suns.
Game 6 is tomorrow night in Los Angeles. If you like basketball, you should watch.
|  | How can I cheer against Katharine McPhee?
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Tough choice here tonight, as The Amazing Race season finale (hour two) on CBS is going up against American Idol on FOX... up against Lost on ABC. And here I am with no DVR. I really don't care about Idol, but that Katharine McPhee chick is hot. And there's an odd buzz in Birmingham about Taylor Hicks, with this being his hometown and all. It's at least even with what I saw in Evansville when the Aces made the NCAA basketball tournament in 1999, which is a shameful indictment of Evansville, but many people here care about him. It shocks me that a guy with gray hair is a strong contender on that show, but what do I know?
Tough choices or not, it'll be Lost for me. Passing on that isn't even an option. And there's NBA playoff basketball on tonight! So many options...
My neck is killing me as I type this. I went to a doctor right after work, as my Cigna insurance situation finally got sorted out. My doctor in Tampa refused to fill my prescriptions again with me going in for a revisit, and that isn't exactly feasable from Alabaster. Anyway, I took my prescriptions over to CVS, and so when 7:45 PM Central gets here, I'll be there waiting to pick them up. But at least I'll be able to get my meds.
Time to lay down and relax with the heating pad, for now. Later on I'm going to try to wrap my mind around the whole WordPress, MySQL, "Web 2.0" thing. I'd like to retrofit some of my sites (particularly the radio ones) for RSS/XML, but despite my time at DigiQuest, I'm really not a computer programmer. I taught myself .html because I had to, but .html and .shtml doesn't require you to install your own software onto a server, etc. But I'm sure it can be done, seeing how widespread it has become...
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