You guys know where that title comes from, right?

Right! It's one of the best Star Trek: DS9 episodes ev-AH. Ooh, when Kor sedated Worf and took his place, saving everybody, I have to admit I was this close to crying. Kor died, yes, but in his own terms. In the midst of battle, going down with his ship instead of letting old age claim him while looking at old family photos in a rocking chair. Kor was a freaking badass, and he wanted to die a badass. You have to respect that.

Yeah...

Hmm? Oh! Right, the Spurs.... ...What about them?

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Seriously, guys. I refuse to believe I'm the biggest loser here. I refuse.

Tonight, Westbrook dominates Kidd, Harden has a good yet unManulike game, and Dirk misses a free throw. Maybe.

Jump in!

This is the title: FUCK YOU, NBA.

But I couldn't put that in the post's title. There are rules, you know.

I came back today after a day or so of traveling around the country, with no Internet connection to use and abuse. I missed part of the backlash, the nervous jokes that help us vent, the nauseating trade ideas. The trolls, the people that love to show up and told-you-so, the Spurs fan hurrying to write obituaries - as if being the first ones to send our boys home will make it more special. The Dynasty is over! Read it here, everyone, while the bodies are still warm and haven't decomposed. Much.

I'm angry. My fellow fans are leaving the AT&T Center at halftime to beat the traffic, and the Coyote hasn't even brought out the T-shirt cannon. They are ready to remember the Good Old Days, acting like that Basketbawful asshole (whose site I visit everyday) who decided it was time to wax poetic about his old nemesis. It is easy to praise what you no longer fear, but to me his words stem more from relief and nostalgia that from real love or appreciation. I love the Spurs when Tim Duncan does that boring, repetitive shit he does so well, and I love them when Tony is fouled and stays on the floor like the French powerpuff that he is, and I sure as hell love them when the camera closes up on Manu's horrifying bald spot. If you only love them because they're done for, kaput, extinct, then your love means nothing to me. Save it. Let them become a couple of names and a vague memory of flops and dirty plays, as you want to. My people will remember them as they deserve to be remembered, when the time comes.

I've written this post before. This is the fourth straight year that we face elimination games, knowing full well that chances are against us. I usually expound at length about my positive outlook, like a stupid William Wallace asking Scotsmen to die in a war for freedom - only that the Scotsmen all die in a hail of arrows, I get skewered in my ass, and Hipuks shows up from between the bushes to laugh at us. "It's not over until it's over!" "The fat lady isn't a Grizzly!" "The boys haven't given up!" I say, and then they lose, they lost, they will? Clichés raining on you like Battier triples.

Well, you know what? It's still fucking true.

So I'll be there tomorrow, in front of the screen, looking at what could be the last game of the season, but believing that I could be watching the start of a magical sports moment, the bloodied underdog that throws a wild knockout punch, the comeback to end all comebacks. I refuse to believe that the previous teams that came back from a 1-3 hole were somehow worthier than Tim Duncan, who has won championships with nothing but a hard look. We still outManu them 1-0, and Tony looks good on a hoodie. It's time to cash in the infinite good karma accumulated through the years by letting Jacque Vaughn and Matt Bonner play in the NBA. Down 20 in the last quarter? No problem! The powers-that-be will provide.

B-b-but, Latin, they have taken our triples! Neal can't defend! RJ is overpaid! Matt Bonner is paid! Blair is playing less minutes than Tiago! They've broken the Spurs! How can we win?! Well, to all that I say: I don't know. I don't know anything about basketball. Seriously. Nothing. I'm an engineer and the whole extent of my basketball experience consists of shooting at a hoop in my backyard with a two-handed form so ugly that even Tiago would pity it. I'm not Popovich - yes, Popovich, that basketball genius that subnormal Spurs fans want to fire immediately because he makes mistakes. Look around the league, you nincompoops! Spoelstra has a job! They keep taking Popovich's second-in-commands as if they were all Red Auerbach clones! If there's one reason to want this Dynasty to be over is that the dry, winless seasons will probably cull all of you.

