Basketbawful

Wednesday, January 03, 2007

Let's see here. The Miami Heat are currently a very disappointing 13-17. That's "good" for ninth place in the dreadful Eastern Conference, a couple games shy of making the playoffs -- if, you know, the playoffs started today. The team was already without Shaq (knee surgery) and Dwyane Wade (his vagina hurts), and now Antoine Walker and James Posey have been deactivated indefinitely because they didn't meet a team conditioning goal (that's basketball parlance for "thier fat asses couldn't break the doughnut habit").

And just when you thought that things could be get any worse for the defending champs, Pat Riley is taking an indefinite leave of absence because of ongoing hip and knee problems.

Uh huh.

Look, I don't mean to be cynical here, but this is the same guy who a few years ago dumped his coaching duties on Stan Van Gundy during the pre-season when it was obvious the team sucked. But then Wade ended up being much better than expected, and the team recovered from it's 0-7 start to win 42 games. Then they got Shaq. And, well, you know the rest.

Now things kind of suck again, so Riley is taking a page out of Shaq's book and going on vacation for the not-so-fun part of the season. I can just imagine The Big Coffee Break having a meeting with Riley and saying, "Dude, just take 20 or 30 games off like I do. You'll come back refreshed and ready to dominate. Seriously."

I know he's a coaching legend and all that blah-diddy-blah. But at this point, Riley seems like he has a bad case of basketball-related Attention Deficit Disorder. He got tired of coaching a bad team, so he quit coaching. He got upset when the team didn't win a title in Shaq's first year, so he replaced pretty much everybody but Shaq and Wade (and yeah, I know it worked, but still...). Now the team is old and sucking, and suddenly he needs some time off to soak in Ben Gay. Funny how his physical condition wasn't an issue before the team started falling apart. I mean, his hip and knee weren't hurting him a few months ago when he was doing his victory dance...

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