NBA Finals Game 6 Diary

First off, I gotta give my boy Greg a big 25th birthday shoutout!!! Happy birthday bro!

Now to the game. I started watching a little late. We're about half way through the 2nd Quarter. Let's get into it.

9:47 - Powe just scored after a horrible turnover by LA. Isn't this Celtics crowd 100x better than LA's crowd? I mean seriously, did it ever seem like LA's crowd was into any game at all? I don't think so.

9:49 - What the heck are these stupid commercials with the "couch surfer" for T-Mobile? I do not understand these. Is the guy a professional loafer or is his hobby being a hobo? Either way it does not make me want to change my wireless service to T-Mobile.

9:52 - Poor Ray Allen can't catch a break. First, is kid is sick in the hospital, now he's stuck in the locker room because goofy Lamar Odom hit him in the eye. They do not want him to enjoy this, even if he wins do they?

9:55 - Great rebounding by the Celtics leads to a Posey 3. But why is Garnett chilling out at the 3 point line?

9:56 - 3 by Eddie House. The Human Microwave is what I like to call him.

9:58 - Notice that when the NBA commercial comes on and they talk about fear, they show Kevin Garnett. I'm telling you, I love KG but dude has faded into obscurity in the Finals.

10:00 - I never want a pick to be set on me by Big Baby Davis! Ever!

10:01 - Ray comes out of the tunnel. We've seen this before.

10:02 - Posey with another 3 and the Celtics are up 14. Why did it take Doc Rivers the entire series to decide to put Posey on Kobe. Really, I should put my toughest, best defender on the other team's best player? Really, that works?!

10:05 - KG shoots a turnaround fade away jumper over Kobe. Why not go right at him?

10:08 - Mike Breen tells us that Kobe said that Paul Pierce was his favorite player in the NBA. I wonder if that was a compliment or a backhanded remark in the direction of his teammates?

10:14 - The Celtics are one of the only NBA teams that OVER pass. Completely unrelated side note: Jordan Farmar is my least favorite point guard in the NBA.

10:17 - KG with a ridiculous and 1. Marc Jackson refers to it as a "kiss" off the glass. I would say more like a punch to the face off the glass.

10:18 - Boston up by 23 at halftime. Kobe has 14 but only 3 in the 2nd Quarter. I just hope the Celtics didn't spend all their energy on this run. I hope they got some left for the second half.

10:31 - I'm kind of tired of hearing about how great these finals are just because it's a Celtics/Lakers match up. There's been several times in this series that I turned off the tv because the basketball was so bad. Bill Simmons even got an email from a reader talking about how there were times in this series that the 10 players on the court were probably the 10 worst players to ever appear in the NBA Finals. These sound bytes from Doc and Phil are hilarious. They aren't saying anything meaningful.

10:35 - Let's show Kobe being a good dad to his daughters so everyone will forget what a jerk he is to his teammates. Dwayne Wade should stick to commentating. I've said this over and over again lately, D-Wade is the new Penny Hardaway. Ridiculous in his first 3 years in the league, successful because he played with Shaq, compared to Jordan, gets injured a ton, ends up hardly playing for the rest of his injury plagued career. It's gonna happen. You watch!

10:44 - I could watch Ray Allen shoot all day, and I wouldn't mind if I never saw Radmonovic shoot again.

10:45 - I'm not a fan of the huge NBA Finals Trophy painted on midcourt. It looks stupid.

10:47 - Danny Ainge won NBA executive of the year because Kevin McHale is his friend and David Stern needed to take attention off the Donnaghy Scandal.

10:49 - Wow, I actually liked a comment Jeff VanGundy made. He told Mike Breen that the ball wasn't bouncing the Celtics' way but that they were pursuing it.

10:52 - If they say something about the 17th title on the 17th of June one more time, I'm going to throw my computer at my tv.

10:53 - Marc Jackson just called Ray Allen "Jesus Shuttlesworth" his character's name from the Spike Lee directed "He Got Game." haha. I agree with Bill Simmons that the LA jumbotron operator really messed up by not showing the scene from that movie where Denzel puts it on Jesus Shuttlesworth in their one-on-one pick up game. Denzel is a huge Laker fan. The crowd would've gone nuts... oh wait, the game was in LA, the crowd there never goes nuts.

