There are fifteen players listed as members of the Miami Heat when I click on last night’s box score in my ESPN app.
None of them played in the NIT.
And we’re not talking redshirt complications.
No, believe it or not, Max Strus was not enough to will DePaul to an NIT appearance. Gabe Vincent couldn’t get UC-Santa Barbara to such heights. And as for Jimmy Butler, well…there’s a reason Buzz Williams had to take a step down from that premier college basketball program in Milwaukee and end up in the wilds of Texas.
The Heat have no NIT experience. None. Collectively. Not a single player on that roster has played a game of any more significance than a regular season (or conference tournament) college basketball game with theoretical NIT implications.
Which is why the powers that be should be making great efforts to ensure the Heat don’t win this year’s NBA Finals.
The NBA is acknowledged rather widely as a joke. Not an exhibition tournament, like the one that graces TruTV in March, but one step above it: A senior circuit for NIT greats and those willing to keep being reminded of their eternal failure in exchange for a paycheck. It’s not a bad life if you’re a former NIT great, like Juwan Morgan, and it’s not a bad life if you aren’t a former NIT great but you have no pride in yourself, like Grayson Allen. For the rest of the guys, though? It’s rough. It’s, I would venture, a bad life. It’s not the NIT. I’ll tell you that much.
Still, there’s a veneer of dignity that the NBA has managed to prop up to shield itself from reality, and if there’s one thing our present-day society loves, it’s veneers of dignity shielding us from reality. The Heat win? The veneer shatters. (I’m assuming veneers are like mirrors and can therefore shatter here, but if not, please work with me.) The Heat win? The NBA gets laughed off its own floors. The Heat win? I get to give LeBron James a swirly while Ralph Sampson high-fives me from off the screen.
The Heat must not win.
Good luck, NBA.
Contreras v. Vogelbach
I’m going to the Cubs game tonight with Joe, and after last night’s happenings, the main story is obviously Dan Vogelbach. From what I can tell, the Vogelbach/Contreras situation is as follows:
- Willson Contreras and Dan Vogelbach were once prospects in the Cubs’ minor league system together.
- Dan Vogelbach got traded for Mike Montgomery, who went on to be the dude on the mound when the Cubs won the World Series and then went on to be the dude in the clubhouse who was unrosterable chemically because the Cubs wouldn’t pretend he was better than he was.
- Dan Vogelbach has bounced around since debuting after the Montgomery trade, playing for Seattle, Toronto, Milwaukee, and Pittsburgh, with the Toronto stint part of a 2020 season in which he somehow played for three teams across two countries despite the schedule lasting just sixty games. Over that time, he has hit 55 home runs and amassed 1.0 cumulative WAR. Not a bad little career.
- Willson Contreras remembers Dan Vogelbach fondly, as a friend.
- Dan Vogelbach has met so many people since meeting Willson Contreras that he does not have any fondness for Willson Contreras, possibly because he doesn’t like the guy but possibly because he’s playing for the Pirates now and he’s also played on so many teams since 2016 that his heart is simply out of fondness.
We saw this blow up a little in April, when Contreras [Did he pick Vogelbach off? I forget the exact play] and cheerfully taunted the big man while the big man did not look amused. It stood out a little at the time, but not enough to warrant its own Supreme Court-imitative header in a Wednesday edition of Stu’s Notes. “Hmm,” we thought. “Contreras seems to think they’re still friends, and Vogelbach does not seem to think they’re still friends.”
Well, last night we got confirmation. After a “collision” at home plate (Vogelbach’s train went off the tracks approaching a waiting Contreras, armed with a baseball deftly and forcefully thrown to him by Seiya Suzuki, and the two kind of body-tagged one another as Vogelbach, like a treed squirrel accepting its fate, gave himself up to the out), Contreras (to use his words) asked if Vogelbach was ok, to which Vogelbach responded by throwing Contreras’s mask to the side, to which Contreras responded by confronting Vogelbach.
I wish Contreras had acted more emotionally wounded. “I thought we were friends!” That kind of thing. I also want to point out that outs on the bases are probably especially rattling for Vogelbach, whose entire vibe is “Gigantic man who looks like he can bop and looks like he’s going to always get out in embarrassing fashion on the bases.” I also want to acknowledge that Vogelbach was probably pissed at the Pirates’ third-base coach, whose identity I do not know but whom I can surmise the Pirates probably employ because he’s hated by other teams and the Pirates live to be a pesky villain.
Anyway, Contreras thought they were friends, Vogelbach didn’t think so, there’s something beautiful about it. A little like Buddy the Elf and the raccoon.
