He Really Deserves a Raise After All of This

There are those who believe that if Dwyane Wade hadn’t suffered a rib injury in the playoffs, the Miami Heat might have been able to do what the Detroit Pistons couldn’t -- defeat the San Antonio Spurs in the NBA Finals.

Columnist Dave Barry of the Miami Herald sounds like one of them.

“Dwyane’s injury was a huge blow,” he wrote, “because Dwyane is the Heat’s leading scorer and humblest human being and People magazine’s Most Beautiful Person and pilot of the team plane.

“Dwyane also invented penicillin, correctly identified Deep Throat four months ago and is currently batting .438 for the Marlins.”

Another viewpoint: Ron Artest, the suspended Indiana Pacer, said on FSN’s “Best Damn Sports Show Period”: “If I was playing, definitely we’d be in the Finals. We’d probably have the best record in the league and home-court advantage.... We’d be the NBA champions.”

Trivia time: What NBA player picked up two technical fouls in the first 10 minutes of his first pro game in 1995?

Spurs of the moment: Not only did the Spurs win their third NBA title since 1999, their record of 438-186 (a .702 winning percentage) over the last eight seasons is the best record in any of the four major team sports during that span, according to the San Antonio Express-News.

During that time, they have also won five division titles and three times have had the NBA’s best regular-season record.

The right type: The typewriter used by the late Jim Murray to write more than 10,000 columns for The Times was among the sports memorabilia sold at a Sotheby’s auction in New York earlier this month. The typewriter went for $18,000, proving that sometimes a thousand words is worth more than a picture.

Kissing cousins: Jamie Miller, 11, of Pittsburgh, was thrilled to win the boys’ division of the 82nd annual National Marbles tournament Thursday at Wildwood, N.J.

But it came with a price.

Tradition calls for the boys’ winner to kiss the girls’ winner, which is bad enough for an 11-year-old. In this case, the girls’ winner was Jamie’s cousin, Amy Nees, 13, of Palisade, Colo.

Amy got a reluctant kiss on the cheek.

Looking back: On this day in 1969, Pancho Gonzalez, 41, won the longest tennis match in Wimbledon history, beating Charles Pasarell in a 112-game match that lasted 5 hours 12 minutes.

Trivia answer: Rasheed Wallace.

And finally: Wallace got into foul trouble early in Game 7 Thursday night. Comparatively speaking, he showed considerable restraint. His fiery temper used to be worse, but Wallace didn’t always quite see it that way. For a 2002 segment on HBO’s “Real Sports,” he was asked by James Brown, “Why do you hate the refs so?”

Said Wallace: “Well, it’s not really that I hate them. I just try to come at them with logic and I guess they don’t like that.”

Larry Stewart can be reached at [email protected].