Let me just get that out there: true MVP's do not miss critical free throws in the closing moments of elimination games. I'm not saying, I'm just saying.

Derrick Rose is a fine player, definitely in the upper echelon of point guards playing the game today even if he plays it a little unconventionally as a score-first point guard. However last night showed that maybe all this hype and excitement over this Bulls team was a little too much too soon.

Same thing goes for the Oklahoma City Thunder. Another nice team with some young up and coming stars, but just couldn't match up with the veteran experience of the Dallas Mavericks.

So we have a rematch of the 2006 Finals and unfortunately I think we are going to see a similar result: a Heat win. I say unfortunately because I really want this whole LeBron-Wade-Bosh thing to fail. It is bad for the NBA to have that much talent concentrated on one franchise.

I've said all along that you can't win an NBA Championship without a legit post presence. Unfortunately, I never began to consider that statement wouldn't hold up if none of the other teams alive in the playoffs had one either. After the Lakers and the Spurs exited early, the road was paved for the Holy Triumvirate to take the whole thing.

Consider me underwhelmed.

So let's be honest, when you heard the Mets sold a minority stake in the team to fund manager David Einhorn, you thought of this:

In other Mets issues, the team continues to play like utter crap in the wake of owner Fred Wilpon's less than charitable comments on the overall talent level of his team. Sadly, this is only the latest in a long line of acts and comments that make me convinced the man is losing his mind. My assumption is that his mental state is very similar to Robert the Bruce here:

The NFL and NFLPA continue to find ways to screw up the best thing going, and now with the cancelation of the rookie symposium, you have the first of what will be many offseason events canceled by the NFL as they pursue some semblance of reality and understand that only idiots truly cannot work together to split $9 billion.

In this ever aggravating saga, I've personally watched the needle sway from owners to players to owners and now back to the players. They are both equally guilty in this and need to just get back to the table. In my opinion, the two sides would still be talking if the union didn't decertify. But the union wouldn't have decertified if the owners just would have treated the players like business partners they really are.

In the end, the NFL owners are probably hoping for a similar solution to the NHL's recent labor stoppage, when the owners got a much better deal in the end than the last pre-lockout offer to the players.

Unfortunately, that means we're going without football for a bit folks.

The Los Angeles Lakers have hired Mike Brown to be their head coach. Apparently Brown said he'd get on the phone with Kobe sometime in the near future.

I'm sorry what?

This is just another example of the Buss family proving to the world who runs the franchise. The only thing is that Kobe is that kind of personality who can make or break a coach. Right or wrong, if you lose him, you lose the team and eventually your job.

If Kobe wasn't consulted on what will probably be his last coach in a Lakers uniform, what exactly do you have to do to earn that respect?

The "experts" are saying that Brown is a good hire because he's defensively-minded, and yes the Lakers did struggle mightily on that end of the floor. But there's something beyond the x's and o's that makes me very worried: if LeBron eventually tuned him out, how long will it be before Kobe does the same thing?

The Cavaliers main offense was LeBron versus the world under Brown. Kobe can't do that anymore. This hire is exceptionally short sighted and I stick to my guns that the right hire was sitting there on the payroll all along: Brian Shaw.