An (belated) angry and super nerdy basketball rant from Griz vs Clippers series

So why the waste of cyberspace? There are a lot a questions that need answering or at least asking, and a lot of nerdy basketball rants that need to be(/don’t need to be but can be) unloaded in a post.

      Q: How does a completely useless enraged nerdy basketball rant even start? -Long-winded A: When a friendly text from a friendly friend with an easy going laid-back cool demeanor who just wants to shoot the breeze with a little basketball banter, accidentally rips open pandora’s box. Admittedly, this friend is pretty much an all around more decent human being than I am. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this particular friend angry before, and I have never seen anyone angry at him before, until he decided to hop on the LA clippers bandwagon. He had never really followed the NBA that closely, certainly not the Clippers. After living in Malibu for a few months, he naturally chose he was going to start being a Clippers fan in the middle of their most successful season in years.

 photo credit: not me

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     He wasn’t supporting the Clippers during the Michael Olowokandi years, not even last year before the franchise-redeeming Chris Paul trade, not during the lockout, but conveniently this season, during Lob City’s ceaseless high-light reel of  season, the clippers became “(his) team.” Then during game 4 of the Grizzlies-clippers first round series, he texts me to ask if I have been keeping up with playoff games, as if i am not the Grizzlies’ good luck charm, 100% responsible for the Grizzlies game 6 victories over the Spurs and Thunder last season, which were blessed  by my presence in FedExForum in Memphis May 2011. He asks me if I am keeping up with the surging Grizzlies, as if I hadn’t been following the Griz since the early Memphis days of their explosive one-two punch of Brevin Knight and Tony Massenburg.

Brevin Knight was the special type of selfless point guard who could average more assists and Shane Battier-hugs than points per game

 

Lob city? How soon we forget the combination of J-Will aka White Chocolate and Stromile “Stro-Show” Swift was actually an extremely potent alley-oop combo that made regular appearances in SportCenter’s Top Ten

         (Sorry I unintentionally created the appearance of a weird trend of very affectionate teammates in the above photos of early MemphGriz days, blame Google image search)     Anyway back to my friend and the playoff game… We continued communicating harmlessly enough while clipper enforcer Captain pube-beard Reggie Evans is out smashing into the bodies of the 9 talented people on the court attempting to play basketball around him, and then my friend has the audacity to complain to me that the referees are allowing Griz point guard Mike Conley to guard Chris Paul, or as he called it, repeatedly “foul” Chris Paul.  For certain, it was a rough series with lots of physical play and no-calls for both teams for 7 games, and Chris Paul, an unquestionable elite player who has earned the superstar status that allows him to constantly ride and pander to the refs, apparently was the only player not getting calls to go his way according to my friend.

     Yes, while the Clippers are winning, and on their way to ultimately winning the series in a game seven in Memphis (only to then get swept by the Spurs as part of  SA’s huge win streak),  he tells me that CP3, one of the most notorious floppers in the league on the non-spurs team most notorious and widely ridiculed for overselling and flopping for foul calls and working the refs over all game every game all year, needs some sympathy for not getting enough calls to go his way. Like the thought that guided the previous long rambling fragment of a sentence, I lost it. I was furious and basically lost my cool.  Like a hungry morbidly obese kindergartner who cannot fit his hand to reach the midway point of a  pringles can, I threw a verbal temper tantrum and went on a pathetically angry, raging, nerdy basketball rant, that was somehow supposed to be defending the integrity of my beloved Grizzlies, which included some version of the hostile statement that “even if Mike Conley (abused) Chris Paul and his entire family at midcourt as a halftime performance of every game, it would still not be as egregious or obvious as the fouls Reggie Evans commits on any given play while purporting to be a basketball player.” I then went on to insult my friend’s credibility as a fan. What an absurd concept, what is credible about senselessly yet loyally supporting a team of grown men being overpaid to play a game for a few years before retiring to riches? Not sure, but it is definitely fun and more so when your team is too busy winning to draft Hasheem Thabeet ever again. I sobered up from ridiculous childish rage, and while no one should be so caught up in a sport played by total strangers (who are million times more athletic than us) that we allow ourselves to become emotionally invested in the outcomes of games, I still don’t ever want to hear it from bandwagon opportunists.

 

Billy Crystal: City Slicker, Clippers Fan, and the voice of an entire generation of green one-eyed monsters

      Long time clipper fans deserved to see their team win a playoff series after missing the playoffs so many seasons, but brand new band wagon clipper fans don’t need to cram in the kitchen to steal a bite of the fresh loaf of Sweet Success Bread when none of them were there to support the Little Clipper -Red Hen of perpetual “rebuilding” seasons.

                      Good luck to the clips and the Grizz this offseason as they try to close the gap between them and theThunder who reign comfortably atop the West.