Round 1 Coming Attractions: Lakers-Thunder

We here at No Regard love our stories. And the playoffs are where each narrative strand that was teased in the regular season is shredded or affirmed. So, here are the first round series as we see them. Thank you.

“They’re Babies and yet… they’re Geniuses.”

That might be something that is said during the course of Baby Geniuses. Then again, it might not. I got bored trying to read the Wikipedia page. From what I can gather, the plot is that of a group of impossibly capable infants going up against insurmountable odds as they face off against scientists, or burglars, or perhaps just parents, who are turned into super-villians simply because the they are adult humans and well, not babies.

As a 50-win team with an average age of 23 in their starting lineup, the Thunder are nothing short of whiz-kids (or whiz-babies), while this year’s Laker team is comically stacked. Los Angeles has a starting 10. Their coach has won a million games. Compared to OKC, the Lakers look like the MONSTARS.

As I write this, I’m watching an interminable ESPN special on the current Laker season. Andy Garcia is narrating and is obviously struggling to find the suffering in a team that won 70% of its games. I can only imagine Mr. Garcia laughing his ass off after a take: “I’m sorry, you actually want me to say, ‘After their seventh consecutive road win, the Lakers returned home… hobbling?’” Oh. Quick update while we’re on the topic of Laker Propaganda, Kobe takes a helicopter to work.

The Lakers care about what America thinks of them about as much as well, Kobe Bryant does. It’s impossible for me to get behind a team like that. The Lakers are built for the playoffs while the Thunder are frankly more equipped for the sandbox.

Defining Quote

Margo: "Stick to your rapping Ice Shtick and leave the smart remarks to those with IQs over 40."

Dickie: "It's not rap, it's mantras."

I’d be thrilled to see the Thunder take the Lakers to six, but if I have to guess, I’ll say...

Lakers in 5. Booooooooo.

Round 1 Coming Attractions: Boston-Miami

We here at No Regard love our stories. And the playoffs are where each narrative strand that was teased in the regular season is shredded or affirmed. So, here are the first round series as we see them. Thank you.

[Open mic night in a quiet Union City bar. Pete appears on stage, giddy and ready to decimate the crowd.] Good evening ladies, germs, Germans and Jeromes.

Hey, isn’t it weird that almost the entire Celtics roster, with the exception of Rondo, Glen Davis, Kryptonate and Kendrick Perkins, were alive during prohibition in America? [Crickets chirp.] Prohibition, the 1930s. Okay... uh, it’s also weird that their coach is aptly named Doc, after the oldest of the seven dwarves. [Heavyset man, 30s, shifts uncomfortably in front row.] And... it’s even weirder that a bunch of grumpy old men are about to beat a Miami Heat team featuring one of the league’s top four players: Dwyane "Don't call me Dwayne" Wade. Despite recently being sighted at a bingo game, Pierce, Allen and KG are about to prove that [affects a hackneyed Jim Carrey voice] senior citizens, although slow and dangerous behind the wheel, still can serve a purpose.

Sure, they collect social security checks every week, but this Celtics team can still defend. That hard-nosed, old-school defense, literally. [A lot more silence. Pete shakes as he loosens his tie.] Pierce sneakily remains one of the best on-the-ball defenders around and has acutely worked his cane into his defensive skill set. His walking cane... So, uh, don’t be surprised to see #34 on #3 during fourth quarters of close games, assuming Paul remembered to take all of his medication that morning.

And KG, while now sporting a Bill Russell salt-and-pepper beard, still slams his head on the post of the hoop 12 times before the game and can handle the underwhelming, and many years his junior, front court of the Miami Heat (Jermaine O'Neal is but a babe at 31). And even though Rondo didn’t walk up hills both ways 20 miles in the snow to school like the rest of his teammates (jeez Michael Finley, we've heard this story enough times, thank you very much!), his quickness and massive hands make him a threat to have three steals a game this playoff series.

Celtics fans have two things to fear facing off against Miami. The first is Dwyane Wade, who will win the Miami Heat three games by himself. The second is that it’s very possible many of their players will forget to leave their off-season Florida homes, missing the series altogether! [One woman in the back boos loudly. A bottle careens towards the stage, shattering several feet to the right of Pete. He soldiers on.] I don’t think a starting five of Rondo, Davis, Robinson, Scal and Perk can beat this Miami team. And 90-year-olds tend to be forgetful. [The crowd becomes unruly, showering the stage with anything available: Tomatoes, cats, chairs, cans of paint, whipped cream pies.]

They're old. Prunes. Goodnight! [Pete ducks out stage left.]

Defining Quote
"I'm 94 years old. What the hell do I care?" - Grandpa Gustafson

Celtics in 7

Round 1 Coming Attractions: Atlanta-Milwaukee

We here at No Regard love our stories. And the playoffs are where each narrative strand that was teased in the regular season is shredded or affirmed. So, here are the first round series as we see them. Thank you.

The Bucks have been every League Passer's sweetheart since day negative one (turning the name Ersan Ilyasova into NBA geek cultural currency), but with Bogut injured, the BUCKS STOP HERE... LOLZZERS 4 WTF.

