05/16 (LeBron) Quickie

Gabe turns 6 today. For those of you who have been around since the day he arrived in 2006 (announced in the Quickie, I believe), thank you.

He gets his presents tonight, but this morning we gave him his first gift -- a Cam Newton t-shirt jersey. Newton is his favorite player. He didn't even have it on before he did Cam's "Superman" move in celebration. I think it'll be impossible for me not to buy him a real Newton Panthers jersey this fall.

(He is also getting a half-dozen packs of various sport cards -- just in case you were wondering if analog sports fandom was dead. It's not -- turns out 6-year-olds are as fascinated by the facts and data on the back of a sports card as they have been for three generations.)

More:

*Heat lose to the Pacers: Chris Bosh turns out to matter... a lot. But the story of the game was LeBron missing those free throws at the end, then standing around as Mario Chalmers took the would-be game-tying shot at the buzzer. I understand why Spoelstra would use LeBron as a decoy to get the cleanest shot possible, but it sure doesn't look good. If the Heat lose to the Pacers -- and at this point it's 50/50 (which is a lot more tenuous than it was this time yesterday) -- then at least they have the built-in excuse that Bosh wasn't playing, no different than the Bulls getting bounced without Rose.

*Spurs win, handily. It's their title to lose. Today's best read is a sneak peek of this week's SI, which has a great profile of Tim Duncan by Chris Ballard.

*Head over to Quickish for some really great reads about the biggest topics.

-- D.S.