A Sixth Sense

If you are a basketball fan (I guess this one goes out to all the husbands out there) then hopefully you watched the transcendent performance of LeBron James last night against the Detroit Pistons. LeBron scored 29 of his team's last 30 points, including the last 25. It was an incredible spectacle, with spectacular drives to the basket mixed in with questionable 22 foot fade-away jump shots that improbably went in time after time.

The Sports Guy's article on ESPN dot com about the game ended up using a couple of analogies to video games to describe just how dominant LeBron was last night, as though comparing LeBron to actual players would have cheapened the experience. The comparisons are apt, as the easiest (if not best) strategy in basketball video games is to give the ball to your main guy and just go to the hoop. I almost feel like doing that cheapens the integrity of the video game, so I'll frequently be looking for ways to get all of my teammates involved when playing video game basketball. Clearly I was raised in a town where John Stockton was idolized and not, say, Stephon Marbury. But last night proved that LeBron is a video game, and the Cavaliers actually do use the strategy of playing one on five, and it actually works. (Rant: thanks to the ridiculously bad defense of the Pistons. The Cavs had at least one guy on the court at all times who was a ridiculously bad offensive basketball player, either Eric Snow or Andy Varejao. I have no idea why Detroit didn't run a box and one at LeBron, or just run a freaking double team at him to make him pass. I mean, he literally scored the last 25 points! At some point don't you consider giving Eric Snow the chance to beat you? I would have rather given Eric Snow a wide-open two foot layup last night than let LBJ jack up a 30 foot fade-away three point shot. I'm not exaggerating. And yet there went LeBron, right down the middle of the lane...)

I've had some kind of stomach flu or something since Memorial Day which has me down, so I ended up going to sleep last night around 7:30 after getting home. I was feeling so under the weather I wasn't even up to watching re-runs of the three best comedies on TV (and for us 30 Rock isn't a re-run, since we've just now gotten into it).

So, when did I wake up? With 6 minutes left in the fourth quarter, right before the LeBron experience began. Now that's what you call a Basketball Sixth Sense. I may not see dead people, but I know when it's time to watch greatness.