Losers, Cont.

So while my fellow Snake below decided to jump right in, I feel that there’s an obligation that goes with the start of a blog to introduce it in some way. And since we don’t have any kind of “Information” section about just what this blog is, I’ll take a brief moment to explain. I am one of two Snakes who will write for this blog, and it’s all about AZ sports. We’ll primarily focus on professional sports, but will certainly discuss all levels of play… and naturally we’ll veer off into topics that aren’t even close to relevant to AZ or even sports, but rest assured that we’ll do our best to find a roundabout way to justify why it’s being included here. We call it “Six Degrees of AZ Sports,” in which we can take any topic and relate it back to the governing theme of the blog. To give you a quick example, if we’re talking about our favorite amateur porn videos, it can be as simple as “This is an amateur video. Tell you who’s also an amateur – Earl Barron. If the guy in this video is capable of finishing in three minutes, why the fuck can’t Barron finish in the paint?!”

So, welcome then, one post late, to “Can’t Snake a Snake”…. And what is that title? Why exactly, you ask, can’t a snake be snaked? It’s a valid question, the answer to which could be debated for hours. To put it simply, it’s just an indelible truth: a snake in question cannot, at any point, under any circumstances, be itself “snaked.” To further shed light on the phenmonenon, you can look no further than searching for “flying snakes” on youtube. Pretty much says it all. Then of course, think of all the Snakes we know and love. You’ve got Solid Snake, who does so much snaking of his own there’s not even time to look at it the other way around. You got the lovable vato, Snake from Airborne, who teamed with Mitchell Goosen to take on Devil’s Backbone. I mean, the only way you’re gonna make a rollerblader tough is if you name him Snake, right? Then of course, you’ve got the original Snake – Plissken. No one’s gonna out-snake that motherfucker. You got a weak Snake when talking about the guy from the Simpsons, but he’s hilarious enough to warrant the name. Then you got Jake "the Snake" Roberts, the wrestler who carried around a boa constrictor. I mean, I refuse to look it up, but when you got a guy named "The Snake" in WWE it's safe to say he held the title belt for a long time. And then we’ve got a hero of the blog - Jake “The Snake” Plummer, an ASU grad who led the Cardinals to their first playoff win since moving to Arizona, against the Cowboys no less. And now apparently he's a professional handball player, which sounds about right. (By now you’ve figured out that this is pretty much all nonsense, and that not being able to snake a snake really means nothing, but in a deeper sense, means everything. Also, the Dbacks are affectionately known as “The Snakes,” and though it could be said, especially in the last few seasons, that you most definitely can snake a group of snakes, the 2001 title puts any threat of our snakes being snaked to rest).

The title of this entry is “Losers, Cont” so rather than ramble on and on about nothing I should probably touch upon the issue brought up by my colleague below. Painful losses. Well, we are AZ fans, so we should have annals of bad losses from which to choose. He pretty much covered the worst of them, so there’s not much left for me to say…

The Suns losses are the toughest to remember. The Suns figure most prominently in my love of sports, and while I could scrutinize the past six or seven years in exhausting detail, Bill Simmons already did this in a far more eloquent and interesting (and really fucking depressing – it’s not easy to read) way.

I don’t want to harp on what could have been too much, because the recent Suns playoff performances have been some of the most grueling, heartbreaking moments of my life (yes, the implication there is that I have an unexciting, loserish life). From the flat-out failures to the severe injustices to the fucking Evil Empire that is the Spurs, it’s been a rough decade as a Suns fan (but also a glorious one, as Simmons also explains. We’ve been spoiled to have the most entertaining team for years). While I’m tempted to launch into a tirade on the Spurs right now, I’m going to save that for a future post. Not sure my blood pressure can handle it. I will, however, take a look at a specific game that's fresh in my memory: Game One of the 2008 Playoffs, though, as I distinctly remember how badly that loss hurt.

Game one of the ’08 Playoffs – Suns vs. Spurs. (I know the most painful losses occurred during the 2007 Playoffs, when the Spurs played some of the dirtiest, pathetic basketball of recent memory and were gifted a win from David Stern. But it’s not as fresh as this memory). In game one, the Suns suffer a double overtime loss. Game is sent into the first OT by a three from Michal Finley, who deserves to be on a Most Overrated list, but whatever. A shot like that is part of the game. Finley is an effective three-point shooter and he hit one when he needed to. Part of the game. Let me tell you what’s not part of the game. Tim Duncan hitting a three to send it into the second OT. Do you remember this?

Good fucking God do I hate watching it. O’Neal does the right thing following Ginobili off of the screen. He needed to get in the way of a potential game tying three. And why not leave Duncan alone? It’s not like an eighteen foot bankshot is gonna tie up the game, so Duncan’s pretty much an afterthought. But no. Ginobili swings the ball back to Duncan and he plants those two pigeon toes together and hoists up a prayer three. And somehow, it goes in. (And then an obnoxious celebration by the Gumby-esque Duncan flailing those limbs around did not help lessen the fucking impossibility of it all).

Right, the game went into another Overtime. So the Suns could have won it. Well, true. But back-to-back clutch threes to extend the game will galvanize a team and that’s exactly what happened. The Suns lost. And this changed the face of the series. Had Duncan not hit that three, it’s entirely probable that the Suns take the series, and then face the Hornets, who clearly would have struggled matching up against the Suns. (I know Parker went off against Nash in the remainder of the series, but it was the Suns’ pain of Game One that forced all subsequent storylines). After the Hornets, we’d have faced the Lakers, and who knows? Maybe here the Shaq experiment would have paid off, where his hatred for LA and his desire to still be one of the best would have neutralized Gasol and Bynum. Just by being in the Conference Finals, that close to the Finals again and another title – that’s easily enough incentive for the Big Shaqtus to play his ass off… and with Nash, Stoudemire, et al firing on all cylinders, they probably could have taken the Lakers. Then the Celtics in the finals… who knows?

Obviously, I’m going out on several limbs to say that losing Game 1 of the first round of the playoffs is the reason the Suns didn’t go to the NBA Finals. (Bias or not – that’s exactly what happened). And maybe that’s one of the toughest things about being a sports fan. Mapping out a narrative in your head of how things “could have” gone, if not for one play here or there. And every team in every sport probably has these moments (Christ, the Buffalo Bills!). These moments you can’t forget. The ones that, god dammit, maybe could have happened a little differently. And as I mentioned, the '07 playoffs were even worse. But that's a topic for another post down the line...

Welcome to Can't Snake a Snake.

-TC