10:56 - I wonder what Kobe just whispered to Lamar Odom, I'm gonna kick your tail after this game if we lose. Maybe he desperately apologized for being a bad teammate in hopes of getting Odom to play hard... Nah I wouldn't count on that.

11:01 - Are the Celtics really up 31 points? This is crazy.

11:03 - I almost wonder if all the talk about the Western Conference being so much better than the Eastern Conference will be silenced if the Celtics win. Especially since it took 7 games for the the Celtics to get through both of the first two rounds. Obviously teams in the east are more physical and more defensively oriented (with the Spurs being an exception and it was mainly injuries that killed them). I wonder if the Lakers would have breezed through the Eastern Conference Playoffs the way they did in the West. I'm thinking maybe not.

11:08 - Right before Rondo strips the ball away from Kobe, I was asking myself why the Lakers aren't giving Kobe the ball every time down the court. But I guess that would be the obvious thing to do.

11:10 - And now we're all aware of VanGundy's man crush on John Havlicek.

11:12 - Someone needs to show Vuya-dork or whatever his name is, the video of an ancient Ray Allen blowing right by him at the end of game 4 to remind him that he's a horrible defender and encourage him to stop acting like a fool on defense. Please do it NOW!!!!

11:14 - I want this last quarter to fly by so I can watch the trophy presentation and get to bed at a reasonable hour.

11:20 - Farmar commits a stupid flagrant foul on Rondo. Why foul there? Why? sometimes I wonder what's going through these guys' heads when they play basketball.

11:22 - Phil Jackson looks like someone just tried to pluck the hairs in his soul patch.

11:23 - I hope everyone realizes that Andrew Bynum is going to comeback next year and be horrible!!!!

11:24 - Vujacic is going to have nightmares of Ray Allen for years to come.

11:25 - Phil Jackson calls a timeout after another Ray Allen 3-pointer. This gives me a chance to say: Please stop with the Kobe - MJ comparisons!!!!! It's not even close! Would His Airness ever let his team get beat by 30 points in the Finals?! Would he ever let his team blow a huge lead at home in the Finals? NOOOOOOO!!!!! All you're doing by comparing the two is tainting Jordan's legacy and ruining Kobe's chance of ever living up to expectations. Please stop!

11:31 - Doc and Rondo embrace each other as Rondo comes out of the game. One thing you gotta hand to Doc Rivers is that these guys love playing for him. He's not the most overwhelming pre-game speaker, but his players do love him. That says a lot about a coach.

11:35 - David Stern obviously allowed this game to go un-fixed if you will in order to dispel all the accusations made by Donnaghy. If these things hadn't come out when they did then you better believe a series of this historical magnitude would find a way to go 7 games.

11:40 - My favorite stat of the night: 25 All-Star appearances between KG, Pierce and Allen, 1 Championship won together by sacrificing individual glory. I love team sports!!!

11:42 - I love that they just showed that Kobe has 1 assist.

11:45 - I'm sorry but I'm the guy that would say all those things about the WNBA.

11:47 - Turiaf = 6 Fouls

11:49 - 40 point lead? This is crazy? I know I already said that but really I did not expect this at all.

11:51 - Gatorade shower on the basketball court? This celebration is getting out of hand! But when you're up by 40 points for the whole second half, you just have too much time to think about it.

11:54 - Ball game. Celtics are Champs and the Lakers look like they didn't even deserve to be there. I'm happy for the Big 3 though. They're all good guys and hard players. What a great team.

Thanks for reading this if you stuck with it and read the whole thing. It's the first time I've tried a long post like this. Let me know what you think.

Peace. Congrats Celtics.

Record Review

N*E*R*D - Seeing Sounds

2008 Star Trak/Interscope Records

Noel's Rating: 4/5

N*E*R*D is by no means new to musical success and critical acclaim. The band was formed by super producers Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo (collectively known as the Neptunes) and their childhood friend Shay Haley. In 2002 they released the cult classic, In Search Of... which fused hip-hop beats with hard rock instrumentation. This effort was followed up by the more eclectic Fly or Die in 2004. Fly or Die featured tracks influenced by almost every popular musical genre. Seeing Sounds shows the band's continued growth and their new focus on live performance and does it in short but really fun album.

