"Me and D-Wade."

"The two of us."

"He and I are the leaders of this team."

I can't tell you how many times I've seen quotes like this from LeBron James this season.

And there wouldn't be anything wrong with them, if there really were only two leaders on the Heat.

But there aren't. There are three.

There were Three Amigos this off-season in Miami, it was the Big Three as the season got underway and it's still "That's a Magic Number."

Chris Bosh has been maligned his whole career as too soft to get it done. His own G.M. in Toronto even went so far as to question Bosh's "toughness" (a cardinal sin just about anywhere, but completely unforgivable in today's NBA) towards the end of last season.

And throughout this season, people have been maligning Bosh and what he's brought to the table, no matter what he does or doesn't do. Too few points? Not enough fire in his belly. He's a wallflower with skills well below those of his flashier teammates who's just happy riding their coattails. Riles should do us all a favor and trade the bum this off-season for better complementary players. Too many points? He's not distributing enough. He's shooting too many jumpers. And he's not banging around the middle like he's supposed to be. (Don't even get me started on the "s" word.)

Soft, soft, soft…

Bull.

Bosh is a 20 points-per-game guy for his career, and averages 9.2 rebounds-per-game. That's soft?

Well, he disappears in the playoffs, the chuckleheads say.

Wrong.

He's averaging 18.2 PPG and 9.1 RPG this year, off his numbers by a single basket per game.

That's less than LeBron's scoring decline in the playoffs, by the way.

The drop in Wade's scoring is less than either of them, but he's been here before. He's won a ring. So that eases the butterflies a bit.

The bottom line, for all the "greatest" talk that surrounds Wade and James, is that neither of them can do it alone. Period. Wade needed Shaq to get it done in Miami. James made a habit of folding like a lawn chair in past playoff appearances. And Bosh? Well, he never spent all that much time playing in the post-season.

But I'd venture he was pulling a heavier load. And to discount him at this point, as James seems to want to do, as too many basketball "experts" seem to want to do, would be a mistake.

James needs every bit of help he can get to finally win the Championship trophy everybody (himself included) seems to feel is his birthright. He spent the first part of his career in Cleveland proving to the world that he couldn't get it done on his own.

What he should do now is accept that, like he did in the off-season, and thank his lucky stars he's got a guy like Bosh in his corner.

Bosh ain't no Ringo.

Speaking of Ringo, that steady banging noise you're hearing isn't coming from the drums, it's the sound of poor Jim Riggleman banging his head against his office wall at Nats Park. The Nats beat the Orioles last week 17-5. How awesome is that?!? So why is Riggleman playing Moby Dick with his melon? Because all around that offensive onslaught were losses of 1-0, 3-0, 1-0, and 2-1.

Eeeeewwww…

At least when I played baseball we lost convincingly and consistently. We weren't trying to tear anyone's heart out.

While we're talking about tearing people's hearts out…. Every time another cycling Judas comes forward to damn Lance Armstrong a little part of me shrivels up and looks for a place to die. And it has nothing to do with cycling. Cycling is jogging on two wheels as far as I can tell. Go go go in a big ol' circle and find yourself ending up exactly where you started, just sweaty and short of breath. No, Armstrong's legacy for me will always be about the fight he's brought against cancer, a fight we should have all been fighting for the last 50 years but haven't, a fight that could be won within a decade if the government, our government, would turn the big guns against it.

If we can spend 10 years and trillions of dollars looking for a guy hiding in plain sight in Pakistan, maybe kicking cancer's ass can be next on the agenda.

Hmmm?

How 'bout those Caps!? Oh… Well…. Nevermind.

There's really nothing to say.

I think there's some tennis thing going on somewhere. Maybe France. Pretty sure there are no Americans anywhere near the thing, and if there are they certainly won't be playing for long. At this rate, tennis is going to be about as popular as horse-racing in the U.S. any day now.

Is the NFL lockout over? No? Guess "activist" judges aren't so bad when they're ruling in favor of big business, huh?

Happy Memorial Day. Try to take a moment during your holiday weekend to remember what it's all about.

Alex can be reached at cuda24@yahoo.com