Why Fight It? 0
A game with everything but talking dogs
I measure excruciating losses by the amount of time I walk my dog afterward. That’s my ritual. My team gets crushed, I walk it off. The walks usually last for 15-20 minutes. The walk after Game 6 lasted for hours. I think I ended up in Compton.
At one point, Rufus just stopped. He had enough. It was like 9:45 at night. We were in the middle of nowhere. We were like 250 blocks from my house. I think we were on the same street where Ricky Baker got gunned down in “Boyz n the Hood.” Rufus planted his furry butt on a sidewalk and stared me down.
“I’m not going back until you explain to me why Doc put Tony Allen in the game,” I told him.
He kept staring at me.
“We were up by five,” I said. “We had scored on like 10 straight possessions. We were humming. They couldn’t stop us. The series was over.”
More staring.
“Two and a half minutes left and we have the ball. Again, they can’t stop us. So Doc brings in our worst player — our least intelligent player, our most ineffective player, the master of the fantastic drive/missed layup — and takes out Big Baby when he was our second-best player tonight? And all because Chicago went small? SO WE’RE REACTING TO A DESPERATION COACHING MOVE BY VINNY DEL NEGRO!!!!! REALLY, THAT’S WHAT WE DID?????????”