Congrats to the Miami Heat and their fans, after the South Florida NBA franchise repeated as world champs late last night. As someone rooting for the Spurs, the indelible image that I can't get out of my brain this morning is the great Tim Duncan pounding the court with his right hand, just after missing a running hook shot and follow-up tip that would have tied the game with less than a minute to go. As a 49er fan who (thankfully) has mostly erased the non pass interference call on wide receiver Michael Crabtree in the last minute of this year's Super Bowl, let me just say that to Spurs fans everywhere, I feel your pain.
Some folks are calling this one of the greatest NBA Finals series either. I wouldn't go that far, but Games 6 and 7 get it close to the two best series I can remember, the epic Boston-L.A. 1984 series, and the Lakers-Detroit series in 1988, when Magic and Kareen repeated by staving off Isiah Thomas' heroics. Congrats to LeBron James - no pro basketball player has had more pressure on him, and he continues to elevate his play - now he's like Oscar Robertson on 'roids - the combination of scoring, rebounding and assists make him a more complete player than Michael Jordan, and when his outside shot is connecting as it was last night, well, then there's no stopping him, or the Heat.
Moving on to local news - well, the wheels are totally coming off the campaign for the Lens in St. Petersburg. The Chamber of Commerce yesterday said the city should just walk away and start again, a huge paradigm shift for that group. But Councilman Charlie Gerdes couldn't get anyone on the board (for different reasons) to agree on that notion, so the measure on the Lens remains on the August 27 ballot, as it should be, since much of the populist anger about the whole thing is that a large portion of the citizenry
feels they should have always had a decision on the matter.
Councilman Jeff Danner joked at a Tiger Bay luncheon yesterday that he was happy to spend 45 minutes talking about something other than the Lens, as he and PSTA's Brad Miller talked about the transit tax, which won't be on the ballot for 16 more months.
There will be a protest against NSA surveillance and Bill Nelson's comment that Edward Snowden is a "traitor." Meanwhile, Nelson says there's another Booz Allen employee who shouldn't have had access to classified intelligence who worked at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa.
And please check out our story in this week's CL, where we report on a situation out in Eastern Hillsborough County regarding a possible big-box development in an area that absolutely wants nothing to do with it, and those citizens frustrations with their own government.
