Paul Daugherty | Cincinnati Enquirer

Wochit

David Richard, USA TODAY Sports

Mixed Monday morning, Mobsters. The Reds Plague (a close relative of the Black Death) continues unabated. There is no vaccination. Someone alert the Centers for Disease Control.

But my annual one-month like affair with the NBA has returned. And LeBron James is a decent alternative to/antidote for the Can’t Do Kids on the river.

In theory, basketball is a team game, played by five guys working as one. More often than not, that’s exactly the case. I’ve been watching the Celtics and their genius coach Brad Stevens systematically ransack the 76ers, for example. Boston has almost no one on its team that you’ve heard of. Its best player could be Al Horford. Its second best is Terry Rozier, whom I vaguely remember from his ‘Ville days. And yet they’re about to close out Philly and head to the East finals.

Where they will pose a fascinating challenge for the Cleveland LeBrons. James is working his way past Michael Jordan as Greatest Ever. The postseason he is producing defies credibility.

No one has ever swallowed a game whole the way James has. Toronto can’t beat him in the postseason (2-11). James dominated Game 2 with 43 points. Then on Saturday, after the Raptors had tied the game with 8 seconds left, James simply took the inbound pass, went coastal and dropped a 10-footer for the win.

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Between October and May, the NBA is an afterthought. The season is too long, the games too similar, the names not recognizable enough. Everything changes now, though, when the stars come out to shine, and we get to watch magnificence a few nights a week.

Game 4 of Cavs-Raptors is tonight in Cleveland. Then, the Cavs will get Boston and Genius Brad in the East finals. Can Stevens find a way to dilute LeBron? Maybe.

I’m hooked.

Now, then. . .

THE REDS SERIOUSLY VALIDATED ON SUNDAY the notion that for some, baseball works better as a concept. That is, the idea of going to a baseball game is far better than the reality.

Three hour and 36-minute game. Seventy-three-minute rain delay. Stupidly long time to navigate downtown for a place to park, owing to the running of the Flying Pig earlier. Finnegan gives up four in the first, Reds never in the game. By the final out, maybe 1,000 fans still in attendance. Reds lose 2 of 3 to a team that’s supposed to be worse than they are.

Nobody is worse than they are.

I’m sitting in the press box. My body is calcifying, my brain is oatmeal. I wanna scream. And I love baseball. Great American Small Park is becoming a sad place.

When is rock bottom?

Since firing Price for going 3-15, the Reds are 5-11 under Riggleman. They’re winning slightly more than one game a week. Has anyone other than Steinbrenner fired an interim manager?

Finnegan isn’t competitive, and hasn’t been in any of his five starts since they recalled him from ‘Ville. It took him 29 pitches to get an out Sunday. The top of the 1st required 21 minutes. In his one rehab start, Finnegan walked five in five innings and threw close to 100 pitches. Hey, let’s bring this guy up!

He looks overweight, possibly because he is.

Meantime, Amir Garrett is pitching middle relief. Because, I am told, he’s comfortable with that.

And on Saturday night, the minor-league soccer team outdrew them. Again.

Is summer really summer without the Reds? Could be we’re about to find out.

SPEAKING OF SOCCER, I don’t know how competitive FC Cincinnati would be in the MLS right now, but it did well versus MLS teams last year, and very well in the Cup, so. . . I wish we could find out.

We can’t though, because those who run the MLS make those who run the NFL look like the Benevolent Daughters of the Convent. These people have jerked around a town and its fans. They have FCC ownership in full Grovel Mode. They charge a $150 million expansion fee, for entrance into a league that draws test-pattern TV numbers. They proceed to tell our wannabe team it needs its own soccer-specific stadium. They go on to tell our wannabe team where that stadium has to be.

Our wannabe team spends more than a year jumping through every hoop, like a good little trained seal. MLS says on multiple occasions it’s ready to name its 2nd and for now final expansion team. It never does. Instead, it tells our wannabe team its bid still isn’t quite ready. And our wannabe grovelers do the whole mushroom thing again. (Have dung shoveled on them, go subterranean.)

Wouldn’t the stadium be best sited in the northern ‘burbs? Mason, West Chester? Of course it would. That’s where a decent clump of the fan base resides. Wouldn’t it have been good in K-Y? Yep. Easy access, great views. I’m told MLS shot K-Y down. And MLS wasn’t crazy about Oakley; Not downtown-y enough.

WTF.

We keep hearing it’s a done deal. So why isn’t the deal done? MLS had no problem admitting Nashville. Nashville’s team hadn’t even played a game in the USL when it was awarded an MLS franchise.

Meantime, Cincinnati sets attendance records, has ownership with pockets both deep and historic, and Jeff Berding who, like him or not, has done everything but head a ball off the top of the Carew Tower trying to win MLS’ approval.

Thank you, MLS, for rewarding that support, enthusiasm and dedication by making us assume the position.

I feel better now.

TIGER IS DELUSIONAL. Can’t make a putt at the Wells Fargo, says it’s because the greens are different from the last time he played Quail Hollow, three years ago.

KAISER GATES is leaving Xavier to play professionally. Wow. Hope he likes Tel Aviv.

OH, JEEZ. . . They called it a “traumatic hematoma’’ and that was putting it mildly.

MY ROOKIE FORAY INTO FANTASY BASEBALL has had an interesting, unforeseen consequence. Beyond the fact that it has made me follow the AL more than ever before – how did my guy Salvador Perez do last night? – it has suggested to me how hard it is to be patient when good players are playing like crap.

A dollar for every day I've wanted to dump Anthony Rizzo.

Another for the suddenly powerless bat of Andrew Benintendi and the 3-for-40 swoon of Brian Dozier. And don’t get me started on the lameness of Luke Weaver.

Fellow fantasy weirdos, are you with me?

BY THE WAY. . . Given the way starting pitchers are being used, should we redefine the Quality Start? It’s a bogus stat to begin with – six innings, 4.50 ERA, wow – but if we insist on keeping it, shouldn’t it be five innings and two runs these days?

FOND FAREWELL TO ICHIRO. . . Can you imagine what Billy Hamilton could do if he could approach hitting the way Ichiro did? An astonishing stat, courtesy of SI.com’s Tom Verducci:

Almost a quarter of his hits (23%) never left the infield.

An Ichiro story, from Verducci. The Mariners had just signed him. His manager was skeptical:

Suzuki simply kept slapping the ball to the opposite field in batting practice and in games. Mariners manager Lou Piniella, among others in uniform, grew worried about him – worried that major league pitchers could knock the bat out of his hands. Teams began defending him as they might a lefthanded-hitting pitcher.

Finally, before a game in Peoria, Arizona, Piniella used Suzuki’s interpreter to ask him, “Do you ever turn on the ball?”

“Sometimes,” Suzuki said.

First time up, Suzuki pulled a long home run high on a hill in rightfield.

When he reached the dugout he asked Piniella, “Are you happy now, Skip?”

Said Piniella, “You can do anything you want the rest of the year.”