The Cavs are losing again.

The Cavs have lost two straight to teams that they should have beaten. Evidently Mike Brown's brilliant stunt has begun to wear itself out. Let me explain.

You see, when Mike Brown maliciously benched Big Z, giving him a DNP-CD on the night he was to break the franchise record for games played, Brown also gave the other Cavs a motivation for positive action. Lebron famously looks on Big Z as an older brother, so Mo Williams and Jamario Moon look up to Big Z as a beloved uncle. So we have that the Cavs played with the fire of family scorned. They fought like insurgents in a brutal quagmire. Of course, because of this, the Cavs won a number of games consecutively, even trouncing the Suns in his glorious return to action.

New NBA Rule: Players can't talk to coaches

In the wake of the sordid Ilgauskas-Mike Brown fiasco, in which Mike Brown somehow managed to be as evil as Big Z is mediocre, David Stern has passed a new law: Players are no longer allowed to speak to coaches, on or off the court.

"We just want to prevent, you know, that *element* from coming into our league," Stern moaned, through opaque membranes of apparently organic chambers, in between the sound of a woman babbling in French. "If Mike Brown had not had the chance to engage in malicious drama with Z, and probably with management as well, I am certain Brown wouldn't have benched Ilgauskas on the day he was expected to break a franchise record for games played with the only DNP-CD of Z's career."

The new rule forbids a coach from talking to his players, as well. It is this aspect that has unsettled many coaches.

"When they are playing bad, I want to tell them that," Lakers coach Phil Jackson said, "Or when they're good, or when they need to guard passing lanes better, or tighten up on offense. Or even just tell them that this hellish rule of silence will someday be lifted."

These Mist Colored Mountains

Let's look at outer space through the eyes of a baller.

The Solar System (at time of writing) must be understood to be a Finals game between the Cavs and Spurs. Right now I suppose that the Spurs have the ball (Earth's moon) on offense, and the Earth is Tony Parker, driving the moon through Mars (LeBron) and Jupiter (Shaq) through Saturn's Rings, the rims of this side of the arena.

Unfortunately, Ilguaskas is Saturn, ever in a stupid goaltending position, hoisting himself between the great rims. Meanwhile, the other Cavs dance electric around Shaq and Lebron and Ilgauskas, like the moons of these respective planets in orbit. For example, Jamario Moon is a moon. This doomed gambit of Parker driving towards a blocked basket will soon demand an official or a foul of contact on the lingering lunk Saturn, but life is so slow for planets, those ponderous giants set in a world of light and speedy atoms. For planets any resolution is long in coming.

Darnell Jackson will outlive us.

Darnell Jackson will outlive us.

Big Z, Il Gauske, the Big One-Dimensional, the Big Dismal, the surreal second center of the Cleveland Cavaliers...is in constant conflict with his superior, Shaq, but it is not the one-sided conquering the casual might expect. On his side Z has not youth, but the relentless consistency of mediocrity. Shaq is a million feet tall and can get into foul trouble quick. He is a force of nature that is actually...really inconsistent and unpredictable, for such a renowned competitor. Big Z can "accidentally" injure the Big Man when Mike Brown inexplicably plays both centers.

But whereas Shaq is incredibly inconsistent, and whereas Z is incredibly mediocre, and they are in ineffable dialectic, there is a third center on the roster: the little-used, invisble Darnell Jackson. Less than 25 and looking like an undistinguished Shaq, Darnell Jackson is Dustin Hoffman from the Graduate, but of the center position of the Cavs. He exists in the rare case that one of these two archetypes (that represent the two sides of Mike Brown's personality) is injured, and Mike Brown needs a dependable third wheel. He has no adjectives. When Darnell plays, he is the absence of form, structure, and meaning.

Categorical Marxism; Shaq. But I repeat myself.

Scientists have known that the world is a giant category ever since Karl Marx proved it in the 19th century. The denialism surrounding this revelation is just plain denialism. The reasons? Well that's a category unto itself.


What is a category? A category is two things. First, a category is a bunch of dots, representing objects. Second, a category is a bunch of transitive arrows between the dots. These arrows represent transformations between objects. So, two objects might be a blank manuscript, and then this very essay. This essay didn't used to be written, but now there it is. I am an arrow going between that blank manuscript and the manuscript of this write-up. Now we have an essay thanks to my miraculous arrowing of that blank scroll. I arrowed the hell out of it. I wrote the essay, son.

Raw, Unfettered Baskebanlysis for Halloween Time

Do you remember John Goodman?  I hate to cut in, mid-scene, but the narrative demands it.  We are in a motel room and John Goodman, burning, walks in.

Anyway, the fire is burning all over the motel but John Goodman appears to be unaffected by the smoke or flames, (naturally, given his extraordinary nature) even as the foundation of the motel may be destructed. In your mind I want you to try and turn the fire surrounding the man into an aura of power.  Yes, let's take this image to the next level.  First picture the fire, in its complexity and red-hot hydra-legs reaching out in every direction..  But now that fire is also a 60 foot radius of undiluted, spherical, visible and translucent energy.  You can see him but it blurs his face a bit.  Alright, so it is red-orange pure power surrounding a smiling John Goodman who is carrying a shotgun. Just for fun let's also put him in his red and white flannel and his jeans and maybe overalls. Still surrounded by a red-orange glow.