theLeftAhead

All We Got – Condolences to Patrick Beverley and his family. The Rockets shooting guard found out about the passing of his grandfather an hour before the tip of Game 4. He proceeded to hit the first shot of the game, a three from the elbow, and set the tone for the entire night. In a game that was eerily similar to Game 1 in San Antonio, the Houston Rockets…

Friends S3:E24 – What’s good, Friendlies? Happy Monday to you. Welcome to the penultimate post of Friends 20/20, Season 3. Typing those words is music to my fingers. I won’t lie, I am readier than ready for summer vacation. In about one week and four hours from now I will be touching down somewhere tropical and dropping off of the grid faster than AT&T cellular service in a building with…

Guess Who’s Back – Face it y’all, y’all Rockets playing basic-ball. We’re on the block like we’re eight feet tall. [Friday Afternoon] Yeah, I did it. Guilty as charged, Your Honor. There’s no denying it. Yes, I used a Scarface song against the city of Houston for the Game 3 theme of my San Antonio Spurs blog series. I’m not even sorry about it. Judge, I refer you back to…

Rocket Man – And I think it’s going to be a long, long time till touchdown brings me around again to find I’m not the man they think I am at home. I mean, come on. This is insanity. Kahwi Leonard just obliterated James Harden and in so doing…the way the “experts” framed this year’s NBA MVP race. You need to take your “best two-way player in the game but…”…

Welcome to the Jungle – One of the great equalizers in military conflict is the element of surprise. Guerrilla tactics can often catch a superior army off guard to win a battle, especially in terrain as hostile as the jungle. Once the inferior army has successfully stunned the opponent through its initial guerrilla attack, it can use jungle terrain to its advantage to stay two steps ahead until the battle…

Victory – We’ve been hot for a long time burning like a candle. Much like Newton’s Laws of Motion, one would assume it safe scientific theory to postulate that if two basketball teams were to repeatedly play each other over and over again, it’s a statistical inevitability that eventually one of the two teams will win a game on the road. In the 2016-17 NBA season, the Memphis Grizzlies and…

Friends S3:E23 – Hey there, Friendinistas. What’s a koondis with you? Welcome to Week 15 of the resistance. I hope this message finds you well. Our feckless would-be Supreme Leader just celebrated the completion of his first 100 days in office by holding a 2016 campaign rally in Harrisburg, VA at the exact same time he should have been in the audience at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner listening to…

Let It Be – When I find myself in times of trouble, Manu Ginobili comes to me, bringing that grandpa juice, let it be. Welcome to the 2017 NBA Playoffs, Manu. In all sincerity, it really just wasn’t the same without you. I had a sneaking suspicion all day yesterday, as I nervously awaited tip off, that you would arrive in Game 5. Because of this hunch, there was no…

Heroes – Congratulations are in order for the city of Memphis. What a hard fought victory. In particular, congratulations are in order for Marc Gasol. What an incredible shot. Put more succinctly, what a heroic shot. With the weight of the entire Grit-N-Grind era of Memphis Grizzlies basketball quite literally hanging in the balance, Pau’s little bro aka Big Spain found the soft touch to deliver one of the biggest…

Friends S3:E22 – Okay, okay, everyone settle down and take your seats. Look, I know you’re all all very anxious to get your grades back on the homework assignment but we’re going to do that at the end of class. Come on…I wasn’t born yesterday. First, we’ll do today’s lesson. Then, you get your papers back. If we do it the other way around, many of you will be so…

HUMBLE. – If the last six months have taught us anything, it’s that whining can take you a long way in Donald Trump’s America. Case in point, Memphis Grizzlies head coach David Fizdale. Congratulations, Fizzy. Whining has now earned you a playoff victory against the San Antonio Spurs. In the least surprising development of the 2017 playoffs, to date, Memphis defeated San Antonio 105-94 on Thursday night to close the…

Good – What are we talking about? Data? We’re talking about data, man. We’re talking about data. We’re talking about data. We ain’t talking about the game. We’re talking about data, man. Different bat time, different bat channel, same bat story. The San Antonio Spurs have now defeated the Memphis Grizzlies an impressive ten straight times in the postseason after vanquishing our division rival 96-82 in Game 2 of the…