theLeftAhead

Here Now – It was a devastating way to lose the NBA Finals. When you’re up three games to two and you have a lead on the road in the last minute of the fourth quarter of Game 6, you have the trophy so close within reach that you can almost scape a fingernail on it. Even though no lead is ever safe in the NBA, the reason why you…

C.R.E.A.M. – Championships rule everything around me, C.R.E.A.M., get the trophy. Baller, baller skill y’all. For the seventh consecutive home playoff game, the San Antonio Spurs blew out our opponent last night defeating the Oklahoma City Thunder 117-89 at the AT&T Center to take a 3-2 lead in the 2014 Western Conference Finals. In a surprising tactical adjustment, Coach Pop started Matt Bonner instead of Tiago Splitter in order to…

Californication – Last night, an irrationally unsettled Scott Brooks played Russell Westbrook 45 minutes in the Oklahoma City Thunder’s 105-92 victory over the San Antonio Spurs in Game 4 of the Western Conference Finals. Midway through the third quarter, with the Spurs down by 20 points, Gregg Popovich pulled his top six players and let his third string play the remaining 18 minutes of the game. After the Spurs bench…

Hot – The writing was on the wall from the first Oklahoma City shot attempt of the ball game. When Serge Ibaka calmly drained the first bucket with his lethal mid-range jumper and the crowd exploded as if Jesus had taken the stage at a Pat Robertson led evangelical revival, it was more than clear that the Thunder had meticulously planned for Game 3. This meticulous planning, however, did not…

All Along The Watchtower – There are two things that you need to know about Danny Green. The first is that Danny Green loves animals. And the second? Danny Green lives downtown and apparently his property is conveniently located near a KFC with a great lunch special because if you give him an ounce of daylight, Danny Green gets buckets. The Oklahoma City Thunder are quickly learning that the San…

Around the Block – Legend has it that there is a gunslinger who resides out west with a draw that is so fast that it defies the physical laws of time and space. They say that he is so quick that he can do what takes the fastest of shooters almost a second to do (namely catch, TURN, and shoot) in just a fraction of that time. Yes, rumor has…

B.O.B. – When the hip hop duo, OutKast, released their debut album, Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik, on April 26, 1994, Tim Duncan had just wrapped up his freshman season at Wake Forest. Fast forward twenty years and OutKast is the most buzzed about act on this year’s summer music festival circuit and Tim Duncan is making his twentieth appearance in the NCAA or NBA postseason. In the past 20 years, OutKast has sold…

Santeria – It was just one of those things. On the way to the Moda Center for Game 4 of the Western Conference Semifinals, a Portland TriMet bus came out of no where to inappropriately violate the space of one of the Spurs’ team buses. Or maybe the driver of the Spurs’ bus simply swerved after seeing that a snake was suspiciously slivering right smack dab down the center of…

Time Is The Enemy – At the St. Mary’s University graduation ceremony yesterday, one of the graduates ripped off his robe after walking the stage to reveal that he had written “Go Spurs Go” on his chest. Now, besides being hilarious, that was just about as #BlackAndSilver…#playoffs as it gets and, as it turns out, it was also just about the most dramatic thing that happened yesterday with regards to…

Heirplanes – In another brilliant performance, two-time NBA all-star and first-time MVP candidate Kawhi Leonard took the air out of the Staples Center last night with a suffocating all-around display of his versatile skills as a basketball player. The Los Angeles Lakers seemed flabbergasted with their inability to contain Leonard on either end of the court as Kawhi, who is this generation’s closest attempt at reincarnating the talents of Scottie…

Public Service Announcement – “Allow me to reintroduce myself, my name is…” Marc – O, B to the Elinell – E, I used to move them J’s by the O-Z. I guess even back then you could call me, CEO of the T-R-E. When Marco Belinelli hit two long jumpers curling off of screens to score five points during the fourth quarter of the San Antonio Spurs blowout Game 7…

Wild International – The San Antonio Spurs organization should strongly consider sending a case of HEB salsas to Paul Pierce of the Brooklyn Nets, as a small token of our appreciation. Pierce provided a valuable assist in the effort to save the Spurs season yesterday afternoon when he blocked Kyle Lowry’s driving layup attempt at a series clinching game winner for the Toronto Raptors in their first round match up…