LITTLE ORPHAN TIMMY:
Spurs fans numbering in the skillions have emailed me, chastizing me for characterizing Little Orphan Timmy as the Spurs as "whiners.'' And my characterization will cease. ...
As soon as Tim Duncan ceases whining.
With 1:05 to play and San Antonio leading by a point in Saturday's Game 3 at the AAC, Dirk Nowitzki dribbled around defender Tony Parker and drove the lane. His intended target, almost certainly, was Duncan, the singular reason this semifinal series, is even close. Duncan had five fouls when the two stars made contact.
Whistle. Foul. On Duncan. That's six. Sit down.
Nowitzki made those two free throws and later made two more after an offensive rebound against a Duncan-less Spurs team that, fell to the Mavs, 104-103.
If you have watched this series, you are not surprised by what Duncan did after the whistle. Or what he was doing late into the night following the game: Palms up, to beg. Eyes wide, to beg. Gums flapping, to beg.
"He didn't fall into me," Duncan said in his postgame press conference. "He didn't touch me, I didn't touch him. He tried to draw contact, I moved out of his way. If he stepped on my foot, he stepped on my foot. There was zero contact."
Um. ... if Duncan's foot and Dirk's foot touched. ... that's contact. Right?
Responded Dirk in his media session: "Is that a foul? You tell me.''
It is, not unlike a late phantom foul that sent Manu Ginobili to the line, not unlike Manu and Fabio's series of flops, not unlike Bruce Bowen's nasty habit of undercutting airborn shooters, not unlike Duncan's own whistle-drawing theatrics, a foul only if it's called.
There WAS contact. There WAS a whistle. There WAS a foul.
"It was frustrating, because the type of fouls they were calling down the stretch, I didn't think they were fouls,'' cried Little Orphan Timmy, and I really believe there were tears in his eyes as he whispered his plea to the media, in a voice far softer than the one he used to (if I read lips even near right) MF Josh Howard as he exited.
Maybe Dirk got a superstar call. Maybe it's because he is, as coach Avery Johnson called him, "the new and improved Dirk."
And maybe Duncan gets some superstar calls, too, on the way to his terrific output in three games in this series. But Little Orphan Timmy won't be completely "new and improved'' until he puts his palms back in his pockets, puts his eyeballs back in their sockets, and puts the teardrops back in their ducts.
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