Closing Night

After a week in New York in which I went on a spending frenzy like I was George Steinbrenner and I'd just found out that a new mediocre pitcher was on the free agent market, it's time to end this east coast road trip. I was able to soak up quite a bit of the city, although I didn't come close to seeing everything. I never met the cabbie that tells Chris Berman who the Bills are about to draft and I never saw a NY'er in a Randy Johnson jersey. Perhaps those two things don't exist. I did actually catch some sports late last night thanks to the miracle of Slingbox. HUGE thanks to my buddy Nico (I feel so Simmons-y right now) for hooking me up with some streaming NBA, MLB and Sportscenter. Here's some reaction to what I saw in that lil' 320x240 window...

Nobody can complain about the Cavs being marketed by the NBA as a one man team. They are a one man team. If anyone other Lebron had stepped it up for the Cavs last night (even by just grabbing a rebound), Cleveland would be on their way to Miami. Instead, they have to try to win in Detroit against a Pistons team that might actually be starting to wake up.

The Mavericks also blew a golden opportunity in Dallas last night, but I don't think their fans should be quite as disappointed as Cavs fans. True, they'll have to win in San Antonio if they want to advance, but they've shown they're more than capable of doing just that. The Mavs were clearly missing Jason Terry in Game 6 and his return should be a spark to his team. As long as they aren't drawing up plays for Dirk Nowitski to launch fadeaway threes from the corner, Dallas should be just fine this Monday.

The Yankees' Carl Pavano is going to need surgery for a bone chip above his elbow and will likely miss the rest of the season. For those keeping tabs, that's 4 years, $40 mil for a 4-6 record with a 5.77 ERA over the first two seasons. I'm a bit surprised that the Yankees are actually going to send him into surgery. It seems to me that it might be more cost effective to just have him put down.

After an 0-3 night, Barry Bonds is still stuck on HR #713. Bonds has now gone 39 plate appearances without a homerun, hitting only .138 in that span. There are rumors that Bonds may have to move to the American League soon- not because he needs to play DH, but because the only way he can get another homer is by getting to face Randy Johnson. I'm beginning to suspect that those specially marked balls that are used for Bonds' plate appearances have been engineered by Bud Selig to prevent travel over 300 feet. Maybe there's some sort of weighted device that causes the ball to sink or something. Although realistically the only commissioner capable of such an evil mastermind plot is David Stern.