The King gets his ring

It was a coronation, but it wasn’t a one man effort like in previous decisive games on this playoff. The Miami Heat came together as a TEAM. The most convincing win of the series make the Miami Heat show its true colors. From Rio who came out from a surprising game 4 to Shane who also shoot the lights out in OKC, to the rookie Cole who seems to had warped from his awesome first game versus the Celtics last Christmas all the way to the NBA Finals. To the unexpected, half injured, seldom played Mike Miller who looked more like Reggie Miller. The whole team came together to close this Finals with authority.

Mr MVP didn’t need to get crams this time since his game, although still on attack mode, became a distributor and played more like a Magic Johnson than a Michael Jordan. He had a series high 13 assists and most of them were for 3 point cannons having this time around a well deserved triple double.

LeBron was all business and even if he yelled Rio a couple of times during the game, the Heat kept focused while OKC kept having meltdowns. Durant had great moments like a side dunk on the face of Hasslem. Westbrook was also taking his deadly drives to the basket as well as Ibaka did had some monster blocks on Wade, Bosh and James. But the sharpness of the 3 pointers were just too much for any team to hold up. OKC tried many times to come back as they brought it down from 17 down to 3. They even had the lead plenty of times during that first quarter. But after Wade hit his second foul was the blessing in disguised Miami had to unleash Miller time. For most of the fans this means also a big breakthrough, for all the jokes about King without a crown and seen less talented players like the Paul Pierce, Dirk Nowinsky or Dwight Howard getting to the promised land or at least a shot at the finals. But the King got there by changing his game and  mindset. Not only posting up better, avoid offensive blackouts, or just relying on a more structured plan of attack.

LeBron didn’t had to shoot particularly well, he didn’t need to have 3 point shots or half court last minute shots. He didn’t even looked like the previous LeBron. However, his endurance and the endurance of the team seemed that have more talent to break away games. Even in Boston, the teamed seemed to react at the crunch and erase double digit leads to get into a position to win the game. It didn’t always worked, but you can say Miami was a team only limited by their mindset.

The era of “King without a crown” has reached it’s closing and the LeBron era might be already underway. Next time you see LeBron would be with the USA Basketball team followed by some public appearances and cameos. But welcome to the reigning King era, and the question would be targeted more on Dynasty and of course the comparison with other icons like Kobe and MJ. I think if King James is still playing by June next year, the era would be well underway.

The Start of a new Dynasty in Basketball

Welcome to this new blog about professional basketball, one of my favorite sports ever. I and even if the timing is a bit overdue I hope this blog will be a great one that fills the need for basketball junkies like me well fed. Even if the season is a few days to be over, I bet there would be enough activity during off season specially with the Olympics coming up and a very active rookie season, free agency and more.

But first thing is first, and the raise of a new dynasty is well under way. Welcome to the LeBron and the Miami Era!! One of the most controversial figures in sport is starting his kingdom in basketall. There is no doubt he is good since a very early age, and the fact that took nearly a decade to achieve this championship is almost mindblowing. The chosen one has been a bumpy election with many disappointing crashes, his crashes with Celtics and the rising rivalry versus Chicago and Orlando was something that LeBron had to endure through out his recent years. Forcing him to leave his town into one of the hardest transitions in the history of the game baptized with the name “The decision”. But beside all the scrutiny he finally is just 24hrs to finish this journey. Did he deserve it? Is well overdue.

This means that a new dynasty would come to town? Miami is repeating their finals competition in 2 straight years. The closest competitor is the Chicago Bulls with a Rose that might not be eligible for another 11 months and might not be in top shape once he is back. Thunder will still be there, and Spurs as well, but just like the Lakerrs, this are pretty old teams that might not be as potent as the Heat. There is also the talent attention the team will get by stars that want to end up their hall of famer careers with a ring, just like Barkley, Drexler and Malone did in the late 90’s. Think about Steve Nash or maybe a not so old center like Dwight. The Heat as a champion offer a bigger platform than other cities in the US, and could become something that many basketball stars would consider. The promise of multiple championships still well underway and repeating doesn’t seem so odd at the moment. Clippers, Grizzlies and Denver are still under heavy development, and some of the upper elite like Spurs are clearly on the downhill.

But lets go back to where we are right now. The finals are 3-1 and a coronation might happen in 24 hours from now. But right now is still business, and the Miami Heat still need to play for 48 minutes one of the quickest and most unpredictable teams in the league – The OKC Thunder. So what will the weather be tomorrow?

