Those darn vibes

The Knickerbockers of New York swept the 76ers of Philadelphia out of the NBA playoffs yesterday by 30 points, 144-114. It concluded a four-game beatdown of a team that came into the series having won three straight itself to  knock the Boston Celtics out of the playoffs.

And now, God help me, I'm starting to get these vibes.

Willis Reed vibes. Dave DeBusschere vibes. Walt "Clyde" Frazier vibes.

Please, Lord. Stop me before history kills me again.

Because, look, I know, this is utter folly. Comparing these Knicks to those Knicks? The legendary Knicks? The NBA champion Knicks? What am I, nuts?

Don't answer that.

Anyway, what got me hearing echoes of Willis and Dave and Clyde 'n' them is what the Knicks have doing so far in the playoffs, which is go through them like Patton through Europe. Swept the Sixers. Beat Atlanta in six games in the first round, booting the Hawks by 51 points in Atlanta in Game 6. 

In the last three games in that series, they won by 16, 29 and 51.  That's a a 96-point combined victory margin if you're keeping score at home.

Oh, and that win yesterday?

 The Knickerbockers led by 24 at halftime, having made 18 threes by that time. That tied an NBA record for most triples in a half.

Also, the 30-point win means they closed out their first two series by a combined 81 points. Both on the road.

That's "holy shite" and "omigod" if you're keeping score at home.

"Does this mean you think the Knicks are going to win it all?" you're saying now.

Oh, heavens, no. They're the Knicks. They'll find a way to crush New York's soul, same as always. And, besides, do you REALLY want to hear celebrity Knicks fan Stephen A. Smith if his guys win it all?

Good lord. He'll be hollering for weeks.

However ...

However, the vibes keep coming. 

Suddenly I'm looking at the way these Knicks distribute the basketball, and it's starting to look like the way Red Holtzman's Knicks distributed the basketball. Is that Jalen Brunson out there, or Clyde? Is Karl-Anthony Towns starting to resemble Willis? And who's DeBusschere in this scenario, Mikal Bridges or OG Anunoby?

By the way, did you know the Knicks' average margin of victory in the playoffs so far is 19-plus points? Which is the largest margin of victory since the playoffs expanded to 16 teams 43 years ago?

 Nineteen points! Why, that's almost 20 POINTS PER GAME.

Please. I'm begging you.

Somebody hit me over the head and bring me to my senses. Now.

Preview ... or not

 Christian Lundgaard won the Indianapolis Grand Prix yesterday at the Speedway, bringing it home for Arrow McLaren with a nervy outside pass of David Malukas with 18 laps to go. This immediately makes him the favorite for the Indianapolis 500 two weeks hence.

"Wait, what?" you're saying now.

I said ... this makes him the favorite for the Indianapolis 500 two weeks hence. Because doesn't the winner of the Grand Prix always go on to win the Greatest Spectacle?

"No," you're saying.

Well, Alex Palou won both last year.

"But Alex Palou won damn near everything last year."

And, um, let's see, didn't Simon Pagenaud win both in 2019? And Will Power in 2018?

"Well, yes. But ..."

But what?

"What about all the other years?"

Ah.

OK, so maybe Lundgaard's win wasn't a preview of coming attractions, although he had his best finish in the Big One last year, coming home seventh. And he's got one of the premier rides in IndyCar with Arrow McLaren. And he's got three other top-ten finishes so far in the young IndyCar season, including second at Alabama.

So, yeah. It could happen. But it could also (and probably more likely) NOT happen.

At any rate, Lundgaard's in the conversation now. But you know who raised an eyebrow in these precincts yesterday?

The guy who finished third.

That guy was Graham Rahal, and it was his second podium in the last three races, and, listen, who knows, who knows. Indy in May is the quirkiest of places, and it has a habit of occasionally meting out both triumph and heartbreak with wild caprice. 

