Record: 31-29
“The facts are before us. The conclusion is inescapable.”
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Thank you, Science Officer Spock, and I agree. We’ve seen enough of this Cavs team. We’re thankful that there were some free-throw shenanigans at the end of Game 3 that gave the Cavs the cover. We’re thankful for those free-throw shenanigans saving our Cavs pick. Now is the time to stand up from the slot machine and leave the casino with our Cavs’ winnings. Ill-begotten gains if there ever was such a thing. Miriam Adelson is out here financing the Greater Israel Project with her earnings derived from people who can’t walk away after they successfully win a bet tailing Little Game James. That’s not us. We’ll walk away from the table.
Wait, no, Miriam Adelson makes money off of Dana White playing $10,000-a-hand poker games. Duh, lol. K-Shaped economy and all that. Sorry for the misinformation.
These Cavs-Pistons games aren’t awful. They’re not as inescapable as the Lakers losing their composure against the Thunder with Ajay Mitchell playing instead of Jalen “Rottweiler” Williams. It’s just that the Cavs have a charisma problem. They have a lack of fighting spirit. It’s an unlikable team. Let’s look at the Cavs’ Big 3 of Unlikability!
Number One is Evan “King Theoden” Mobley. Jesus Christ, he found it within himself to attempt a free throw and get more than 5 rebounds in Game 3. He’s still working on shooting above fifty percent on those free throws, though! King Theoden will always be in a state of “I’m still working on it”. And people will keep buying his bullshit. Dan Gilbert definitely has! Dan wasted no time signing King Theoden to the richest contract extension possible. Have fun with that, Dan! Yes, King Theoden had a great double-pump dunk all over Isaiah Stewart. Yes, King Theoden had a kind of nasty putback dunk on Isaiah Stewart. Great. King Theoden made 4 shots and all of them were at the basket. He is not a big who can space the floor on offense. The conclusion is inescapable! Goddamnit, Dan! Fucking Jesus Christ, you can’t just get more working Americans to sign up for variable-rate mortgages and pump up that interest rate in this scenario! Manipulating dumb working people into believing that you won’t jack up their mortgage rate after signing, won’t get you out of this mess you made with King Theoden! Screwing over more working people won’t make King Theoden and Jarrett “Wormtongue” Allen compatible, Dan! Fucking goddamnit, Dan, how long have those two players had those nicknames!?!? Here, I’ll remind you, Dan. You’ve lost a lot going on in that time. You have a lot of opportunities to run from the goddamn truth that I’m telling you for fucking free. You jackass. Those two have had the LOTR nicknames since the Knicks series, where my step-son Mitchell Robinson made Wormtongue his prison bitch and King Theoden just sat down and watched it. 2023. It’s time to shit or get off the pot, Dan. Trade one of them. God, you’re like the Sixers owner who held on to Ben “The Quitter” Simmons for too long and then got saved by a Little Game James playoff meltdown.
Hey, Dan, did you see Game 3? Did you see “Bball” Paul Reed score 11 points in 10 minutes while being +11? Dan, did you see that and understand that Bball Paul did that because King Theoden is too physically weak to prevent 6’-8” Bball Paul from dunking and slapping the backboard after, like he’s in a goddamn AAU game? Dan, it’s almost like you have no fucking clue what you’re watching. It’s almost like you fucked up Young LeBron James and then got so upset that he rightfully left your dumb ass, that you wrote an open letter showing everyone what a petulant douchebag you are! Yeah, it’s almost like that! Don’t think I forgot that, Dan! I’m not all the sycophants you hang around who are trying to get you to like them because you’ve enslaved America with Rocket Mortgages! I’m the fucking Prophet Of God!
But yeah, in a “good” game from King Theoden, he missed 5 free throws. Something is wrong with his mentality. He got to do the halftime interview with the sideline reporter and he can not be any less charismatic. A halftime interview that preceded King Theoden allowing more offensive rebounds to this Pistons team that has been manhandling the Cavs all series. The broadcasters love peddling this “soft-spoken” bullshit to excuse King Theoden from being the mentally weakest player in the NBA. We see it. We see the propaganda that Noah Eagle is peddling. King Theoden sucks. And he sucks because there’s something rotting in his head. Dan Gilbert won’t let him live without Wormtongue.
