Afternoon Delight

For those who like it in the afternoon, we thought we'd help out with a little something to get in the mood.  Shout out to our friends at Hooped Up Online for unearthing this (Diamond? Rhinestone? RingPop?) in the rough. Watching this I smiled, grimaced, felt strangely aroused, and threw up in my mouth, but my fantasies about a man nicknamed "Big Baby" are my business, not yours.

Team Dreamin' 2011: THUNDER

At No Regard, we love basketball. We love the spectacle and strategy of the game, but sometimes the league's lack of imagination confounds and disappoints us. Call us optimists, visionaries, or kids who watched too much Space Jam, but we have ideas. Damn are we gonna share 'em.

The Thunder found near-immediate success settling into Oklahoma City; that which can't be credited directly to Kevin Durant's instant superstardom certainly goes to a young bench teeming with raw talent.

Watching a Thunder game this season guarantees three things:

1) KD and Russell Westbrook continuing to blossom before your eyes.

2) A host of rising stars jockeying to position themselves around Kid Delish and Jet Zero.

3) A gargantuan and vacuous black hole at the 5-spot, a position the front office seems intent to never actually fill.

The Thunder need more guards like Peyton Manning needs another endorsement deal. Ignoring the need for big men troubled them all season. Surrendering the paint buried them in the playoffs. Do we have ideas for them? Of course we do.

Consider the above photo. Pick out who is the most bored and who is the craftiest guy there. Easy, right? Bored goes to Nick Collison (Lower Left, Napping). Craftiest goes to James Harden (Top Back Right, Suit).

James, Nick, can you guys come over here for a second? Hey fellas, have you ever seen Freak the Mighty?

Perfect. Here’s what we’re gonna do…

Finals Game 4: Babys R Us

"Because this is what legends are made of. This is where you grasp the moment. Immortality. This is all you can do right now." -Glen Davis

The ravings of a madman are perhaps all that can be used to describe this game. Everything about it seemed backwards. Despite being completely outplayed, the Celtics snuck past the Lakers and tied up the Finals. Their salvation did not come from men nicknamed Jesus or Truth, but rather from the one they call Big Baby, and a sidekick who coincidentally looks like a Baby.

For the most part, this game looked like it was was being played on a Tuesday night in December. With the exception of Kobe, the entire Lakers squad seemed to want to excuse themselves for the evening. They passed too much, shot too little, and seemed to hope someone else would win the game for them. Well some other guys did win the game, but they were wearing green.

Going into this series I assumed we'd eventually see a night where the Big 3 crumbled and Rondo went limp and Sheed locked himself in foul jail. What I would not have guessed is that the dynamic duo surfacing to spearhead the effort to win this game would have been Glen Davis and Nate Robinson. It was a remarkable sight to behold, and their post-game interviews are among my favorite things to come out of this finals so far. Davis grimaced at the microphone, concentrating so hard, as though he'd practiced this speech (the nonsense in italics above) since he was a kid. When Nate came on, he had a towel rolled around his neck and tucked into his shirt the way my mom used to do when I got out of swim lessons. The absolute jubilation in their faces won me over. I forgot entirely that before last night I'd really only mildly disliked these two players.

There may very well never be a night like that again. Nate and Baby will not be tearing it up anytime soon, the Lakers are never caught sleeping twice. The Big Four were given a pass last night, but on Sunday they'll be back in LA, and naptime will be over.