How else to explain the fact Mario Andretti, the greatest American race driver of all time if A.J. Foyt isn't, won the 500 just once in 29 tries? Or Scott Dixon, the greatest IndyCar racer of his generation, winning it at 27 in 2008 and never since? Or Buddy Rice winning in 2004 and then virtually disappearing, putting up just two more wins, five poles and five podiums across an eight-year IndyCar run?

Graham Rahal?

Indy in May's mostly been a nightmare for him, especially lately. In 18 starts he's finished third twice, most recently in 2020. Since then he's finished 32nd, 14th, 22nd, 15th and 17th. Qualifying has been even worse; since 2010, he's started 26th or worse seven times.

And the last three 500s?

Well, in 2023 he failed to qualify but replaced the injured Stefan Wilson in his Dreyer-Reinbold seat and started 33rd. He finished 22nd.

In 2024 he started dead last again and finished 15th.

Last year he started 28th and finished 17th.

But, again, it's Indy. History's eddies course down the weird channels here. So maybe, finally, it will be his year.

Or Christian Lundgaard's. 

Or Alex Palou's again.

Or Josef Newgarden's, Scott Dixon's, Pato O'Ward's, David Malukas's, Kyle Kirkwood's, on and on and on.

Flip a coin. Good as predictor as any.

Speed freak

Maybe you didn't hear about what happened in Milwaukee, Wis., last night, where the hometown Brewers whupped the lordly New York Yankees in fine and thorough fashion.

What happened was, a splinter of a kid named Jacob Misiorowski shut out the Pinstripes 6-0.

Along the way, he struck out 11 batters in just six innings' work.

Also along the way, he threw 95 pitches.

Forty-one of them -- almost half -- dinged the radar gun at more than 100 mph. Ten hit 103 or higher. The fastest pitch he threw clocked in at 103.6,the highest velocity of any pitch tracked by MLB since it started tracking such things in 2008. Misiorowski did it three times.

Now imagine you're a batter standing in the box looking out at this dude, who's 24 years old but looks like he just got back from the prom.

He winds up. You dig in. He lets one fly at 103.6, from 60-feet, six-inches away.

Know how fast that pitch is traveling?

According to Mr. Calculator here, it's traveling 150.9 feet per second. Which means you have less than half-a-second to react.

Ridiculous.

Also ridiculous?

Misiorowski doesn't think the speed freak stuff is the story. Or at least not all of it.

"I'm not real keen on the velo, whether it's 100 or 103 or whatever," he said. "I just know if you don't have your other stuff or don't locate that in the zone or you're throwing it just down the middle, these guys can time up a jet plane."

Maybe so. But I can just hear what a Yankee or two might have said in response:

Oh, yeah? YOU try it, kid.

Indeed.

Wrestle mania

 I haven't checked in on professional wrestling since, I don't know, Rowdy Roddy Piper was playing dirty pool against Hulk Hogan or something, mainly because it's professional wrestling. Hasn't really been on my radar since I was into cartoons, which has been some time ago.

But this morning I was cruising the ESPN site per usual, and suddenly this appeared on my laptop: A picture of some guy with biker hair pounding lumps on some guy dressed as the Gingerbread Man.

"Well, THIS is interesting," I said to myself, and opened the accompanying story.

Let me say right here that things have changed a bit in pro wrestling since the Hulk/Rowdy Roddy days. And certainly since the Dick the Bruiser/Yukon Moose Cholak days.

Bruiser and the Hulk never beat up on a literal cartoon character, for one thing.

But, yes, here was the aforementioned Gingerbread Man, who was last seen cavorting with Trick Williams, a present-day pro rassler. This was supposedly the way Williams chose to troll his opponent, Sami Zayn, the guy with the biker hair. Sayn's hair, you see, is red.

He's a "ginger," in other words. Get it?

Anyway, Williams went on to beat Zayn, but that's not all, folks! You think pro wrestling's gonna turn its back on something as wacky as the Gingerbread Man?