Second on the Big 3 of Unlikability is Donovan “Frodo” Mitchell. Jesus, it’s a wonder that the epigraph wasn’t a Gandalf quote. Samwise left so that Little Game James could join Frodo on his quest out of the second round. Frodo was making shots and one of his “dribble packages” completely dusted Duncan Robinson. 35 points on 24 shots. We can’t say that Frodo wasn’t excellent in Game 3. We can say that it’s very funny watching Frodo avoid left-hand layups. Now, that observation about Frodo refusing to use his left hand is not originally ours. It’s not originally ours, and we’re not crediting the person who gave us that information.
We don’t know the name of Frodo’s Instagram Basketball Trainer (IBT). We do remember seeing a YouTube video where Frodo was dribbling and someone was verbally jacking him off in the background saying how Frodo plays with such great “pace”. Hey, if you want to compliment Frodo’s “dribble package” and use fancy words that I don’t understand like “pace”, you can fuck right on out of the second round in the Junior Varsity Conference. When you want to be a man and attempt left-hand layups like Kyrie Irving, come back to me and I’ll maybe think about not referring to you as a munchkin from LOTR.
Frodo was doing some nasty hesitations on his two steps to the rim, and he’s capable of that. There is definitely an element of unguardability to Frodo’s offensive game when he doesn’t tire himself out taking too many shots after dribbling too much. Who was the person on the Cavs that allowed Frodo not to tire himself out and get bitchy with teammates? Yeah, Dennis Schröder! Dennis got really upset with Jaylon Tyson at the end of Game 3 in a way that informed viewers why Dennis keeps moving teams, but Dennis is a playoff dog! We’d love to play with Dennis! He’s obviously comfortable taking wide-open corner threes that Little Game James dishes to him! Unlike King Theoden! Dennis is down for the war!
Dennis also has these moments where he reminds you that he moonlights as Germany’s Kobe Bryant. Dennis is kind of unguardable if you try to just slide your feet and stay with him one-on-one. Ask Ausar Thompson. Yeah, Dennis dusted Ausar Thompson on his way to a layup. Go find the tape of Little Game James doing that to Ausar. Spoiler alert, it doesn’t exist! Dennis has some certified African juice in his lower body. Shout out Gambia! Here’s Dennis Schröder speaking German to GQ. It’s incredibly captivating watching someone purple speak in native German.
OK, the third member of the Big 3 of Unlikability is obviously Little Game James. He wasn’t getting physically violated by Ausar Thompson and Ron Holland during Game 3 and while part of that was because J.B. Bickerstaff’s fat retard ass didn’t play Ron Holland, LGJ just made shots. The most notewrothy of which was a stepback three over Tobias Harris where LGJ was more upset that one of the dipshit refs (rightfully) didn’t give him the and1 three. LGJ left the huddle during the following timeout early to go complain to the dipshit ref for (rightfully) not awarding him an extra free throw. Even after all these years, Little Game James is trying to get the dipshit refs to understand that these playoff games aren’t materially different from the preseason! Oh well, I guess we all have our wrong beliefs that we will take to the grave.
Who did the Nuggets draft over Jaylon Tyson? DaRon Holmes! Just kidding. DaRon was drafted 2 spots after Jaylon was drafted so the Nuggets didn’t actually pick DaRon over Jaylon. But yeah, Jaylon Tyson is a dude. Athletic enough to play. Takes open shots like he wants to. Doesn’t look uncomfortable dribbling the ball to the rim. Appropriate size. He’s good! The Cavs have a good bench/supporting cast! Sam Merrill, Schröder, Max Strus, and Dean Wade all bring stuff to the party. It’s the Big 3 of Unlikability that is the reason this Cavs team blows.
