Trying To Say Something Nice

“So what’s your theme this week?”

It was a simple question from a friend, one that I laughed off, but privately sent me spiraling. As we all know, sports don’t have a new theme every week. This isn’t fashion with “a return to femininity!” or “urban lumberjack cool!” It’s basketball. Games are won, games are lost. Occasionally, if you get lucky, you can follow a group of players that behave, both collectively and individually, in an engaging and flamboyant manner and that creates its own good story.

The Miami Heat aka the Heatles, would certainly fall into that category. And yet, even when the players contribute with buffoonery, you’re still, more often than not, a modern-day Pat Hobby scrounging through a pile of scraps to find something that sounds interesting. And this week, man, I was knee-deep in scrap. I was even tempted to write about LeBron James’s upcoming animated series about a family of different-sized LeBrons, or something, though I decided against it at the last moment, since I thought the show was actually positive and remotely charming. Ergo, uninteresting.

Like a Ouija board with a dated headband and crummy tattoos, James is usually the one who obliges most frequently in providing me with some answers from his dispirit world. I can always count on him to coax some “not-nice” from me. Why? Because, in what actually what may be my meta-theme for this column, I’m kind of a dick.

How do I know that? Because I can read. (Trust me.) And also, because my mother, who watches basketball, called me to tell me just that during Sunday’s Jets game. “Ease up on him,” she advised, from her West Palm Beach condo-slash-cocktail lounge, over a din that suggested a bunch of deaf, old people shouting about roast beef. “You’re beginning to sound like a mental patient, hon.”

Anyway, let me just say this: I don’t think James is actually a bad person (although I’ve called him every third name in the book), and to be honest, if it weren’t for him, I’d be doubly screwed here. But sometimes I just want to shake him because he speaks before he thinks way too frequently. Even Antoine Dodson and three-fourths of the LeBrons know that.

On rare occasions, James’s cluelessness can also work in his favor, like last week, as the Miami Heat shuffled like a flu-ridden Pope Benedict through a losing streak that has seen each one of the big three pull up lame — James and Bosh with bad ankles and Wade with a balky knee and then a migraine headache. LeBron was able to smile and laugh it off, even though it sure looks like they’ve hit a wall. In lockstep, the local press managed to find a silver lining as well: it…gives…a…chance…for…the…awful…players…to…play? Not sure if I buy that exactly, but it’s called a silver lining, not a gold one, for a reason.

Amid the nicks and dings came at least a modicum of actual (as opposed to manufactured) positive news, with the return of Mike Miller, a player whose shooting range immediately makes the team a greater, and perhaps the greatest threat in the East. Miller was injured during training camp and so the team has, technically, never been at full strength. The Heat still isn’t clicking on all cylinders, and yet you can visualize how it will look — Bosh in the post, Miller on the perimeter, with Wade and Bosh alternating drawing the double-team and Coach Spoelstra making sure that Crimean war veteran Juwan Howard doesn’t die of old age on the bench.

At the base level, Miller immediately opens up the post for LeBron who, in Bosh’s absence, has promised to discover his inside presence, one that a player of his size should’ve learned in college from Roy Williams or one of those Italian coaches in the country music capitals. Beyond that, Miller can create his own shot, has a quick release, and, if he’s feeling it, can score in bunches, as he is beginning to do.

In a tangentially related story, the team certainly chose an odd week to tell season ticket holders that they will have to dig a little deeper next season. Personally, I don’t find the amount onerous or even unreasonable for a top-flight team who will be in the mix for a championship every year. Then again, my views could be tempered by the fact that my mother has recently discovered the Internet and, while she’s old enough to have actually owned an awl, she doesn’t really want a mental patient for a son.

Tony Gervino is a New York City-based editor and writer obsessed with honing his bio to make him sound quirky. He can also be found here.

Photo by Keith Allison, from Flickr.