There are some bitter folks in our nation's capital. And it has nothing to do with John McCain's energy plan. Fans of the Wizards — and the folks that cover them — seemed especially bitter about the suspension of Darious Songaila, aka Shaquille Erving Magic Jordan, for Game 6. The suspension was a surprise, given much worse had happened. But the league had its reasons.

The Washington Post's Mike Wise wrote that the suspension was "one of the great miscarriages of playoff justice ever meted out by the NBA, a travesty that cheated the Wizards out of having a legitimate shot of bringing the series to a Game 7 climax, irrespective of the final score."

The only disgusting miscarriage news heard recently was about that Yale art student (warning: not for kids) who claimed her senior project came from intentional miscarriages. This is what we get for $40,000 a year for higher education, a byproduct, one would assume, of $3 cups of coffee.

As for the NBA and miscarriages, let's just say the league is sometimes inexplicable and leave it at that.

Tom Knott of the Washington Times is no fan of James. He wrote: "With the suspension of Darius Songaila, league officials might as well allow James to play in the Popemobile."

Perspective is an amazing thing. Be real … without perspective and different viewpoints would we ever have "Deal or No Deal"? In Washington, James is viewed as crybaby numero uno. That's fancy language for "number one." In Cleveland, James was the victim of the most egregious attacks since the James Gang. Truth be told, there were several ugly flagrant fouls in the series, and all were on James.

This might mean he was the only one going to the basket, but it doesn't. It means he was the victim of hard fouls that were excessive. Hard fouls are part of the playoffs. What happened to our LeBron went beyond simple hard fouls. They were cheap shots. He thought the Wizards wanted to hurt him; I thought they wanted to intimidate him. No matter. The fouls were excessive, period and end of discussion. The league thought so. The Cavs thought so. Washington folks didn't. Perspective.

Final result: The Cavs won the Series 4-2.

This is the point when all Cavs fans can put their thumbs in their ears, wiggle their fingers and stick out their tongues while looking toward D.C.

But I wonder this … Washington writers properly made a big deal out of Caron Butler and Antawn Jamison taking charge in Game 5 and telling their teammates just to play. If those two pros didn't think things were getting out of hand, why make the statements? And why write about them as if they had just ridden in with the light brigade?

Meanwhile, the D.C. sports blog quoted Butler after the game this way: "I'm a man, he's a man, and when the battle was over, I went up to him and gave him respect…. We fought it out, and the best man won. He said, 'Good series dog, respect, respect,' and we walked off. That's what men do."

Amen.

Said DeShawn Stevenson: "I'm a talker, you know; that's what I do. I was raised like that. We need someone on the team like that."

True that.

Meanwhile, the Post's Michael Wilbon — his relatives live just a few doors down, which must earn this neighborhood some kind of Pardon the Interruption coffee mugs or doormats or book covers or something — attributed the Cavs' victory to … (drum roll please) … LeBron James.

THAT is really true. If the folks locally who watch pro sports don't realize what a special, special player James is, what a leader he is, how mature he is on the court … well then there's something amiss in Barberton. James is a once-in-a-lifetime kind of player, the Jim Brown of his era. And we all get to follow him and watch him.

Finally, let's give Mike Brown some credit. Seems like fans in this area love to lambaste our coaches, like they're turkeys on a spit. But Brown has done an oustanding job in the playoffs. He struggles occasionally with offense, but someone made some good offensive adjustments to get the Cavs over 100 points in Game 6. Finally, his defensive coaching is unquestioned. Washington scored 31 points in the first quarter, 57 the rest of the game. And the Wizards were held below 90 points in four of the six games. Brown deserves a lot more credit than he receives, and a lot less criticism.

The final word (for now) on the series comes from James: "We had a lot of things go on besides basketball in this series, which was fun. But at the same time we took care of business. Soulja Boy, DeShawn Stevenson, my big brother Jay, myself, the crowd with 'overrated,' all that, it comes down to us winning a really gruesome series 4-2 and looking forward to the next round."

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 3rd, 2008 at 11:43 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.