Subtitle “Who’s crying now?”
NBA Finals commence tonight and after not caring about nor being even a tad bit interested in it, I now find myself looking forward to watching it. The Boston Celtics have home court advantage and are the prohibitive favorites to win.
For the last several years the Celtics have come close to winning their 18th championship and taking the lead from the Lakers who they are tied with at 17 titles each. However, the Celtics, despite going to the Eastern Conference finals 7 of the last 8 years, have always come up a little short in their quest for Number 18.
That said however, all of the talking heads, pundits and smart money are pointing to them getting it done against the underdog Mavericks this round and notching their 18th Championship. The Celtics have been impressive throughout the playoffs so far and swept the Pacers in 4 games to enjoy a couple day’s extra rest entering into tonight’s start of the Finals.
However, the Dallas Mavs have been on a roll too and with Luka Dončić and Kyrie Irving playing well, it might be fun to watch to see how they match up with the mighty Celtics. It might also be worth a contrarian bet on the Mavs for the upset. The Celtics are getting that choke rep and an early loss of a home game sure won’t help them to make that rep go away. As stated this could be fun to watch.
As to the naming of names, check out how I spelled out Luka’s last name with the correct accents. If you read most articles about him, you will note that his name is usually just Doncic and not the accented Dončić.
Why this matters has to do with how you correctly pronounce his last name: it comes out as Don-chitch and not Don-sic as we would say. Those special characters are known as diacritics and designate the letters with a different pronunciation. In English we don’t mess with these accents and choose instead to just spell it out. Every once in awhile you may see some English words we use spelled out with accents such as crêpe or naïve, but for the most part we don’t bother with it. A good example of where these accents help distinguish between words would be when referencing one’s résumé as opposed to using the verb resume. “Send me your resume” sounds funny doesn’t it?
And since I am lost in the land of linguistics, here is another quick digression into something that I ran into just the other day in Regina Hammett’s History of St. Mary’s.
I was looking for info on my Grandfather James Harry Raley purchasing Buzzy’s Country Store from Mike Schuman in 1945. I did not find any mention of that, but the following caught my eye:
With my Mom’s maiden name being Raley, it surprised me some that I had never heard nor thought about Raley being a variation on the name Raleigh (as noted in the above excerpt.) I also learned that there are folks with the name Rayleigh as in Lord Rayleigh who came up with something known as the Rayleigh Scattering.) Raley/Rayleigh/Raleigh we’re probably all related someway or another.
But back to things basketball, the accusation around the NBA is that Dončić is a chronic complainer to the refs about being fouled and in turn gets special treatment from them. That may or may not be true given that he led the league in technical fouls called against him by the refs. (True that he complains alot; not true that the refs are favoring him any.)
Thus, in Game 5 of the Mavs-Timberwolves playoffs, someone sitting near Snoop Dog was waving a handkerchief and making comments about Dončić crying to the refs. Pissed, Dončić then proceeded to hit 4 three pointers and score 20 points in the first quarter (click here) to give the visiting Mavs a huge lead that they would never surrender in eliminating the home team Timberwolves from the playoffs. Later in the game, Dončić had the last word(s) for Snoop and the jeering fan when this went down:
Wonder if the supposedly intelligent Boston fans will be waving any hankies at him tonight. For a related story on Dončić and his complaining to the refs (click here.)
Speaking of “Who’s Crying,” Journey is currently on tour overseas. Always liked the line herein “Neither could change their headstrong ways” (00:44 mark.)
Seems that all that lawsuit business Journey members had against one another is now OBE according to this 3/23 story (click here.) (Note that OBE is short hand for “some money exchanged hands somewhere along the line.” As in most things, it usually comes down to money.)