Oh, HELL, no. Because on the next edition of "SmackDown," there the Gingerbread Man was again, celebrating with Williams and his sidekick Lil Yachty. (And, no, I'm not making up these names). Except -- what's this? -- it was actually ZAYN wearing the gingerbread man costume, and he proceeded to attack Williams and Yachty. (Again, not making up these names).

And the next week?

More Gingerbread Man.

This time, however, it was a mannequin Zayn had dressed in the costume. He proceeded to pound the dough out of fake Gingerbread Man, in the process "ripping off its delicious arm" according to the account by ESPN correspondent Greg Wyshynski.

So that's your pro rasslin' these days.

Can't wait for the next WrestleMania, emphasis on the "mania." I predict a cage match between the resurrected Gingerbread Man and the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man. 

Highest sugar content wins.

Canaries in the mine

OK, class, it's Friday morning here at the University of Blob, and ya'll know what means. Quiz time!

"Aw, gee, Mr. Blob," you're saying now. "Do we hafta?"

Yeah, you hafta. Besides, this quiz is easy. It's only one question.

Q: How do you know when an NBA team knows it's up against it?

A: When it starts griping about the officiating.

It's the canary in the mine in the Association, and it  happened last week, when the Philadelphia 76ers rallied from a three-games-to-one deficit to take down the choking-dog Boston Celtics in Game 7 in Boston. As night follows day, the Celts' Jaylen Brown came out in the aftermath and said the officiating in the series was less than impartial, and the league really ought to do something about it.

Fast forward a handful of days later, and here were your Los Angeles Lakers, losing to defending champion Oklahoma City last night by 18 in Game 2 of the Western Conference semis. That put the Lake Show down 2-0 in the series, the Thunder having also beaten it by 18 in Game 1. 

You know what that meant.

Sure enough, Lakers coach JJ Redick crabbed about the officiating in the postgame, saying Oke City gets away with stuff because it hardly ever does what Redick was doing, which is crab about the officiating. He also said it was disgusting the way LeBron James gets pounded on, claiming that LBJ gets "the worst whistle of any star player I've ever seen."

About LeBron, he might have had a point. In two games in this series so far, LeBron's shot a measly five free throws. And, yes, it's an eternal verity in the NBA that the big fellas always get pounded on with impunity. 

However ...

However, Redick didn't pick the most opportune time to take off on the officiating, except for the fact his team is down 2-0 and he likely knows in his heart of hearts that Oke City is just better than his Lakers. 

Hard to make a case for blatant favoritism, after all, when the Thunder was whistled for 21 fouls and the Lakers for 26, in Oklahoma City. Hard to argue Joe Official was a terrible handicap when the Thunder shoots just five more free throws -- again, at home.

Yet, Redick did. Because ...

Well. See all of the above.

A Turner Classic story

 My father never knew Ted Turner. Let's begin today with that obvious factoid.

Dad was a retired International Harvester employee, master woodworker and electrician from Fort Wayne, In., and Ted Turner was ... well, Ted Turner. Multimedia pioneer, professional sports owner, America's Cup champion, Jane Fonda's hubby for ten years. Southern born, southern bred, Atlanta's own.

But they fought the same fight, the two of them. And for one brief moment, Ted provided Dad the ammunition for it, sort of.

Allow me to explain.

See, Ted and my dad both died of Lewy-Body dementia, Dad in 2018 and Ted yesterday, at the age of 86. If you've ever seen it at work close-to, you know Lewy-Body is one hell-borne SOB, little by little erasing a human being's life and taking its time about it. It is, needless to say, excruciating to watch happen; you find yourself searching for any piece of the person you knew, no matter how small and no matter how briefly.

Which brings us back to Dad and Ted.

One day, when much of the man I knew had already vanished, I walked into Dad's room at the memory care unit, and the TV was on. It was tuned to Turner Classic Movies. "The Maltese Falcon" was playing.