Did the Pistons seem like the much better team in Game 3? Yes. Was the Cavs cover in serious doubt until Frodo made the requisite garbage time free throws? Absolutely. Listen, we “timed the market” with that Cavs pick and we’re going to go ahead and pick the Pistons to cover every game for the rest of the series. We can’t have the possibility of watching another game of this series knowing that we took Little Game James and the Big 3 of Unlikability to cover.
The Pistons have the scouting reports on LGJ and Frodo. Frodo never wants to go left and LGJ only wants to go left. Cade Cunningham had a brilliant defensive moment where he walled off LGJ’s left side and just took the hit that LGJ gave him while staying ready. LGJ is too old to do anything about people ignoring his right side.
Was Cade bad? Sure. He had an interception off an inbounds where the person guarding the pass just jumped up and grabbed the ball. You never see that in an NBA game. Evidently Cade was too tired to stay in the game and not commit minor league mistakes. The broadcast made sure to say that J.B. tried to get a sub in for Cade before that inbounds but that the subs weren’t at the table in time to be put in by the dipshit refs. So that’s a very public mistake that J.B. did. People see that stuff. J.B. does some things that are very loud mistakes from a coach. He initiated a very low-upside challenge on a Cade charge. The charge was pretty clear but beyond that, challenges are only appropriate if they directly put points on the board or they are obvious out-of-bounds calls that the dipshit refs screw up and everyone in the immediate crowd sees as wrong. This challenge from J.B.’s fat retard ass was neither. J.B. has these challenges that make you wonder, “Do coaches only get one challenge? They must get more than one because this fatass for Detroit just used a challenge for something trivial and not obviously wrong. Oh, there’s only one challenge?! No wonder J.B. is one of those coaches who flames out in the playoffs, where you need some semblance of strategic coaching.”
8 turnovers from Cade. A bunch of offensive fouls and straight-up interceptions. Cade will have some bad turnovers. Don’t be one of those people who’s like, “Well if you have someone possess the ball as much as Cade does, he’s going to get at least 6 turnovers.” No, Cade has a problem. A problem that J.B.’s fat retard ass doesn’t help by only playing Daniss Jenkins 18 minutes. J.B. is giving Daniss the Steve Kerr yo-yo bullshit. Daniss had a great off-ball cut to the rim before hanging in the air for the layup. Robbie Hummell is a great color commentator, light years ahead of Grant Hill’s staid ass, and Robbie couldn’t contain himself at that “beautiful backcut”. Daniss can play but J.B. is too fat and stupid to understand that.
But hey, at least J.B. is soft-benching Jalen Duren so that Bball Paul can play the first 6 minutes of the fourth quarter! You see what the coaches really want to do with the fourth quarter minutes distribution. Elon Musk sat De’Aaron Fox for a big part of the fourth quarter so that Dylan Harper could play and not be a screaming tire fire. J.B. gave Bball Paul Jalen’s minutes during the fourth. Jalen sucks and he’s been sucking. 4 rebounds, 3 turnovers, 11 points on 8 shots. Got dunked on by Wormtongue during the loudest possible 7-0 Cavs run. Jalen Duren will not stop getting savagely dunked on. My goodness. I’m so excited to see how much of the salary cap the Pistons allot to Jalen Duren, or if Jalen just leaves and goes to Brooklyn.
Did Tobias Harris really have over 20 points again? Did we really spot something when we said that Tobias was becoming a playoff performer for the first time at the age of 34? Do we really have the deductive power to see the look in someone’s eyes and accurately understand their psyche? No way. That’s too good to be true. We can’t really be the POG like that.
Knicks 👖 (-1.5) over SIXERS 🔔
- I took the Sixers in Game 3 and they lost by a bunch. Ebola Embiid can’t be on the court but he’ll demand to and Nick Nurse can’t stop him.
Spurs 🤠(-4.5) over TIMBERWOLVES 🐺
- Hey, no one knows more than me how lucky I was to get The Wembanyama to destroy Earth with his Game 3 performance. Yes, I ordered War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells after that game! But I just don’t see the Spurs' supporting cast playing as atrociously as they did in Game 3. So that’s one thing. Another thing is The Wembanyama and I’m fine just blindly taking The Wembanyama for the rest of this series and maybe the rest of the playoffs.