But seriously forks, as excited as I am to see Jennings' game one haircut (I'm thinking he'll go simple, with the stoic high-top that got him here; but maybe we'll see another revolutionary stylo like we did All-Star Weekend), he's capable of shooting the Bucks out of at least two games at this point, and how much can we really expect from John Salmons past a scratchy beard and 20 points?

More importantly, the surprisingly mild-mannered Hawks. Crawford may be the least cutthroat player ever to drop 50 that many times, Bibby and Joe Johnson just seem like guys who hate breaking rules and even Josh Smith quietly shattered his billing as an uncoachable troublemaker this year.

At some point in the last two years, though, these nice gentlemen decided that the suburban sprawl of being simply young super-athletes was getting boring, so they applied for motorcycle licenses and started acting like the other elite biker gangs of the league. But we've yet to find out if their personalities have caught up with their talent, or if their jump to a 50-win team is simply posturing.

They took the about-to-be-champion Celtics to a game seven in 2008 (probably akin to some act two triumph for Travolta and company), but then got swept by the questionable Cavs of '08-'09 (paralleling some early act three beat-down at the hands of Ray Liotta, I'm sure). Truth is I've never seen Wild Hogs (I'll happily watch Blankman for this Website, but I have boundaries and my safe word happens to be "midlife crisis road trip"), so I'm not sure how this gets resolved. Hopefully, it will involve Joe Johnson breaking out of his mild-mannered Bill Macy demeanor to torch fools, an angry Zaza and much more of this.

Let's take this already-forced comparison to it's breaking point, shall we? Lightning Round:

*Peep that tagline on the poster: The road has definitely been unkind to the Hawks, who have won just one road playoff game in the last two years.

*Actor Kevin Durand is in Wild Hogs, just one letter away from a basketball player.

Oh yeah, basketball: When Bogut's arm exploded all true NBA heads got robbed of the riot we were so looking forward to, but we may be better rewarded in the long run by an easy first round warmup for the Hawks, who just might make a run at this thing.

Defining Quote
Bobby Davis: I think we better get out of here.
Woody Stevens: No, we'll get out of here at sundown, after we've had our beverage.

Hawks in 4

Round 1 Coming Attractions: Cleveland-Chicago

We here at No Regard love our stories. And the playoffs are where each narrative strand that was teased in the regular season is shredded or affirmed. So, here are the first round series as we see them. Thank you.

If you believe, like I do, that MJ was and is a supervillain, it is easy to paint the Bulls of the 90s as the Galactic Empire. If you are appalled by that statement, rest assured that when I say "supervillain", I refer to the kind of being that any of us with good sense roots for, the kind who is too cool to be truly good and whole inside. He is Mr. Glass. He is MF Doom. He is, in many ways, Darth Vader.

But as we all know, the Death Star has been idling for a minute now, and the man in black has found property elsewhere in the galaxy, down south somewhere, I hear. Meanwhile, the Rebel Alliance has come to new prominence under the leadership of a fearless young man driven by what? Love? Pride? Glory? All of it, most likely. LeBron walks on the sky like none other, and he wants some more hardware for his heroics. Sure, LeBron already got his medal, as did Luke at the end of A New Hope. The Olympics were some sort of benchmark for LeBron, ending one chapter and starting another. But he and his crew--his Han, his C3PO, his R2, his Chewbacca, his Obi-Wan--are dreaming of bigger things, you know.

The Bulls, though. The team with a name that, to many in our generation, is still synonymous with basketball. The once great Empire. You can bet they haven't forgotten the way their franchise used to run this show. And the end of the regular season has been an impressive showing of muscle, the kind of muscle that can handle almost any work when there is retribution involved. Chicago is a cold city, y'all. These dudes know what Hoth looks like, and they are sending their peoples.

Let it be mentioned that this Bulls team, this weakened yet tall shadow of a monolith of the past, has a lot more on the line than just reclaiming faded glory. They are led by a man who will obviously go to great lengths to get this franchise back on top. They have a dangerous crew of droids, an ugly-ass Wompa, and a new breed of man in black who is eager to show that his name must be mentioned when we are mentioning names. And, hell, with the way they've been playing lately, they may even get LBJ on the rocks and try to convince him to join their forces and rule the world.

Sure, the Bulls may have fathered this whole modern operation, but in the end, they will have to accept that a new force is in control. Big L will find a way to escape in (mostly) one piece and make it back to the Falcon. It is home, after all.

Defining Quote:
"A Jedi must have the deepest commitment, the most serious mind. This one a long time have I watched. All his life has he looked away... to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was."-Yoda

Cavs in 6.

Round 1 Coming Attractions: Phoenix-Portland

We here at No Regard love our stories. And the playoffs are where each narrative strand that was teased in the regular season is shredded or affirmed. So, here are the first round series as we see them. Thank you.

“You’re supposed to be dead!” “Am I not?”


