I'll Go Along With The Charade, Until I Can Think My Way Out

Wednesday Spike and I had the following exchange:

Charlie T: The "W" word that ends in "inning" hasn't even been going around for a week and I'm already tired of it.

Spike: Is this a heat reference?

At the time it wasn't, but as the weekend went on I wasn't so sure.

I originally wrote it to declare my departure from the Crazy Train of Sound Bites and Video Clips coming from He Who Shall Not Be Named. (both to be referred to as CTOSBAVC and HWSNBN from here on out) Thanks to this deluge of pop culture fodder, certain words have instantly lost their meaning. One is a flavor of Sno-Cone and the other is a word used to descibe what happens when you have more points than the other team at the end of the game. The Sno-Cone reference is less relevant here. I'm more interested in the word that starts with "W" and ends with "inning".

During Weekend Update, Seth Meyers ran down the Winners and Losers of the whole CTOSBAVC coming from HWSNBN. The biggest loser was the "W" word. According to Seth, it just doesn't mean the same thing anymore. I thought it was a very valid point and it gave me a clue as to what was going on with the Heat.

Back in August, LeBron completely changed the way NBA players handle free agency. He collaborated with ESPN to have a one hour special to announce his intentions. You may have heard about it. This set off a chain reaction with Bosh and Wade both opting to join him in Miami, which set off another chain of events that led to Mike MIller and Udonis Haslem taking huge discounts to join as well as a bunch of other veterans and 3 pt specialists to join the Heat for the minimum. By themselves, these were not new ideas. But all together, now that was something new. The Heat became the first team to completely strip their roster down to the league minimum of one player. They also became the first team to have 3 of the top 5 draft picks of a single draft. The firsts continued for this trend setting team. They were ahead of the curve, transforming the way things are done in the NBA on the fly.

Now back to the "W" word. The Heat had to stay ahead of the curve. The word had lost all meaning and significance. They wanted nothing to do with this bandwagon. Almost instantly the world shifted its view from "W#%&ing is Everything" to "Everything is W#%&ing". So like all good trend setters, the Heat decided that they were done with the "W" word. Even if it was painful and might come with some sad eyes, there would be no more W#%&ing.

And so it was. They settled in trying out as many different methods of not W#%&ing as they could. Close games, blowouts, last second decisions, against good teams, against contenders, blowing big leads. It has proven to be a fairly difficult task, requiring creativity at the end of games and poker faces during press conferences. We know this is some of the best talent in the NBA, so I have faith that they will be able to keep this up as long as they need to. If I could be on how long the CTOSBAVC will last versus the Heat's counter-culture movement, I would be the farm on the Heat.

While I don't doubt the Heat's resolve in standing up to HWSNBN, for my sake I hope HWSNBN folds. And soon.