Roof That Peach

Love the manufactured drama of everybody calling out LeBron James’ horrific game the other night. Just because Knicks fans are spanking themselves at a frenetic pace, envisioning him in MSG next year doesn’t mean people who think logically need to blindly follow. He is LeBron James, and in Game 6 Thursday you will likely find out (again) that he can beat teams by himself. Of course, he could lose. But this being a “pivotal moment in his career,” as every pundit is saying, I’m betting on killa instinct. He’s not about to become Karl Malone, as Bill Simmons reminds us he could be in his latest volume.

• Remember what he did to Detroit in the ’07 conference finals? Not the same? No, not at all. He scored his team’s last 25 straight points against one of the soundest defensive squads of the past decade.

• You mean he didn’t try during stretches of Game 5? Stunning. Imagine, an NBA player coasting through parts of a game. And in a blowout at that.

• Are you trying to say Mike Brown is a bad coach and the rest of the Cavs aren’t even worthy of being called mediocre without LBJ? No way! In other news, water is wet.

What you really have here is just another moment of New York-centric media-manufactured hyperbole. Fan the flames that his bad night and possible playoff exit are omens. If Cleveland loses, the Knicks win.

But, if he should singlehandedly carry them to two straight wins (which is not difficult to bet on), the Knicks still win, because dammit, this guy’s a winner.

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UPDATE – Oh well, so what I was wrong. Best of luck wherever you go LBJ, because wherever it is, it’s not like that team is going to be in the Finals in the next 2-3 years anyways.

Three games into the NBA season, there isn’t a whole lot to report on the Toronto Raptors. An emotional, unexpected win over one of the Eastern Conference’s top teams on opening night has given way to two losses – one to an NBA doormat in Memphis Friday, and one against another elite Eastern squad.

But Sunday’s loss against Orlando doesn’t signify much. Fatalist Toronto fans may be hitting the idiots’ panic button now, but the Magic were insanely hot from beyond the arc — hitting 17 threes, tying a game record for a Raptors’ opponent. At the end of the day it was actually a pretty wacky game and Toronto really wasn’t all that bad, despite trailing by 22 at one point.

While Hedo Turkoglu seemed absent for most of the game, Andrea Bargnani rebounded from a lacklustre effort against the Grizzlies, scoring 22 in the second half and singlehandedly getting the Raptors back in the game late. Chris Bosh dropped 35 with 16 boards. I like what I’m seeing in the small doses of DeMar DeRozan — just a damn shame he’s going to hit that rookie wall in January.

This isn’t a Raptor team that is going to be spectacular defensively anyways, and sometimes your opponents can’t miss. The Raps were no slouch from the land beyond anyway — 10 of 17. Vince Carter missed the game for Orlando with a sprained left ankle, more notable because an unusually small Sunday crowd witnessed the game. Call it a Halloween hangover, I guess.

While I’m on it, seeing as Jay-Z played the ACC on Halloween night, I need to bring this up — this Toronto-ized cover (below) of his and Alicia Keys’ Empire State of Mind. Few things — Rosie O’Donnell included — annoy me more than Torontonians putting themselves in the same league as New York. This sort of thing NEEDS to stop. The reason New York is called the City That Never Sleeps is because it literally never sleeps. Finding a 24-hour restaurant there on a Tuesday night isn’t a lost cause, like it is here. And that’s not even taking into account everything else — infrastructure, transit, etc. SO PLEASE STOP THIS COMPARISON.