Throwbacks

 Well, then: It's the San Antonio Spurs and the New York Knicks in the NBA Finals.

Just like 27 years ago.

Just like the last time the Knicks played in the Finals, and the Spurs won their first NBA title.

Now it's a different Knicks team, this one led by a watch-fob veteran guard (6-1 Jalen Brunson) and not a 7-foot veteran center (Patrick Ewing). And it's a different Spurs team, only ...

Only in some ways it's not.

Back in 1999, see, the Spurs were led by a 23-year-old center who'd been the No. 1 pick in the draft just two years before. This time, they're led by a 22-year-old center who was the  No. 1 in the draft three years ago.

The first guy was Tim Duncan, a platinum-card Hall of Famer everyone called the Big Fundamental. The guy this time is Victor Wembanyama -- who's on a Hall of Fame trajectory, and whom some folks call The Alien on account of he's 7-4 but runs the floor like a man a foot shorter, and plays anywhere the Spurs need him to play.

On the perimeter, he has a silky stroke that regularly bottoms threes. Down in the low post, he blocks shots and rebounds the way you'd expect a 7-4 guy with a 7-9 wingspan to. Out on the floor, he takes it to the rim like a guard, and even dishes like one occasionally.

And he's got the Spurs in the Finals just two seasons after they went 22-60.

Just like Tim Duncan, who took the Spurs to the Finals two seasons after they went 20-62.

I don't know about you, but I sense some harmonic convergence here. A little throwback soft-shoe, if you will. One of those occasions when time's river turns back on itself.

"But Mr. Blob," you're saying now. "What about the Knickerbockers? Don't they have some deja vu going on, too? And haven't they blown through the playoffs in historic fashion, winning 11 straight games by an average margin of 23.8 points?"

Well, yes. Sure. They also beat the Spurs two out of three times during the regular season -- the first in the finals of the NBA Cup, and the second on March 1, when they won by 25 points and smothered the Spurs defensively, forcing 21 turnovers and limiting them to just 41 percent shooting.

On the other hand ...

On the other hand, that was one of only two regular season losses Wemby and Co. suffered after the first of February. And on the further other hand, even though they lost the season series to defending NBA champion Oklahoma City, they blew out the Thunder in Game 6 of the Western Conference finals, then took Game 7 from the champs in Oke City. 

So they've got that going for them.

And all the rest?

Well, 27 years ago, the Spurs beat the Knicks in five games in the Finals. 

Something to think about, harmonically converging-wise. Or not.

Today's requiem

 I wrote my obit for Sports Illustrated almost two-and-a-half years ago now, on account of the magazine I grew up reading and that steered me into 38 years of writing about our games was long gone by then. Great writing and photography and by-God journalism had surrendered to the omnipotence of The Brand by then, and I mourned appropriately.

Here's what I wrote, if you're interested. Or, you know, not.

Anyway, I'm back on the subject today because SI jettisoned another crop of its writers yesterday, because writers don't matter there anymore. Hell, the bosses can just get AI to do the writing, right? And in some cases (I can hardly say this without throwing up in mouth a little), they have.

I can imagine Dan Jenkins throwing a young scotch against the wall up there in the celestial press box, hearing that. Or Frank Deford or Gary Smith or Rick Reilly or any of the other authors who made Sports Illustrated such a glorious festival of words, images and, again, by-God journalism.

Know what I don't have to imagine?

What another SI alum, Jeff Pearlman, thinks about it. Needless to say, he ain't too happy, either.

Here's how he put it on what can only be described as a seething TikTok video yesterday, and re-posted by the website Awful Announcing:

As a guy who wrote for Sports Illustrated for a long long time and a guy who loves Sports Illustrated, like loves, loves, loves ... this stuff carves me up. And it's one thing that they get rid of writers, they lay people off. What I hate the most is that these corporate douchebags who have taken over the magazine view it just as a name now ...

I do want to remind people, because I think it's important, and I know this makes me a dinosaur. To me, Sports Illustrated is Gary Smith, it's Rick Reilly, it's Grant Wahl, it's Ron Fimrite, it's Frank Deford, Dan Jenkins, Jon Wertheim, Phil Taylor. It's the great, great, great writing and reporting, where once upon a time they put money and pride into bringing you the absolute best in sports ... every Tuesday or Wednesday, you'd open you mailbox and there would be this bible every week  of what's going on in sports.

As someone who actually opened that mailbox every week as a kid, I say this: Amen, Jeff Pearlman. Amen.

Street fights over America

 Saw a photo the other day of the massive UFC build on the South Lawn of the White House, and I gotta say, Woodrow Wilson doesn't look so bad, suddenly. All he did was let sheep graze on the South Lawn to keep the grass in check.

I imagine some people thought that was an abomination, too, Americans being Americans. Never met anything we wouldn't complain about, after all.

In any case, this thing really is an abomination, or at the very least a big ol' thumb in the eye of a national landmark. I'd say it would be like holding a UFC card on the White House lawn, but they really are going to hold a UFC card on the White House lawn.

Some folks just have no couth, I guess. Or manners.

