What a day for my little blog…

Yesterday, I posted these clips from Game 6 of the Mavs/Heat series. And throughout the day I was inundated with hits to my site. As of this writing, more than 9,300 visted the site yesterday. To put that in some perspective, I usually get between 2,000 and 4,000 visitors in any given month.

Apparently, the main thing that happened is that several blogs linked back to this entry.

The most hits, by a factor of three, came from Gordon Keith’s blog. Gordo, of the Morning Musers Show on the ticket, linked to my page early this morning, and I’m pretty sure that’s what set all this off. (BTW, if you are not familiar with Gordo’s, um, unusual and odd sense of humor, you might want to be careful surfing around his blog. He’s a very bright guy….but strange…very, very strange…)

The second-most hits came from a sports site called Deadspin.com, which actually appears to be a really good sports blog that I’d never heard of before.

Then, after this, there seem to be ten or fifteen other blogs that have linked to this entry, adding up to 50 or 100 hits a piece.

Many of you have also left comments about this post. Thanks for that. And, believe it or not, I appreciate almost all of them. You should be aware, however, that I’m deleting anything with profanity.

My blog. My call.

But I’m leaving anything else –positive, or negative– up there for all to see.

And I must confess to being a little surprised by the strong feelings on all sides. But, then, we are talking about sports…so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.

I won’t respond to all of the comments that folks have left, individually. (Or, the emails, which tend to be even more strong in tone…) I will say that I hope you got the hint from my original post that I assumed and expected that I’d be called a “whiner.” Based on some of your comments, perhaps the fact that I assumed this escaped some of you. Or maybe you just really DO feeling that strongly about it.

Beyond that, I also hope you recognized that I was more than ready to blame the Mavs for much of this series loss. To refresh your memory, among other things I said:

— Dirk didn’t play well,
— The bench was uneven
— We couldn’t sustain the amazing streaks we had now and then.

Please understand me: I am not blaming all the Mavs misfortunes on this obviously bad officiating. But, I am asking two questions and making one statement:

1) With the stakes this high, shouldn’t we expect better officiating? and
2) Why are some incidents that get “missed” by the refs during a game eligible to be upgraded into suspensions and fines, while others (like missed foul calls) are not? That just seems wrong. Either the game should be called and left on the court, or anything that is “missed” by the refs should be fair game for further review or overturning.

Finally, the statement: Dwayne Wade is a tremendous player. But he’s also a huge faker. He’s got enough unbelievable talent that all of us who appreciate his talent deserve to have him be subject to the same rules everyone else is subject to. His play would still seem spectacular, even if the refs called fouls on him like they do everyone else.

There does seem to be a profile of an NBA star who don’t get called like the rest of mere mortals do….or, conversely, who draw more than their share of fouls. As I heard one commentator mention today, what this really leads to is defenders being unable and unwilling to really play the guy tight, because they are constantly worried about being called for these phantom fouls. Wade, it seems to me, realized somewhere in game three that the refs were going to give him more leeway than others mortals. So, he started taking advantage of it…to the point that he carelessly body-checked Dirk at the end of the game.

Well, anyway, those are all my thoughts on this subject. You’re free to disagree. It’s a free country. But I’m absolutely convinced by the video evidence. And I’m pleased to know so many of you are too (based on your comments and emails….)

My favorite comment came late in the day from Brandon:

The nba wrote a new rule for future games.
RULE XIII. section 4.21: if you breath on, flash a glance, or mention dwyane wades name in vain you will recieve a foul.

Too funny. And too true.

Hey, thanks again for stopping by, everybody!! And if you’re looking to read others kinds of controversial stuff (politics, religion, music, life…) and leave more comments, I am sure you will find plenty more to write about by snooping around my blog. Feel free. You might start with the introduction, which will tell you where to look.

If you’re looking for other comments about the video clips I posted, they got hotly debated on several internet sites yesterday. And it’s interesting to see how folks on other sites are commenting on this issue.

Here are some places you can read more comments:

Deadspin
Dallasbasketball.com
Bob Sturm’s blog*
Mark Cuban’s blog*
Lone Mavs Fan blog
Lone Star Ball

There are half a dozen more, but most seem to require registration for me to get the link for you, and I’m not that motivated.

* my post gets mentioned down in the comments section…