(Note: this doesnt count as our recap of this atrocity. We'll get to that tomorrow.)
Perhaps I'm at one of them points in my life where you start to evaluate everything going on and see if there's any fat you can trim to try and make your life easier. A sort of life inventory, if you will. Ever had those? Perhaps you're thinking watching less television and joining a gym. Maybe you'll get around to finishing that paperback that's slowly warping and corroding in your bathroom. Hey, maybe you'll spring for the audiobook and listen to it while you work out. Get two birds stoned at once. Perhaps you have all sorts of grand plans and it's time you got serious about them. And perhaps you'll get around to them tomorrow.
Tomorrow we will probably wake up and go along about our lives, most of us understand that this basketball stuff doesn't really matter, not really. But fuck if it doesn't suck to watch the other guys celebrate.
And I don't know what's worse that it happened, or that somewhere, deep down in my sick tortured Houston soul i somewhat expected it to happen. I mean. Like they know he makes these quite often... Why didn't they.... I mean... Less than a second.... I just.... Sigh.
I suppose it's ok. That thing that just happened, where the guy that everyone knew was getting the ball got the ball and did that thing that he does when he gets said ball, Yeah, that thing won't matter tomorrow.
Tomorrow I'm sure we'll also perform a thorough autopsy on our season and see what went wrong. We knew Portland would be a stubborn nut to crack from a personnel standpoint alone but would the Rockets really have performed any better against Golden State? Or even Dallas? Fuck, is this what that mythic Houston Sports Inferiority Complex feels like?
Tomorrow will curse McHale, we'll continue to discuss the major faults in James Harden's game. We give half-hearted props to Howard for the huge fourth quarter but it'll all still feel kinda meh. Tomorrow we'll wonder how Chandler Parsons, amazing as he was just a few moments prior, could blow the most important defensive assignment he's had all season. Let's not even get into why he had that assignment in the first place.
Tomorrow we'll start looking ahead to the draft and read the statnik articles where they mine the SportUV data for a good perimeter defender. We'll wonder what changes need to be made and see how we can go about making them.
Tomorrow we'll think about what a terrific series this was, even if it felt mostly sour for our side. Odds are good that some kid is going to follow the Rockets more closely next season. Perhaps some guy decided to buy tickets the next time he gets a chance. Series like these spawn new fans. And for those of us that have been at this a while a series like this reminds us why we devote so many hours (and dollars) of our time on this stuff. Tomorrow we'll realize that.
But tonight? .... Fuck it, pass the bleach.