Anyway, this Street Fight Over America on June 14 is part of Fearless Leader's celebration of the nation's 250th birthday, upon which the founders told George III and the British to stick it up their nose with a rubber hose. It's probably just me, but I can't think of anything less evocative of that great shouting day than a bunch of half-naked tattoo enthusiasts rolling around inside a cage. 

Unless, that is, the founders settled on the wording of the Declaration of Independence by pitting Thomas Jefferson against John Adams in the octagon. "It's 'we hold these truths to be SELF-EVIDENT', dammit!" cried John, submitting poor Tommy with his deadly Roxboro Armbar.

Yeesh. What a country.

Of course, it's not just a glammed-up brawl on the South Lawn we've got look forward to these days. There will also be an IndyCar race through the streets of D.C. this summer -- keep it off The Wall, Sting Ray Robb! -- and, before long, Fearless Leader will have his very own Reichstag bunker, cleverly disguised as a ballroom. And how about that lovely Albert Speer Memorial Arch welcoming visitors to Arlington National Cemetery?

Talk about not reading that particular room.

But enough about all that. I just want to know what it's going to look like on June 14, which is also Flag Day. I also want to know how fast the new sod will grow in after it's all over.

That Donald J. Trump Presidential Pitch-And-Putt won't wait forever, you know.

Unknowable anguish

 Claude Lemieux was never cut out to be Mr. Nice Guy. If you'd handed him the NHL's Lady Byng Trophy for gentlemanly behavior, he'd likely have told you to stick it, and into what orifice, and with exactly how much force.

He grew up in Buckingham, Quebec, a mill town 24 miles north of Ottawa and 110 west of Montreal that was swallowed up by the city of Gastineau in the early Oughts. He died this week in Lake Park, Fla., just three days after serving as the honorary torch bearer in Montreal before Game 3 of the NHL Eastern Conference Finals between the Canadiens and Carolina Hurricanes.

Police say his son found him in the back warehouse of a furniture store showroom in Lake Park, apparently dead by his own hand. He was 60 years old.

In passing he leaves a quirky sort of legacy from his years as a player, primarily with the Canadiens, the New Jersey Devils and the Colorado Avalanche: Clutch performer and (not to tiptoe around it) a genuine horse's ass.

In his 1,215 games in the NHL, he won four Stanley Cups -- one with the Habs, two with the Devils and one with the Avalanche -- and finished with 786 career points on 379 goals and 407 assists. In 1995, he won the Conn Smythe Trophy as the playoff MVP, leading the Avalanche to the Stanley Cup with 13 goals in 20 games.

Of course, along the way, he also delivered one of the all-time cheap shots in the '96 Western Conference finals, running Kris Draper of the Red Wings from behind and leaving Draper with a fractured skull and a rearranged face. Because that was Lemieux, too.

On the ice, he was that annoying fly buzzing around your head, an agent provocateur who accumulated 1,777 penalty minutes in his career. If he played for your team, he was a hard-nosed guy who played hard-nosed hockey, because it's  hard-nosed game. But if he played for the other guys?

Well. Then he was just, you know, a horse's ass.

"A fierce competitor who rose to the occasion in big moments, Claude was a relentless, courageous and tenacious player who the team to the highest honors," Canadiens owner Geoff Molson eulogized.

To which opposing fans would no doubt reply, channeling The Dude in "The Big Lebowski": Yeah, well, that's just like your opinion, man.

What is not opinion is he's gone now, and the "how" of it is is ineffably tragic. That's because, as is true so many times when someone takes his or her own life, there is no "why" to go with it at this point.

The signs may have all been there, leaving those who are left to deal with a grim emotional stew of guilt, grief and, yes, anger ("How could he/she do this?"). On the other hand, sometimes the signs are not there. Sometimes hard-nosed guys are too hard-nosed, and shielding whatever is churning inside them in the armor they've built up across the years. .

Claude Lemieux?

Who knows what drove him to the back of that showroom? Who knows if the signs were there, or if he'd walled them away from the world? 

All I know for sure is there's this video clip of him bearing that torch in Montreal three days before he killed himself, and the roar that washes down around him from every corner of the Bell Centre is huge, huge. In its midst, Lemieux wears a sort of fixed half-smile as he enters the arena, holds the torch up, shakes his other fist. The fixed half-smile never changes through all of it, never blooms to full wattage.

I don't know what that means. I don't know that it means anything. And I don't know that we'll ever know. 

The unknowable anguish: The tragic core of a tragedy.

Bee time!

 And now the big news from the Blob's favorite sporting event that's not a sporting event, even though it's aired on ESPN. 

It's Scripps National Spellin' Bee time, y'all!

(And, OK, so it's "Spelling", not "Spellin'." But this is my Blob and I'll say "Spellin'" if I want to.)

Anyway, the Big Bee went to a lightning-round spell-off, and a 14-year-old from California won. Shrey Parikh correctly spelled 32 words in 90 seconds, beating out Ishaan Gupta and Sarv Dharavne.

"Question, Mr. Blob," you're saying now. "Did any Americans compete in this thing?"

