*sigh*

'Tis a dark day, in the NBA. The bad guys won. And stunningly, the bad boys were not Detroit. Dickie Sr. and I chuckled last night at how times have changed, rooting with every fiber of our being for the team so-despised in God's Country just 15 years ago. It's hard to say we "despised" them last year - we were just in shock watching Your Los Angeles Lakers collapse in epic fashion, more than anything.

2004: An election for the future course of our nation (and for once it didn't seem a cliche thing to say). Bush won.

2005: A game seven for the future survival of our beloved National Basketball Association. The team with the clay hut and observation tower won.

In both cases, we lost the hearts and minds of thousands of potential new fans. In both cases, our children's generation will struggle to pay for our mistakes.

Indeed, these are dark times. I feel like Yoda - Come has the time for me to go into exile. Failed, I have.

Look, let me echo every single blowhard sports writer out there and say Tim Duncan is indisputably the best power forward in the league right now, if not the best player overall. He's in Cooperstown.

But Christ, if I have to watch "highlights" of him banking off glass on ESPN I'm going to throw myself out the window, land on my right foot this time, ensuring I'm immobile for the next six weeks.

The man's game is unwatchable. They show it to prisoners at G'itmo with their eyelids taped open, then administer electric shock when it looks like poor Mohammed is about to fall asleep. Cardboard is more interesting than Tim Duncan.

And I like how the Tim Duncan "make bug eyes with outstretched arms in exasperation" crescendoed during the course of the Finals. Last night it reached a new peak, but of course nobody mentions this because he's Timmy Duncan. He's such a big sweetie. Scotty aka "19th Hole" made a great point last night, as we watched the postgame atrocit-, er, "celebration": "Duncan showed more emotion bitching about calls than he is right now, having won the Finals." I swear, watching turtles fuck is more interesting than watching this guy. (And believe me, I've watched a lot of turtles fuck.)

And my mentor and spiritual advisor Bill Simmons put it best, asserting this Spurs team is the least compelling championship team since the 94 Rockets. Think about it: Their first C always had that asterisk with the 50-game season. So a couple of years ago they absolved the asterisk.*

*Except they did so against the Nets in the finals. The Nets.

(Did I mention the Nets?)

And then there's this year. The Spurs looked like they were on to something at first, rolling through the Suns and the league's MVP - making the defeat of the league's best-record team look like a walk in the park. But then they almost choked against a good-but-not-great Pistons team in a knock-down, drag-out struggle to Game Seven. Not a powerful statement to make, for the annals of NBA championship history.

So here's to the Spurs. They swing-pass a lot. It's nice to watch. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to book a flight to San Antonio and throw myself from the observation tower. Hey, if you're gonna go - go in epic fashion, right? Maybe someone should teach that to Duncan and the boys....