Again, I can not decide what to write about. I used to be so decisive but my was ex-girlfriend was not and clearly that quality has worn off on me...ehh. So more random, scatterbrained talking points. Please leave a comment if anything I say is stupid. Or don't. Whatever you decide.

A - My favorite part about the NBA playoffs=Charles Barkley. I think TNT has literally given him the right to say anything he wants about anything he pleases at anytime he chooses. He is somewhat subdued during the earlier hours of the night but once the Western conference game ends at about 1:00 a.m. he goes off. Listen to him any night and you are guaranteed at least a few laughs. So far my top two comments this year...

1.) Ernie Johnson (clearly confusing the names of Josh Smith and Joe Johnson) says, "Mike Bibby throws an alley-oop to Josh Johnson...I mean Joe Smith...I mean...you know what I mean."

Charles responds, "What Ernie? What was that Ernie? You think all black people look the same?"

2) After seeing a clip of Zaza Pachulia getting about 300 offensive rebounds in one possession against the Heat, Charles states, "Zaza Pachulia should average zero rebounds a game in this series. Rony Seikaly is rolling over in his grave. P.J. Brown is rolling over in his grave. Alonzo Mourning is rolling over in his grave."

B - Along those same lines, the Heat are wasting the prime years of Dwyane (spelled correctly) Wade. After watching that game 7 the true flaw of the team was evident, they have NO ONE else on the team that can create a shot for themselves or others on their own. Michael Beasley should be that kind of player soon (maybe next year) but this year it was painful to watch the Heat when D-Wade did not have the ball in his hands. I'm not the biggest Shaq fan, but trading him away clearly has not worked out well and he is at least someone who you can still run an offense through to give D-Wade a break. Hopefully for Heat fans Beasley spends a lot of time on basketball this summer and not on this ( http://www.palmbeachpost.com/heat/content/sports/epaper/2008/09/24/0924heat.html )

C - And finally, I'm really happy that ESPN is starting to use OPS ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On-base_plus_slugging ) as one of the statistics they show when a batter comes up to the plate during their telecasts of games (along with batting average, home runs, and rbi's). OPS, which is on-base percentage plus slugging percentage, has been shown to have the highest correlation with runs scored on a team level of any of the commonly used baseball statistics. Without getting too in-depth into more advanced baseball statistics like EqA ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equivalent_average ) or VORP ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_over_replacement_player ), OPS should be used as the metric for judging a player's offensive productivity. I am glad ESPN is making an explicit decision to do this while at least implicitly giving respect to baseball statisticians' work.