How flummoxed the British soldiers must have been the first time they slammed their sword through a pirate’s chest, only to see that same pirate pull the sword through his body, leering, and painlessly slide it back out again. What a horrified look the Brits must have given each other as they ran towards their fate. How disheartening it must have been to fight a war against a well-armed and undead opponent. There must have been pirates in that bunch who had sailed the seas aggressively plundering for (I’m no mathematician) close to a million years. “Why, this is unfair!” the Brits must have wanted to point out.

By all accounts, this Suns team should not exist. They should not be able to walk, let alone play basketball. We’re talking about a team that starts Amar'e Stoudemire (who happens to age like Robin Williams in Jack) and Grant Hill (presumably a grandparent). Teams must be pissed. Every time Amar'e or Grant Hill dunks, I just imagine the Suns medical team, “cheersing” shots and cackling wildly like the mad geniuses they are.

I appreciate that the improbability of all this isn’t obvious to everyone, because Sun teams over the past decade have been arguably the most consistent and exciting offensive basketball team ever. So the fact that they’re still great may not seem all that shocking to your friend Steve, that guy who only watches games at bars, but what does Steve know? He's nice enough, but he's way too passionate about the league for a guy who's perpetually four years behind.

“Oh the Suns," says Steve. "Yea, of course the Suns are competitive. They always are. They’re so young and athletic.” Fuck no they’re not Steve! These are the patients driving modern scientific knee rehabilitation research! They should be in wheelchairs! Instead, they won their last two regular season games handily–one against a very strong, though inconsistent, Nuggets team and the other against a playing-for-a-TWO-seed Utah Jazz squad–to cruise into the playoffs as the three. Other teams must not know what to think. “My sword is embedded in your chest! Why won’t you die?” Confusing. Oh, and they’re led by the best pirate ever–an absolutely ageless (but if you had to put a number on it, 36) Steve Nash who looks as if he has a golden mushroom in Mariokart and he’s just hammering on the Z button.

Meanwhile here’s Portland. They have a golden boy, number one draft pick with glass knees who has been famous for porn more recently than basketball, and a stud shooting guard Brandon Roy sidelined with a torn meniscus. The Blazers are glaringly mortal. They should be spotted points. They should get an award (coach Nate McMillian just might), or at the very least an apology from the league. They should take the Suns medical team hostage.

The Blazers deserve to be where they are and will try like all hell to stab Davey Jones in the heart and make this Suns team mortal, but I hope it doesn’t happen. And I hope it ends quickly, because it's going to be almost too sad to watch this limping but proud Portland team discover that, even mortal and trapped, these pirates are gunners. Anyway, the Brits are boring and injured. How much more fun to root for a gang of trigger-happy immortal ruffians?

Defining Quote
"Drink up me hearties, yo ho!"
Suns in 5

Round 1 Coming Attractions: Orlando-Charlotte

We here at No Regard love our stories. And the playoffs are where each narrative strand that was teased in the regular season is shredded or affirmed. So, here are the first round series as we see them. Thank you.

"Because that will take all the fun out of it, silly billy gumdrops." - Blankman

The Superman moniker just never made sense for Dwight Howard. A singular talent deserves his own nickname, and the Big Nickname already went by Superman for a while. Plus, why compare the world's most shockingly spry big man (dude's missed dunks are thrilling) to the most boring superhero around?

Nope, for Dwight, Blankman is more apt. A naive young man who's blessed with congenital talents (for Blankman it's his odd brand of Goonies-esque inventing genius, for Dwight it's jumping), but is constantly maligned for not taking life seriously enough. Well, this is Dwight's shot to prove you can indeed save a city while having a laugh.

Look, talk of whether or not Dwight Howard is a real superstar—a top five guy in the league—is childish, but it's going to follow him until he wins a championship. He scores too little and smiles too much to be given the credit he deserves. He's getting hammered for not keeping blocks inbounds now? This needs to end and if he leads them to a championship, it will.

Remember: Darryl Walker doesn't become Blankman until he first tastes tragedy when his grandmother is murdered. Similarly, Dwight's superhero narrative starts now, in his first playoffs after reaching the finals and failing (it didn't start when he arbitrarily decided to don a cape and change what dunks look like).

The Magic and Dwight will be impressive in their first round dominance (as was Blankman in his early heroic act of delivering a baby in a stalled elevator). While Charlotte actually does have a bevy of tall men to foul Howard, they're a bit too old (Theo Ratliff, Nazr Mohammed) or unfocused (Tyrus Thomas, Tyson Chandler) to do much else. Mayor Stephen Jackson always gets up for the playoffs and might be able to win one game for Charlotte, but Matt Barnes is going to be able to get under his skin and do as much damage to his psyche as that orange dude in those foul Lamisil toe fungus commercials.

But we'll see if Dwight has really gone superhuman in their round two fight against the Hawks; in Blankman's first real challenge, he's unable to defuse a heap of explosives, leading to the death of the mayoral candidate that's tagged as the city's savior. So there's that. Then there's the movie's last shot: Blankman sprawled out across municipal steps, shaking in orgasm. Seriously, the movie ends with an inexplicable combination of Godfather: Part III homage and premature ejaculation. Prophetic?

Defining quote
"How can I be happy when there's so much work to be done?" - Blankman

Orlando in 5