OK, first of all, Parikh, Gupta and Dharavne are Americans. They're as American as George Washington, despite all the yahoos out there who think the only real Americans are named John-Boy Winthrop and came here on the Mayflower.

 Anyway, as their names suggest, Parikh, Gupta and Dharavne are of Indian descent. Americans of Indian descent own the Bee, having won 31 of the past 37. They're like ... well, they're like India in cricket, another pursuit Indians dominate.

"Question, Mr. Blob," you're asking now. "Is there a pursuit Indians don't dominate?" 

No. Well, maybe cross-country skiing. The Norwegians are all over that.

Anyway, Shrey smoked the lightning round, leaving Gupta and Dharavne choking on the dust of his correctly aligned P's and Q's. The winning word was "bromocriptine", which was not John-Boy Winthrop's nickname. It's a polypeptide alkaloid that mimics dopamine.

"Question, Mr. Blob," you're saying now. "What is a polypeptide alkaloid? And why didn't the spellin' bee people say, 'OK, now spell polypeptide' after Shrey rattled off bromocriptine?"

Beats me. What do I look like, a chemistry major? And I suppose they didn't make Shrey spell "polypeptide" because that would have just been picking on a 14-year-old, and nobody likes a bully.

Steal his lunch money and kick his schoolbooks into the street, that's one thing. But make him do extra spellin'? Unacceptable.

That's u-n-a-c-c-e-p-t-a-b-l-e. Unacceptable.

Today in Curse news

 The Chicago Cubs finally won a baseball game last night, pummeling the Blob's Pittsburgh Cruds 10-4 before a gathering of the chronically disappointed in PNC Park. This was big news for the northsiders, because A) they actually scored some runs, and B) the win snapped a 10-game losing streak.

About that ...

Some astute observer on the Interwhatsis the other day, when the Cubs were still losing, noted that the Cubs last won a baseball game on May 15. Which, the observer went on to note, was also the day beloved Chicago tavern owner Sam Sianis died.

Sianis, of course, was the longtime owner of the fabled Billy Goat Tavern. It was founded by his uncle, William, whom legend has it put a curse on the Cubs after owner P.K. Wrigley wouldn't let him bring his pet goat into Wrigley Field.

The Billy Goat Curse survived in myth and legend for 71 years, until the Cubs supposedly broke it by winning the 2016 World Series.

And then ...

And then the heir to all that died.

And on the next day -- the very next day -- the Cubs began to lose. For, like, 11 straight days.

So what do call this? The Curse II? Heir Beware? A Brief Unfortunate Return To Those Goat-y Days Of Yore?

Only Sam, William and that damn goat know. And they're not talkin'.

Paying the piper

 (In which Sportsball World once again cannot hold the Blob. You know the protocol: Read on, or take your hall pass and skedaddle.)

So I see my alma mater will have to fork over a quarter million dollars to fired employee Suzanne Swierc, and I say, too effing bad. Ball State University should have to pay her a quarter mill. In fact, if it were up to this alum (Class of '77, thank you very much), Ball U. would be paying a lot more.

It got off cheap, in my estimation. So pay the piper and don't play the victim, ya lint brains.

I say this because the current administration showed no stones and less integrity in dismissing Swierc last September, simply because she chose to lay a little perspective on everyone about murdered (martyred?) right-wing provocateur Charlie Kirk. The deification of Mr. Kirk was well underway by then, and Swierc was deemed not properly genuflective (to totally make up a word) because she said some things that frankly needed saying.  

If you read her post, it was the farthest thing from heartless. She didn't "celebrate" his death, as the more fevered of her detractors tried to claim. She simply pointed out that Saint Charlie occasionally said some pretty hurtful things about certain people who'd never done him any harm, and sometimes one reaps what one sows when you do that.

Now, not a word of that was untrue. But Ball State's administration went into cringe mode anyway, apparently afraid governor Mike Braun and attorney general Todd Rokita would come after them with pitchforks and torches. So Swierc was canned for reasons that smelled worse than any cow pasture in Indiana.

Or as the Blob put it last September:

In its official release the University said it went strictly by official guidelines, which state that a public institution can justify a dismissal by applying a two-part test to determine whether or not an employee's speech disrupts the workplace. The release went on to say the University determined Swierc's post did exactly that.

"... Our administration evaluated the impact of the significant disruption to the University's mission and operations and the effect of the post on her ability to perform her work in her leadership position," the release said, in a masterwork of handbook-speak.

And to which the Blob says this: Oh, balls.

Tell me how, precisely, Swierc's post was a "significant disruption" of her ability to (what did she do again?) promote and advocate health issues. Tell me how, again precisely, a post entirely unrelated to her job made it difficult for her to do that job. Explain yourselves -- or to put it in more educational terms: Show me your work.

Indeed. Or, better yet, be honest about it: Say you were a-feared of the Guv and Sanctimony Todd, and decided to cave instead of doing what higher ed is supposed to do.

Which is, stand up for the truth-tellers. Because seeking truth is supposed to be a university's core mission, is it not?

Any university worth the name, that is.