'Lex,

While it is always cool to summon up the mothership, I have to admit that I'm suffering a bout of impatience with anything having to do with Roswell after that goofball X-Files farewell last night. I mean, after that vast school of red herrings, and we wind up with Mulder and Scully canoodling in the auburn twilight in some desiccated Hampton Inn? Although it was interesting that Cigarette Man wound up looking like an original member of Jethro Tull.

The one furr'iner I remember most fondly is the young Arvydas Sabonis, lighting up Indiana for a couple dozen and looking like a 7-foot Larry Bird. He even defended reasonably well. Then, after a bad ankle injury (at the hands of the KGB, if our buddy Dale Brown is to be believed), eight years of bad sports medicine, and enough vodka to float the QE II, he finally gets to the league and he looks like a Baltic Billy Paultz. He was the real look into the future, and the goods besides. It was sad. As for Yao, given the other Chinese sports-medicine options for gaining weight, I hope he's doing it on sprouts.

Once I wrote that the Big Aristotle was going to be a "goliath for everyone to love." At the time, people—serious people—were telling me that Alonzo Mourning was going to win more championships, and that all TBA could do was dunk. You, on the other hand, told the tale of how he went midcourt to the tin the first time you saw him as a high-schooler. Since then, he's learned to pass—no-look stuff across the baseline, little low-post drops to Kobe—and he's a better defender than he's given credit for, although probably not as good as he should be. He's also really playing hurt. Tim Duncan's a great player, but he doesn't snuff TBA's dunk unless that toe is really bad. He really has become one of the four best centers of all time—I'll give you Russell, Chamberlain, and, maybe, Olajuwon. I think TBA passes Kareem when Los Angeles wins this year—and the free throw is just a terrific anomaly, something he can laugh about one day when he's polishing six or seven rings. He's also a very funny man, at least when he's not doing that silly monotone that he uses for his press conferences. The truth is out there ... and, dammit, it's a Chris Isaak video.

Devotedly yours in sport,
Pierce