Suddenly Dad lifted a gnarled finger and pointed at the screen.

"Humphrey," he said. "Sidney."

Sure enough, there was Humphrey Bogart. And Sidney Greenstreet. And a brief, precious glimpse of my old man, whole and present again.

Anyway, that's my Ted Turner story, on the occasion of his death. Except for this: Along with everything else he was, Ted Turner was the money man who got Michael Shaara's epic Civil War novel "The Killer Angels" onto the screen as a lavish four-hour extravaganza called "Gettysburg."

Which my Dad of course saw, being a former re-enactor whose unit appeared in another Hollywood production ("North and South II"), and a confirmed Civil War nerd of long standing.

Voila: Ted and my old man, on the same page again. 

Two men who never knew each other. But two men who somehow, miles and worlds apart, knew each other.

An eternal debate

 It's May now and down in Speedway, In., that old May soundtrack -- the whine and whoosh of purebred racing machines -- rises again from the erector-set canyon of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.  So I guess it's time once more to dust off the eternal debate.

 This isn't my idea, mind you. It's Stephen A. Smith's.

Or, rather, he's the one who brought it up a couple of weeks ago, when he was running his mouth as usual and said golfers and race-car drivers -- specifically, NASCAR drivers -- are not really athletes. 

"Come on, man," Stephen A. opined. "That don't count. You driving a car!"

This brought withering rebuttals from a number of NASCAR folk -- including, significantly, car owner Michael Jordan and longtime driver Kurt Busch. The latter posted this on social media: "Let's go cupcake. I will personally drive you around a NASCAR track for 30 minutes or when you pass out on lap 30."

Ooh. Shots fired!

Me?

Well, my best friend and I have been having this same debate practically since we've known each other, which is almost the entirety of our mutual 71 years. A confirmed gearhead, I covered the Indianapolis 500 as a sportswriter for 40 years; my friend did not. So he takes the "nay" position, and I take the "yay" position. 

Of course, we both long since concluded neither was going to convince the other, so the debate, eternal as it is, has become something of a pro-forma inside joke. Kinda like that old SNL bit with Jane Curtin and Dan Aykroyd, where Dan would routinely challenge Jane's position by beginning, "Jane, you ignorant slut."

In any case, our debate has gone viral now, and let me say this about that: Stephen A.'s elevator doesn't go all the way to the top.

I say this having watched racers literally being pulled from their cars in exhaustion after "driving" for three or four hours in the suffocating heat of a southern summer. I say it having watched IndyCar drivers circle Indy's fabled, capricious two-and-a-half miles for three hours at 220-plus.

Any twitch, any micro-second of inattention or less-than-superhuman reflex will put you in a world of often literal hurt there. Just as it will for the stock-car boys at Talladega or Daytona or gritty old bullrings like Bristol or North Wilkesboro.

Once, in what I like to call the Before Time, I got roped into a charity race at Anderson (In.) Speedway, another venerable old bullring roughly 50 miles northeast of IMS. I was 28 years old then, played a lot of basketball, and was in decent physical shape. The race was 10 laps on Anderson's banked quarter-mile track. So, what, 2.5 miles, right?

In other words, one lap around Indy. At, I don't know, 50 mph or so top end in a battered late-model I suspected was being held together by duct tape.

And who was utterly exhausted by the end of it?

This guy. Twenty-eight-year-old physically fit humanoid. After 10 laps.

I can't even imagine what kind of shape you have to be in -- or what kind of eye-hand coordination, reflexes and concentration you have to have -- to last 200 laps and 500 miles in a rocket ship traveling roughly 323 feet per second. Or  to make it through a 500-mile stock car race at, say, Talladega, where you're humming along at 180 or 190 mph inches apart from 40-some others for three or four hours.

So, yeah, there's my "yay" perspective in this eternal debate. And Stephen A. Smith?

I think he should take Kurt Busch up on his offer. Might open his eyes a bit.

At least until he passes out.