The Miami Heat. Holy shit. Road game in hostile environment? Yup. Opposing team strong in the front-court and point guard positions, Miami’s two biggest weaknesses? Yup. A focused, unrelenting, fast-paced, ice-cold statement win? Yes, yes, yes and yes.

For the first time this season, the Heat played The Game We Were All Waiting For, when everything looked beautiful and terrifying at the same time. Have we finally seen the Dark Passenger?

What can ya do?

– The Minnesota Timberwolves continued their recent run of challenging good teams for long portions of games before relenting sometime in the fourth quarter, this time falling to the Thunder, 111-103. Basically, the T-Wolves are an entertaining mid-level video game boss, with Kevin Love and Michael Beasley as the venomous tentacles/shoulder-attached gun turrets.

– Derrick Rose was ruthless in the final minute of play in Cleveland, and the Bulls scraped out an 88-83 win, extending the Cavalier losing streak to six in the process. I wonder what Rose’s favorite Skittle flavor is. I hope, like me, it’s purple. But I’m guessing it’s red for loyalty’s sake.

– Carmelo Anthony did not want to take the chance of George Karl’s 1,000th career win coming in Boston, because ‘Melo knows how much George Karl hates Dunkin’ Donuts. So he sat this one out, and the Celts won, 105-89. Also, Anthony’s knee hurts.

– Boy, was that Raptors/Knicks game fun. Andrea Bargnani blew up for 41 points on 24 shots, and probably deserved a fate kinder than Raymond Felton’s winning three that touched every edge of the rim; but you know, the Knicks have won six in a row with their own awesome kinetic style, and that, they tell me, is good for basketball, so I’m cool with it. Sorry, Andrea.

– Now THAT’S a tip-in. Andrew Bogut applied the perfect amount of touch to a perfectly thrown in-bound pass from Luc Richard Mbah a Moute as time expired and the Bucks got a muuuuuch needed home win over the Indiana Pacers.

– Even a game as crappy as the Hornets’ 93-74 win over Detroit cannot lessen the sadness of this news. J.E. Skeets summed it up pretty well on Twitter last night.

– The Spurs kind of kept the Golden State Warriors at an arm’s length for the entire game in their 111-94 win. Apparently they couldn’t, however, put an arm or even a hand up on Warriors bench player Reggie Williams, who shot 8-for-10 from three on the way to a 31-point night.

– John Wall sat this one out and, since he’s the young leader of the Wizards, the rest of the team took the night off in Sacramento as well, losing 116-91. It’s easy to be a follower, after all.

– The Suns went through all the trouble of erasing a 14-point fourth quarter deficit, only to have Rudy Gay (22 points on 12 shots) make a game-tying three to send the game into overtime, where the Grizzlies would go on to win, 104-98. Also, Zach Randolph hates the sun, er Suns — Z-Bo pulled the shades down, shooting 15-of-19 from the floor on the way to dropping 34 points and grabbing 17 boards.

– The Lakers/Clippers battle of Los Angeles was a very enjoyable nightcap. Or as enjoyable a nightcap can be without whiskey, one supposes. The Clips freaking had this one. Blake Griffin was pounding away on Lamar Odom in the post, Eric Gordon was taking and making big shots, the youth was revolting.

Heck, even when they naturally left the door open at the end, they denied Kobe the ball. They made Derek Fisher something other than a spot-up shooter. And still, he flipped up a driving layup at the buzzer and boom. It was over. The Clippers are definitely a fun watch, so long as you’re not a Clippers fan. That was rough.

**Williams photo courtesy of the AP.
**Bucks photo courtesy of the AP.

Twitter: twitter.com/griffingotta

Email: griffingotta@gmail.com

– Things got out of hand rather quickly in Indiana as the Pacers dropped an asteroid on the Raptors, 124-100. There should be a way to work an “extinction of the dinosaurs” comment into every Raptor loss.

– NBA to New Orleans: “All your Hornets are belong to us.”

– “It was a bad basketball game and we just played worse than they did,” Magic head coach Stan Van Gundy said of his team’s 80-74 home loss to the Atlanta Hawks. Now, an optimist would have said something like, “it was a good basketball game and we just played a little less good than they did.” If this game proved anything, it’s that optimism is for the birds, er, Hawks maybe? Sorry.

– The Milwaukee Bucks continue to have the offensive flow of a sink after Joaquin Phoenix shaves his beard in it. The Heat won their fifth straight behind Dwyane Wade’s 25 points and bushel of offensive rebounds. LeBron made some reference to the Packers and Brett Favre. Does that make J.J. Hickson Cleveland’s Aaron Rodgers?

– The New York Knickerbockers have also won five games in a row, defeating the Minnesota Timberwolves, who have won five games, 121-114.

