I did not get to see American Gangster over the weekend. My apologies to all of you and to myself. I will rectify the situation this week. In other non-NBA news, I’m not proud to say that yesterday I came extremely close to being one of the main culprits in a Malice at the Palace-esque brawl on the football field. I’m not the guy to take sports when I play too seriously unless I’m angry. The team we played was a group of, for lack of a less accurate term, total meatheads that were celebrating every first down like they won the fictional Super Bowl. They were real aggressive, pushing and shoving and cursing at us in front of little kids.
Things got what the NBA cliche writer would call “chippy.” When I insult people, I tend to do it in a humorous and creative way. But yesterday this guy was annoying me so much that I was just pointing at him saying “Hey, f–k you!” right to his face, and we had the macho walk hard towards each other with a stare down and everything. Some old guy on their team was taunting me from the sidelines and I became more focused on yelling back and forth with him than playing the actual game. My only contribution to the game was that I tried to pull someone’s arm out of the socket when he got too close to me and I blasted their best player as hard as I could without being called for a penalty as he was running full speed down the sideline. I injured my hand on that play. It was worth it. My only regret is that I cared too much about not getting called for the penalty. I should have really let go and gotten myself ejected and martyred. Yes, my cool was lost. I was Ron Ron.
They celebrated the game-sealing pick so much that one of their guys got called for an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty, and then my smallest teammate tried to fight him. Suddenly I was thrown into the peacemaker role, and I had to jump in and hold people back from fighting. It was a really aggravating hour of my life. By the way I got stuck in traffic because of the NYC marathon on the way to the game and I got there late.
The game ended and then the other team tried that “Hey, it’s just a game, we’re just having fun” BS. Nice try, you jerks. We basically told them “You won but you are all losers. We don’t want to be friends.” There were many more f-bombs in that sentence yesterday.
I don’t mean to write about this, I just want to do my job, give you some NBA content, be happy. But this is tough to let go of. SERENITY NOW!
Ah, the NBA. Good lookin’ out to Antoine Walker for being on the T-Wolves and feeling the need to jack up the last shot, hence giving the Knicks a non-collapse in their home-opener. You know that classic NBA footage of Isiah going up to Kevin McHale after the Pistons lost to the Celtics in the playoffs and he said “Beat L.A.” and there was that mutual respect between two Hall of Famers? How the mighty have fallen.
Obviously it’s early, and Washington and Chicago and Golden State each sitting at 0-3 doesn’t mean that much in the grand scheme of things, but still. Gilbert Arenas is coming dangerously close to being the Chad Johnson of the NBA. It’s hilarious and entertaining when he’s winning, but if he’s gonna talk all that trash, he’s just a goofball if he can’t back it up. Not to nitpick here, but in that SI story about how Gil proclaims he makes everyone better because he pushes the ball and everyone gets more shots and thus everyone is happier… well, that may be true. He’s funny and people like him. But he was basically putting himself over Kobe, Wade, and LeBron. Kobe is a three-time champion. Wade is a champion who swept Gilbert’s team out of the playoffs a few years ago all by himself. LeBron beat Gil’s team with their happy 20 ppg big three in the playoffs, also mostly by himself. I enjoy the zany character Gilbert as much as anyone. Hey, he makes our jobs so much easier, and you have to love that. But Gilbert, win some games.
Whoa I just channeled the Walton voice in my head by accident. Oh, by the way the Celtics are off to a great start, just like the Pats, just like the Sox. Boston.
And finally, the Lakers. Of all the thousands of crazy scenarios you would expect from this team, I would never in a million years have thought they would start the season by beating up on Western Conference playoff teams. Holly’s recaps are coming. One of the missions of the day are to find a name for that column. Our art director Stephen Goggi got lasik last week, so his banner designs should be better than ever! Wait, I have no idea what I’m talking about. Alright. Angry MONDAY!