But you know what? If it was up to me, I'd summarize my strategy as follows: FUCK STRATEGY. We are overthinking this. What did we do in the past when they stayed on the shooters? We gave it to Tim Duncan, TIM DUNCAN, and let him score on his own. Or pass. Or do whatever he wants. In this series, I can assure you without looking at the number that he has been our most effective weapon. His field goal percentage has to be way better than any of the other player's. He had 5 dunks in Game 1 - and we wasted it! We wasted it, because we thought we were a team, we thought that Neal and Bonner and Blair could do something in the playoffs, even though we had no evidence of it. You know who's good to shoot in the 4th quarter? TIM DUNCAN. You know who else? MANU GINOBILI. What about Parker, who has been complete and utter dinosaur shit in the 4th quarters? GIVE IT TO HIM ANYWAY.

Tim took 7 shots in Game 4, and that's simply a travesty. I don't care how good Gasol is, or Randolph. If Hollins somehow gets that big red button that summoned Godzilla for the Japanese and they get a Memphis jersey in its size and suddenly Godzilla is guarding Tim Duncan, he still needs to take 20 shots. And if he misses the first 19, he should shoot number 20 anyway. He's old, you say? I. Don't. Care. I want him to shoot until he's so goddamned tired that he's taking hook shots with Rick Barry's underhanded technique. 20 shots! Until he either loses the game or they start doubling him, or someone at least looks in his direction when he's taking position and someone, anyone, is left open at the three-point line. Manu? 20 more shots. Tony? Let's throw 20 for him too.  We need our stars to be looked at as stars by our opponents. That's the whole point of having stars! And honestly, if this is going to be our last game of the season, I prefer to go down with guns a-blazing, and with the Big Three doing the gunning instead of Tiago Splitter or Gary Neal. I want the last shot of the season to be a Timmy banker, not a Bonner three.

That's how I feel. It's probably a stupid non-strategy. Non-strategies tend to be.

Say we lose. The obituaries will multiply, and the Internet will be a nasty place for the two or three days people will care about the Spurs. I expect 99% of all articles written to have two words: "Dinasty" and "over", in that order, most likely one next to the other. Me, I'm going to wait for Tim Duncan and Manu Ginobili to say they're going to retire. Hell, I will probably be expecting a comeback until the Spurs retire their jerseys. And then I will fantasize about what new number they will pick during their surprise return to basketball.

I refuse to write about them in the past tense, not right now. I'll leave that to the realists.

There's no shortage of them when Zach Randolph scores 25 on you.

There's no hiding from the truth, friends, not anymore. This series will be a battle, hard-fought, bloody - hard on the players and even harder on the fans. I am convinced that the Spurs and the Grizzlies' records are a faithful representation of where they are as teams when playing against the continuum of styles that is the NBA, but their head-to-head matchup is unfortunately closer. They are the defensive-minded, bumpy team that bothers us the most, almost a negative copy of our regular season free-wheeling self, and it shows.

No one said the playoffs were going to be a stroll in the park. So far, it's been more of a teetering walk along a tightrope, with the ignominy of the Mavericks-Warriors debacle waiting for us to slip and fall to its depths. Yet the truth is that it took a last second shot for Memphis to win game 1, and that as close as the final score of game 2 may be, when the Spurs had its full team, they won.

It's 1-1 now. We go to Memphis as we have gone to Phoenix before, or Denver, or Dallas. We have Tony Parker, and Tim Duncan, and McDyess, veterans of many such moments, MVPs. We have Popovich, we have Manu.

I like our chances.

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I'm a fan of statistics, an admirer - some might say a groupie. Statistics (and its anal-retentive brother, probability) tells me that it's pretty safe to walk on the streets at night, despite what I see on the news, that flying to my destination is not as risky as driving to it, no matter how many black boxes are recovered, that I have nothing to be ashamed of regarding the size of my feet - they are perfectly average, thankewverymuch.

Statistics uses unfeeling, uncaring methods, doesn't have mood swings, and it helps me not to panic when the Spurs lose by 30 to a good-but-fundamentally-flawed Heat team. (My girlfriend calling me a moron for overreacting helps, too.) For all the grief we give to the likes of PER guru Hollinger, his instinct to create verifiable formulas to try to predict the future of this crazy, uneven league rings true to me. He disassociates his opinions from his articles, and instead simply tweaks those formulas over and over again, trying in a way to find The Formula, The Model, that explains what he can measure in reality. He has got a scientist's soul, and I applaud that.

