The Lakers lost to the Bucks last night (Kobe serving a one game suspension for the elbow to Marko Jaric's face) in a battle royale with “all the intensity of a lunch-time pickup contest at the YMCA”, and the Nuggets lost to Golden State (Melo out for the birth of his first kid) and suddenly the Clips, though still in that 8 spot, are only 3 games back of the flailing lakers for the 6 spot, and only half a game back of Denver for that 7 spot. All this of course makes every game huge, especially with 4 teams (including the Warriors, tomorrow’s medusa, sans snake hair, to the Clips' Perseus, sans Pegasus) within just 2.5 games behind the Clippers, clawing for those last playoff spots. This final push is gonna be a good show. I do believe I'm being legitimately entertained, and not just telling myself that. If a green monkey wandered into my bedroom in the middle of the night and told me the NBA ain’t shit, that I am seriously fooling myself, I’d tell him to go to hell. And not cuz I think the NBA needs to have further representation or advertising of the free variety from the likes of me. I’d love it if it were called the Crap Salad Escobar (CSE, yo), just as long as the comp was legit, and that the wire stretching was comfortable yet painfully elongated. I do think the reffing could be better, and if they botch it nearly as bad this postseason as they did the last (the most obvious & egregious example being the Wade turnstile for a foul layup line, not that he didn’t earn many of those free throws, but more than a couple were David Stern gifts to the apparent 2nd coming.) Overall, despite a few mild fears and needs for reassurement, I feel like there are gentle fingers pushing the happy buttons throughout my brain as the pleasure centers get warmed up & humming. Please, be not afraid, nothing associated with the sex, veritably just the thrill of watching heated competition, of envisioning with both my inner & outer eye the best of the relatively mediocre (and compared to the general population unbelievable good, obviously) hash it out for who gets a chance at the potential champs, thereby becoming potential champs, at least in theory. And sometimes theories are all we have. Those and hypotheses. And, uh, greek salads, you know, with the feta cheese and the cucumbers. and that lamp.