King,

The Pacers are indeed formidable, but Ron Artest is the current incarnation of Marvin "Bad News" Barnes/Mike Tyson; the guy is going to melt down, you watch. Also weighing against the Pacers is their alleged genius coach, Rick Carlyle, who coaches a dull game. Really dull. As for Miami, they will regret giving up Eddie Jones and having the new group of aging, selfish players.

It's true Detroit stood pat with the top 7 players of a rotation that got them a lead late in game 7 of last years finals, but consider these changes. They've shed Larry Brown, a great coach, but a flat-out head case, in favor of Flip Saunders. Saunders will finally, FINALLY, get something out of Darko, Carlos Delfino and Carlos Arroyo that Brown was never going to get. Add in Mo Evans and Davis off the bench and you have a really deep team that is going to have fresher legs come the playoffs. To answer your question: Detroit can beat the Spurs.

P.S.

If Larry Brown gets the Knicks into the playoffs, he deserves the Nobel Prize for Basketball.

King,

Like you, I beat it into my bunker after the sports-brawl-to-end-all-sports-brawls in Auburn Hills. As I emerge a year later, I am still in, well, Detroit, so it's hard to say if civilization has ended. Nothing seems any different. However, the NBA players seem to be dressing pretty snappy, so I'm thinking maybe the players are now running the government and major corporations. If so, we can look forward to excellent trash talk in congress and boardrooms. Also: 4th quarter beer sales (the price we must pay for progress!).

King,

When the Duke-LSU game was winding down, the little score box in the corner of the screen showing a 1-3 point game in what was obviously an important juncture in this tournament, CBS in my area (Midwest) would not cut from a Memphis-Bradley blowout to show the end of Duke-LSU. Here's how bad it was: with under a minute to play in Duke-LSU, CBS saw fit to stay at the Memphis-Bradley game DURING A TIMEOUT. That's right, with a number one seed going down in a tight game, CBS gave us a bunch of gays sitting around listening to coaches in a game the outcome of which was decided. This was a sports outrage! I say flogging is too good for these network jerks.

When a Muslim extremist does something wacky, mainstream western journalists ask, Where are the voices of moderate Islam? Why is there no reasoned condemnation of extremism by moderate Muslims? Now we read about the antic goings-on at the so-called "War on Christians" conference in Michelle Goldberg's excellent article and I gotta ask: Where are the voices of moderate Christianity in condemning such hate blathering? Could it be that American church hierarchies are at least tacitly complicit with the goals and strategies of the religious extremists? Does it seem to anyone else out there that our institutions (intellectual, scientific, religious, you name it) are strangely ineffectual coping with the provocations of religious nuts and opportunists like the attendees and speakers at this conference? The tone of Ms. Goldberg's article seems to be that these swine are desperate and beginning to suck wind as their movement to run everybody else's business loses steam. Let's hope so, because our cultural leaders aren't doing much for us.

With these words, Augustus McCrae, an implacable slacker in the novel Lonesome Dove, rationalizes his preference for a life of cards, whores and whiskey. Then, he embarks upon a perilous, arduous cattle drive across the as-yet-untamed West. Hard damn work, any way you look at it. Granted, he got drunk, gambled and got laid between episodes of hellishly hard work, but it was a delicate balancing act, befitting an amazing fictional character. For this he belongs in the Fictional Wing of the Slackers Hall of Fame.

As someone who endured years of grad school, I am all too familiar with the tension between the urge to work and its opposite, the urge to do not a fucking thing. But not-a-fucking-thing is hard to do. Conversation with other grad students is almost always dreadful, something to be avoided, as it leads, sooner or later, to pitiful confessions about "not getting enough work done," to be followed, if lucky, by another beer or another joint. I'm guessing that graduate school attracts "nerve cases" and turns out head cases. In any event, the author might someday turn his attention to the dreary subject of grad school, a perennial hotbed of slackerism.

Having said that, I would never read a book about such a revolting topic. I will, however, read Tom Lutz' book, thanks to Gary Kamiya's excellent review.

I agree with you on this one: Nowitski is a helluva player, but that's all he is until his team beats Phoenix AND the winner of Miami-Detroit or his team wins a championship some future year. Imagine that! Let's say Dallas beats the Suns (no sure thing); Nowitski then has to go up against Shaq and the Heat or Ben Wallace and the Pistons' meatgrinder defense BEFORE we call him an elite player. Hey, nobody said it would be easy, German dude. But that was a remarkable game 7 performance against San Antonio. I thought the Mavs were trying to blow it at the end of regulation, putting up lame jumpers with the game on the line. But Dirk wasn't having it, he went hard to the rack and made the free throw to tie it up. Still, until the playoffs end, I gotta ask: is he more like Jordan, or more like Dominique (also a helluva player)?

They appear to have flown David Palmer's body from LA to DC during a commercial break. So much for real time 24. However, the general mayhem and ass kicking in this final episode more than made up for the occasional writing lapse. Objective...don't think...can't wait for the new season.