The album opens with a monologue by Pharrell explaining the album title. Apparently, at the age of 7, Pharrell started "seeing sounds," which I still don't completely understand but he said in a recent interview that it is in reference to a scientific field of study called synesthesia. The intro leads into the opening track, Time for Some Action which is a hard rock tune with vocals from Pharrell, Shay and the lead singer of the Hives. The second track is the lead single Everyone Nose (note: I know that the spelling is funny, I'm not an idiot, listen to the song). This song is a bouncy fun track warning young females against a life of partying and club hopping. This one is followed up by the poppy Window which makes Pharrell sound like a somewhat creepy "peeping Tom," but I think it's really his inner 13-year old boy self coming out. After Window, comes one of my favorite tracks from the album the hard rock/hip hop fusion track, Anti Matter. This track brings the heat that the Neptunes are famous for, banging beats and catchy hooks. The next track, Spaz rounds out the head banging hard and fast first 5 songs. By now you've probably heard this song a few times as it is on the Zune commercials and on the MTV new music week commercials. This was my favorite song that N*E*R*D performed at the Glow in The Dark Tour.

After Spaz, you can finally catch your breath with the smooth and jazzy, Yeah You which features Pharrell and Shay trading verses about psycho groupie stalkers (something we all can relate to right?). Sooner or Later is next and it is being hailed by many critics as the best song on the album. It features the Pharrell crooning that we've all come to know and love over a simple beat and piano solo before a crazy guitar solo at the end. Happy and Kill Joy are sandwiched between Sooner or Later and the politically charged Love Bomb. You Know What, another jazzy disco type track, and Laugh About It, a punky dance jam, close out the album's official track list. There's one bonus track, a real gem for fans, the Everyone Nose Remix featuring Kanye West, Lupe Fiasco and Pusha T. This hip hop track makes everyone hope that those rumors about a CRS (Kanye, Pharrell, & Lupe) album will one day come to fruition.

Overall this album is a ton of fun to listen to. The great thing about N*E*R*D is that you know what you're going to get: futuristic sounding space-age production, corny (but fun) lyrics, and a good time. Seeing Sounds picks right up where Fly or Die and In Search Of... left off.

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Tonight I think I'm going to try a running diary of Game 6 of the NBA Finals. Ashley's away at girls camp so I'll be here by myself watching the game. We'll see how it goes.

NBA Finals Update

So the most anticipated NBA Finals in recent history are in full swing. By now you've already heard all the Celtics vs. Lakers hype and you've had time to digest the first two wins by the Celtics. The first game had the drama of Paul Pierce coming back from what seemed to be a season ending knee injury only to nail 2 huge three-pointers and lead the Celtics to a 10-point win. It seemed almost magical. A writer couldn't have written a better story. Well that was until game two.

Game two, Leon Powe bursts onto the scene. The Celtics' reserve forward who was buried on the Boston bench during the Eastern Conference Finals against the Detroit Pistons, exploded for 21 points thanks to some super helpful calls by the officiating crew. This didn't really bother me because I'm not exactly the biggest Lakers fan (or Kobe fan for that matter), but it made me wonder about the integrity of the game, especially when the halftime special was on none other than Leon Powe! Did anyone else find that a little suspicious? I know my NBA conspiracy theories are widely known and mostly disagreed with, but come on. The first time this dude has gotten serious minutes since March and he blows up for 21 against Kobe and the Lakers, and he also just happens to be the focus of the halftime heart-wrenching story. Hmmm. I just don't know. I'm hoping that ABC has already filmed all of the halftime specials and that they just pick the one that involves the player that is playing the best at halftime of that particular game.

Basically all of this boils down to money. The NBA is interested is making as much money as possible. If you think the most hyped series in Finals history is not going 7 games, then you got something else coming. Can you imagine how many people will be tuning in to ABC for that final game!?!?! David Stern is seeing nothing but dollar signs right now. Don't be surprised to see the Lakers win at least two now that the series shifts to L.A.

Tomorrow: N*E*R*D "Seeing Sounds" Record Review