Rapid Fire Week-in-Review: Sixers Team Effort Enjoyable, More on Dykstra, Big East Refs, more

Another Friday, another Week-in-Review:

• All the people shrugging at the Sixers improvement seemed to be buoyed by their loss to Oklahoma City Wednesday night. I’m so tired of the “you need a superstar” mentality. First of all, the same people saying that will tell you that small colleges aren’t represented enough in the NCAA tournament, and how wonderful it is to watch team basketball. And although it’s still fashionable to rip the Sixers, I like where they’re going. Wednesday was mostly about youth, inexperience, and Andre Iguodala not being the guy who should take the last shot. Would I like a Durant? Obviously. But I like watching a true team, too.

• I touched on Lenny Dykstra’s babbling interview that aired on NBC10 Sunday night, but I am still surprised (I don’t know why, since the guy came off like a jerk) that he made a point to say he doesn’t speak to Mitch Williams “after what he put me through.” He seemed shocked that interviewer John Clarke didn’t know he was talking about Williams giving up the World Series winning home run in 1993. Here’s a tip, Len: Most people aren’t that classless.

• In the category of “we saw this coming,” Blake Griffin’s winning dunk over the hood of a Kia in the Dunk Contest is now a commercial. Two things: If David Stern wants to talk about the integrity of his sport, stuff like this needs to stop. I know it’s just the Dunk Contest, but this looks more rigged than wrestling. Secondly, this is becoming the most overrated dunk ever. The man jumped from the middle of the lane, and it was over the hood – not the car.

• Now that the Heat beat the Lakers, I’m sure the LeBron James Fan Club in the media will be pumping out their chests for a while. But for the last week all they wanted to do was literally blame everybody besides Dwayne Wade, Chris Bosh, and James, for the Heat not following the script they laid out last summer by running through the league. That’s a flat out disgrace. This was the deal – if you want to have three max contracts, the rest of the team is likely slop. Don’t cry about it now.

• Bosh tried to explain why he’s underperforming based on the type of contract he signed, saying, “I am uncomfortable now. . . . It is nothing but a conversation to have to correct the discomfort and I am here for the benefit of the team. I just feel that I have to be my normal self, and I really am not there right now.” Actually, he’s just not that good. Just ask Heat team president, Pat Riley, who already made the comment that he couldn’t get a big man this year. Psst, Chris, that was supposed to be you.

• The debacle that took place in the Big East Tournament in the St. John’s – Rutgers game, where the referees essentially stopped officiating when an SJU player traveled and went out of bounds with 1.7 seconds left in the game, has an element that’s being totally underplayed. I saw on Facebook that the over/under was 128.5. The final was 65-63. Can you hear the NCAA gulp?

• Kudos to Rutgers coach Mike Rice for his classy reaction to the controversial ending. He never ripped the refs, and basically moved on. Nice to see a coach set an example worth following.

• There were a few good tweets this week, so I’m giving all three the Tweet of the Week. Part I comes from Dick Vitale, “Now I see y all my tweeting buddies r going bananas over ST John's W vs RU- simple zebras flat out blew it - THAT WAS A TRAVESTY!”

• Tweet of the Week, Part II: From Stephen A. Smith, “Someone just sent a friend of mine a text saying LeBron has s problem closing like a nerd does with a date on prom night.”

• Tweet of the Week, Part III: From PHLSportsFAN, “Example why Twitter needs a like button RT @GregVince My definition of a rude awakening: Angelo Cataldi interviewing Arlen Specter on WIP.”

• In an e-mail on Monday evening, Crossing Broad / Philly Sports Daily blogger Kyle Scott Laskowski responded to my criticism of his post about the Holy Family incident in which the head coach bloodied a kid’s nose with a cheap shot during practice. I can’t believe I’m explaining this again, but he compared the incident to a personal experience he had in a roller hockey game. After explaining what an analogy is – which was, oh, so helpful – he actually wrote, “I was drawing a parallel from personal experience of something that happened outside of the normal flow of the game- which, oh by the way, I have nine screws in my wrist to account for. Not a bloody nose like the kid from Holy Family got.”

Uhm, yeah, I got that. It’s kind of why I criticized the post. As I explained to him, it’s not that I didn’t get the analogy or that I don’t understand the definition of an analogy. The problem was that the analogy sucked and publishing it on what’s supposed to be a professional website was an embarrassment for Philly Sports Daily. No one cares about some blogger’s broken wrist that he got in a neighborhood game, even if it was in an organized league (let’s try to avoid the e-mail explaining how they had matching shirts and everything), compared to a coach giving a kid a cheap shot in NCAA sanctioned athletic programs. If Laskowski needs more help, he has my e-mail address.