Playoff Basketball, I've Missed You.

Nothing passes the time quite like nostalgia. 

I can stare at my screensaver, a slide show of all the pictures on my computer, for hours on end, and I’ll reminisce about the events of each image, smiling all the while.  75 of my top 100 songs—if I were to make such a list—would be ranked, not because of their enjoyable melodies or head-bobbing beats, but because they are inextricably linked to particular moments of my life; the song that softly played during my first kiss, a tune that evokes memories of my first college trip to Vegas, that R&B joint that still to this day serves as a painful reminder of how I let that one girl get away … I can go on for hours with this.

And my longing for fonder times applies to all aspects of my life, especially to the realm of sports.  I’m old school through and through.  With boxing—the most ancient of all athletic contests—I’m an ardent advocate of 15 rounds, one champ per division, same day weigh-ins, and the abolition of the junior/super weight classes.  Call me a sadist, but that is how boxing should be, like it was in the golden age of the sport.

When it comes to football, I’m all for horse-collar tackles and (slightly) late hits on quarterbacks.  I say enough of this protection by referees; it’s a contact sport, and the quarterback should be as much a viable target as any other position.  And if it’s legal to drag down a ball carrier by his dreadlocks, then horse-collar tackles should be kosher as well.

For basketball, I’m an avid supporter of dunks (no thanks to the player formerly known as Lew Alcindor), hand-checking, and of course, the good, old fashioned playoff foul.

That’s why, after one-and-a-quarter rounds of playoff basketball, you see nothing on my face but an ear-to-ear smile.  Like Ahmad, these first few games have me thinking of “Back in the Day,” when flagrant two’s were run-of-the-mill whistle calls, almost brushed off as a natural consequence of a physical game played by gigantic, brooding men.

Not since the early 90s have I seen such deliberately physical play.  We got a small taste of it in the ’07 playoffs when Robert Horry sent Steve Nash crashing into the announcers table like a rag doll.  But not much else — until this year.

Here’s a list of the action so far:

• Dwight Howard sideswipes Samuel Dalembert’s head with an elbow.  Howard is known as a player with a child-like demeanor, but lacking the requisite killer instinct to be great, and that’s what makes this one so surprising.  It was a pretty vicious blow—and don’t let Dalembert’s relatively nondescript reaction fool you into thinking otherwise—that occurred after the play was done.  The suspension was well deserved, but I wouldn’t mind see more ‘bows from Dwight in the future.  Imagine how dominant he’d be if players actually feared him.  He&rsq