Now, sports fans have others tools available that see them through the long season, it's true: the heart, the ability to recognize the beauty of the game, a team clicking at the right time, the extra pass that allows a regular play to metamorphose into a beautiful work of art, the soul behind the boxscore, the keen eye of the veteran fan; they have the endless hope for that one game in which the tide will rise and then rise again, when mediocrity will gel into a championship threat; the stubbornness, too, to cheer when facing a superior opponent in an elimination game. Those are nice, and I use them. But my peace of mind and stillness of heart always stems from statistics, because then I know I'm not fooling myself.

Statistics tell me that the Spurs are a brilliant team, and reach April with the best chances of winning the whole thing since 2007. Their bench is at last good enough to hold the ship steady when the Big Three sit down, good enough to match the Lakers and the Celtics and the Bulls. Home court advantage is close, and no team has been better at home than us. SRS says so, Hollinger gives us the nod, pundits suddenly look at us and try to find reason why we won't, why the numbers lie, and yet if we stand atop our record we can see the entire league around and below us, right now, as I write the words I just wrote.

Stats say we're good, great, excellent. My heart happens to agree.

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I'm recapping this game

When given a choice of games to recap, I chose the Kings. It was a Friday, which meant that I might actually harness the fortitude to stay fully awake throughout a West coast game, and I would have my Saturday to write a lengthy recap. Well, you know what? This game didn't deserve a lengthy recap. It. Was. So. Boring. I should simply 'chop an image of Tiago bursting up through a pile of Kings players, and start up Black Ops. But PTR recap duty is like the Foreign Legion, so let's see how many ways I can think of to describe this utter annihilation of anything purple.

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This is not San Antonio

Traveling is odd. Tiresome, interesting, exhausting, and, for me at least, a great diet. There was a vacation, a plane that finally arrived in Buenos Aires, a missed combination flight, two mind battles with aloof immigration officers, two weeks in San Antonio, three Spurs games, an airline failure and a Caribbean island, boat rides snorkeling dams nice beaches but no topless beaches black sand white sand security checkpoints - and yes, some work too. Then 24 hours that took me across the Earth, and a suitcase full of presents and dirty clothes.

I work tomorrow. I want to vent, or share, or just write things down so someday I can remember.

Damn, I need to stop listening to Janis Joplin.

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So I'm going back to San Antonio. I'm arriving on Dec 27th, and staying for two weeks. Being obsessed as I am, I decided to go watch the two home games in that stretch, Vs. Lakers and Vs. OKC. The last time I was there Wayne organized a get-together for PTR regulars, and I must say it was fun. Dale probably can't go to another one in January, so he wasn't up to organizing it, but I thought I'd ask.

Anyone wants to meet before the game on Tuesday Dec 28th? I can't offer tickets, and they're pretty expensive (and almost sold out) so it might not be a great game for it, but it is what it is. If we reach some sort of undefined critical mass, we can have fun talking about the Spurs and getting to know each other.

What do you guys think?

transgojobot did this. He's awesome

I'm good at pattern recognition. I see a series of numbers, images, hear some sounds, and I can usually make up some sort of relation that explains the seemingly random arrangement. Being an avid Stampler reader through the years, I recently noticed that pattern, which led to me channeling my innermost Bill Simmons and formulating what I will henceforth refer to as "The Sad Blogger Theory". It goes like this: bloggers who use personal anecdotes in their articles improve markedly as their stories become sadder and sadder, edgier even, until they reach a point of maximum quality. Any further lugubriousness past that point will actually rapidly decrease the quality of the writing, and their popularity will continue to plummet down until they're DDoSed out of the Interwebs by angry Julian Assange-loving mobs. Here, let me graph it for you:

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So I'm still going to do this. I'm sure there are better things I could do with my free time, but my mood is fickle.

In this one, I try to SUBTLY break the guidelines. (Can you break a guideline?)

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So I'm in the middle of some Spurs blogging trigamy. Wayne asked me to write some stuff for a new blog he's thinking of starting, just like in a test drive, and I brainstormed for about 1 minute for ideas that weren't very PTR-ish, or 48MoH-ish, or Project Spurs-ish. Of course, I failed horribly.

And then I started up Photoshop and did this. Don't ask me what I was going for, but there you go. Enjoy?

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