– The Bulls got a big night from kinda-new-guy Carlos Boozer (29 points, 12 boards) and aside from the Durant/Westbrook tandem, Oklahoma City got a big night from Nenad Krstic (18 points, 6 rebounds), which clearly isn’t a part of the winning formula. Chicago won, 99-90.

– It is a fact of life that jazz music, the really smooth stuff, can put a grizzly bear to sleep in about 48 minutes. This remained true in Utah, as the Grizzlies went down 94-85.

– Eric Gordon continued with his role as the quiet scoring machine (29 points on 17 shots) and Blake Griffin did Blake Griffin-y things (highlights are a must at this point) as the Clips beat the Kings, 98-91.

**Phoenix photo courtesy of http://www.starpulse.com/news/index.php/2009/01/18/joaquin_phoenix_makes_his_hip_hop_debut_
**Base image courtesy of http://jodyporter.wordpress.com/.

Twitter: twitter.com/griffingotta

Email: griffingotta@gmail.com

As you know, in October of this year Isiah Thomas was taken to a New York hospital after being founded unconcious in his home. The incident was ruled as a “accidental overdose of a prescription sleeping pill”. This was just another scar on the post NBA career for Thomas. The real surprise in this particular incident is that he insinuated that his 17 year old daughter was actually the patient. Why he would try to throw his 17 year old daughter under the bus when it could easily be proven otherwise? Furthermore…what the hell happened to Isiah Thomas?

Isiah Thomas has some staggering statistics as a player. He attended Indiana University for two years under Bob Knight. He was on the 1981 National Championship team and was named the Most Outstanding Player for the NCAA tournament that year. He then left and was drafted with second pick of the 1981 NBA draft by the Detroit Pistons. He was a force right away as he made the NBA all rookie team. He continued to dominate at the point throughout his career and even lead the Bash Brothers teams to two championships in the 1988-’89 and 1989-’90 seasons. Here is a rundown of some of his statistics from Basketball-Reference.com:

- NCAA Tournament Most Outstanding Player (1981)
- NBA All Rookie Team (1982)

- 12x NBA All Star (every year from 1982-1993)
- 3x All-NBA First Team (1984-1986)
- 2x NBA SEcond Team (1983,1987)
- 2x NBA Champion (1989,1990)
- NBA Finals MVP (1990)
- U.S. Olympian (1980…never played because of the boycoot, but, was named to the team)
- J. Walter Kennedy Citizenship Award (1987)

He also scored 18,822 points had 9,061 (9.3 pg) Assists and 1,861 Steals in his career. He is the Pistons career leader in the following categories: games played, points, steals and assists. He is fourth all-time NBA in assists.

These are staggering statistics that led to him being chosen as one of the top 50 players of all time for the 50th anniversary team. He was also named to the Basketball Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility.

He retired as a player in 1994. This was when his career did a 180 and took a turn for the worse.

First, he bought in to the expansion Toronto Raptors franchise becoming a part owner and VP. He was run out of town over disagreements with management. He then tried a forray into broadcasting.

The real trouble started when he bought the CBA in 1998. The league later went into bankruptcy and no longer exists. Isiah Thomas has been given a lot of the blame for the leagues demise. The big reason for this is that he turned down a profitable offer from the NBA to turn the CBA into a development league for the NBA. Thomas declined. The NBA later created the NBDL as a farm system for the NBA which basically made the CBA obsolete.

Thomas was then hired on to replace Larry Bird as the head coach for the the Indiana Pacers. This was Isiah’s first try at head coaching and he was given a stacked team. The Pacers had just won the Eastern Conference title and were poised for more success. But, Isiah never got them out of the first round of the playoffs. They had the talent, but Isiah just wasn’t experienced enough for head coaching. It’s hard to believe that he couldn’t get a team with young talent in Ron Artest and Brad Miller and a veteran leader in sharp shooter Reggie Miller out of the first round of the playoffs. This led to him being replaced in Indiana as head coach.

In 2003, he moved on to destroy the New York Knicks franchise, where he was named President of Basketball operations. He also became head coach in 2006. By the time he became head coach in New York he had helped them amass the highest payroll in the entire NBA…..and the 2nd worse record. On top of that, there were allegations of sexual harrasment and racism by a Madison Square Garden employee.

To me, not many have fallen harder than Isiah Thomas after his career as a player ended. I think bad decision after bad decision may have finally taken its toll. He has won chamionships as a player, dazzled fans with his insane ball-handling abilities and could get to the hoop like no other point guard of his time. But, he fell from an NBA All Star (and personally one of my favorite players) to the the brink of death.

He ripped apart franchises and even destroyed an entire league. All of this finally culminated this Fall with him throwing his 17 year old daughter under the bus for his “accidental overdose”. This is a tragic epilogue to an exciting and dominating NBA career, and it should be a warning sign to current NBA players to not bite off more than you can chew when your playing career is over.

[tags]isiah thomas, nba[/tags]