Miami is looking impressive, but the way they reach this game wasn’t at all. First they were down by 17 on the last game, and LeBron showed signs of fatigue as well as Wade got hurt pretty bad. Also, the effort that Miami had to do to win this one was astonishing. Even if they had somewhat control of the game, Westbrook came guns blazing on the 4th and was keeping OKC alive until the last 2 possessions of the game.

Close games have been a constant through out the series and that means that is anyones game in the end and can be counted on the mental breakdowns and heroic plays. So for game 5, we can expect another close one and a 4th quarter tie at some point. But the ability to close games has been constantly on the Heat side. Is clear LeBron would do anything in his power to get this done tomorrow and it should be something amazing to watch.

Miami Heat goes up 2-1 in the Finals

The game is just over and I think that they did a great job in the 4th by scoring clutch free throws. The ending was a bit ugly since the offence just looked broken and it seems that the team that gets a break from the foul line.

Highlights of the night was the double 3 point fouls to come back from a 10 point deficit. LeBron on a final breakaway layoup against Durant. And overal clutch free throws by Bosh and LeBron.

Dwyane also had some bad turnovers specially the steal that put OKC too close to be ok with it.

However, some tough things to digest was seen Heat not building that same cushion against OKC. Also being underscored when reaching the 4th quarter after barely surviving a bad 3rd quarter.

1. Another thing is a constant which is the isolation basketball. This generate LeBron to do bast last second shots and commiting 24 sec violation.
2. The whole issue about slowing down the attacks to the rim and packing the paint so that the Heat reduce their field goal percentage. 
3. Struggle defending against point guards which penetrate the Heat defense with relative easiness. Specially Harden and Westbrook pulverise the defense.
4. Lack of paint traps, usually Heat make a lot of steals on the paint, but I haven’t seen that in most games.
5. Rio has disappeared from this series, he was playing great versus boston with his runner up layops and teardrops. But i havent seen much excpet one play against Ibaka on the 3rd.
6. Turnovers Turnovers Turnovers!!! They have to stop. Protect the basketball, and probably stop isolation plays.

If Heat wins the next one, it could set the tone for a championship. However is the turn for OKC to play desperately. Can the Heat stand the OKC offense? Can the Heat bench get hot again?

However the game was fun and also great basketball. I had some facebook memes myself and others that were posted by NBA Memes on Facebook. I personally enjoyed the Harden flopping meme, Boshsaurus vs Durantsaurus is also a funny one to remind people, Battier heroic references and finally the referrees mess ups. Here are some of the memes I posted.

Cloud machines and HAARP

This was a pretty bizarre dream, being in a city near Mexico City I leave my precious Cancun and hang during the final hours of the night looking for something. Wtih my backpack full of clothes and looking for a taxi around 3 am. I am trying to find a bus that will take me to Taxqueña, another fictional city close to Mexico City but not close enough.

At the first hours of the morning I go to a supermarket asking for a way to get a bus ticket but nobody really had an answer on how to get there avoiding the morning traffic on the regular high ways. So I come to this park where has a elementary-secondary school and I start seen kids coming up from everywhere, and it seems they are arriving to class. As I walk through this school building I start hearing some nice HipHop (Method Man, You are all I need). Then I walk to a corridor that leads me to a closed room with some paint on the glass talking about HipHop special group. As I approach the door I start noticing all this sport gear around, like banners and trophies and medals. That’s when the doorbell sounded and some older kids start coming through.

Then I saw what seems like a friend and she start talking to me about how they need more support from the school. That’s when I ask her if she was the Dj playing that tune. She said that she was but she can only play records and she can’t mix or put his own thing.

That’s when I start seen something that caught my attention. These massive dark clouds approaching the highway. (I have no idea but seems like we were in an classroom of the school that have a view toward the highway that pass along the park). But these storm clouds were coming through at land level, even a guy step in the way of one. It was somewhat magestic. Then we saw some brown smog clouds, and we joke that’s Mexico city’s farts. But the cloud kept moving and mini tornadoes were starting to form.

That’s when we decided to get out of there, and even thought I gave up about trying to get my tickets since it seems impossible to go from one city to the next wtihout going through Mexico City, I decided it wasn’t worth it. What is funny is that I really never realize why I was going there on the first place. I just thought I needed to go but had to be quick. Anyway she told me to text her if I wanted, and I was like OK, then, shit I dont have ur number. Eventually I caught her and gave it to her and on we went our separate ways.

The girl was cute and remind me a romanian friend that I met in real life. She actually acted a bit like her as well. A bit tomboish but really cute. Also remind me of a cute roomate I had here in Cancun. She weared a baseball cap backwards, and I didnt really notice her hair. I like the fact that she was more a producer than a rapper, since well sometimes is better to talk about technology of things. He had a small mpc like device which was like half an organ, and filled with other nobs and levels and a small LCD screen. It looked pretty nice.

Anyway Life is good, a bit terrifiying but at least not for me right now.

New technology research

Node.js is becoming really strong on the web development space. Just like HTML5 and their Javascript resurgence the need to learn Javascript more and more is becoming omnipresent when you step into node.js.

Node.js is basically Javascript on the server, and like such, a lot of things change in the space of webdevelopment. People relying on other languages like Java, Python, or Ruby to generate Javascript now face a web with the opposite, Javascript replacing everything and even promising to start generating machine code FROM javascript. Like Hiphop but for JS.

This is the other big technology for big data. Hadoop is becoming something that a lot of dba’s are getting on board. Hadoop is the Mapreduce strategy for big data, based on Java

Rather than rely on hardware to deliver high-avaiability, the library itself is designed to detect and handle failures at the application layer, so delivering a highly-availabile service on top of a cluster of computers, each of which may be prone to failures. Seems these projects would be great steps to modernize my skillset on current technologies.

Something that I have been starting to do si to join groups in Linkedin and Facebook about the technologies.

So far I have joined Python, HTML5 and Node.js groups where one of the big advantages is locating resources and job opportunities on the technology.

OpenOffice near to 5 million downloads

After the release of Apache OpenOffice less than a month ago, the software is soon to reach 5 million downloads. Great news for the Open source ecosystem. Since Apache acquired OpenOffice.org and the fork of LibreOffice came to the light, it seems open source was a bit gloom over the idea of having one of the biggest software pieces face a delay on the development and also the image of Oracle being aggresive once again against open source.

However after almost a year in development and a lot of work seprating the licensed dependencies in OpenOffice to make it compliant with the Apache License. OpenOffice.org became Apache OpenOffice and the 3.4 release finally came out.

The news has been sensational once again and a lot of recent enthusiasts on providing help and support of the use of OpenOffice.

So what is new in AOO 3.4? Well for once there are some of the expected updates that appeared on LibreOffice 3.4 and OpenOffice.org 3.4. However some changes seems aparent on the Toolkit and on the overal UX, including the graying out of fields. I am not sure I am in love with this yet, but it was aparent that change has taken place on the new version. There were also some new functions in calc included and some works from the interns that were integrated as the CWS was merged.

For more information please join the dev-ooo@incubator.openoffice.org mailing list and if you want to contribute to the spanish localization please join the localizacion@oooes.org mailing list.

At the moment I am having a few volunteers and seems to be slowly making inroads in the heave workload we have in the spanish community to keep up with the documentation project and the localization of the software.

Heat Unstopable

Sorry for not blogging lately, but the Miami Heat has been Unstopable. With Lebron James and Dwyane Wade stomping on the face of the Indiana Pacers and the Boston Celtics. But wait a minute, Boston Celtics?

Yes I wasn’t really expecting much from the old green Celts, so what happened?

Well the Celtics seems to re-juvenize versus the Heat. Since the somewhat mediocre performance against the Sixers, the Celtics actually start playing against the Heat like no other team. It actually became a serious problem for the organization and was one step from elimination.

Everybody was expecting a Bulls vs Heat duel to the death, but instead we got the old green Celts from Boston scoring like they were D Rose, and Noah.

LeBron Night was BIG!! Scoring 45 points on game 6 versus the Celtics. Before he also had a 40 point game and 18 rebounds versus de Pacers. But it was a great IN YO FACE!!! performance against ctirics and players alike. For people that was doubting LeBron as overvalued. He did performed like no one else could ever on the opposite team. I mean Pierce is good and all and Rondo had a big night on game 2 but 41pts /18 reb/9 assists, his greatness was only compared with Wilt Chamberlain (althought I do remember Michael Jordan scoring 63 on the celtics and 50 pts against various teams including the Cavs).

But this was LeBron’s night. And the way he went about it was astonished.

Well fast forward to now and the Heat are on the Finals against OKC. A match some people say was matched in heaven. Too many similarities, both teams are fast, both teams are strong, Kevin Durant was the MVP runner up and scoring champ. LeBron IS the MVP and also leading the performances in the NBA up until now.

Not just that but they are already out of the first city with a split series 1 to 1. Thanks to the support of the bench from OKC and the wonderful performance from Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade from the Heat.  Game 1 came through for the Thunder, while Game 2 was all Heat almost for the entire game.

It has been a fun playoff trip. I enjoy it personally, going out with friends to the Hooters and also just having fun on facebook with all the NBA memes I had posted. Here are some so you can have a laugh.