Old Men in Sweats! ™
By: Tommy T. & Barry D.
Volume 26
We're Baaaaaack!
Lakers scream out to the rest of the SportsWorld….
"We’re baaaaaaack!"
Make no mistake. The sportsworld is not happy to have the Los Angeles Lakers back in the discussion. Nobody in any part of our great country is feeling good about it. You know where they’re especially steamed? Boston… they hate us the most. Philly. San Antonio for sure. Portland… 16-up entering the 4th quarter of game 7 in 2000 Western Conference Finals. Yeah Portland is pissed! Even places nearby like Phoenix and Golden State. Hell Sacramento remembers Horry’s Game 4 buzzer-beating 3 like it was yesterday. Even a non-existent AAA farm market like Sac-town still hates the Lakers.
You don’t have to be old men in sweats to know about the Lakers ridiculous luck in acquiring superstars. I was a kid when Kareem literally whined his way out of teeny tiny, frigid Milwaukee in the 70s. Next Magic fell into their damn laps… big, cheesy smile and all. Somehow Worthy fell on top of Magic. How is that possible? Two Hall-of-Famers in 3 years?! Then it was Shaq and Kobe. The toughest duo to ever defend in NBA history, yet impetuous enough to ruin it all. That’s okay, Laker Haters, because Pau Gasol replaced Shaq, with all his sweet European moves and back-t0-back championships. Only the Lakers could get that lucky, is what the rest of the sportsworld would say. Even kids who were 4 or 5 years old have grown up hating the Lakers because they’ve heard all the stories from their parents, older brothers, uncles, and teachers. Now they’re NBA fans in their 20s and yes they HATE the Lakers.
Now here comes the King. And here comes the Buss family again. Only this time it’s with the cute, even at 50 years old, daughter running the show. Jeanie hires Magic, he hires Kobe’s old super agent, and together the new Lakers’ front office lures Lebron to Lakerland. We’re old now. We’re in sweats most of the time now. But even we ended up living in Los Angeles for most of our adult lives. All the way from our crappy mill town in upstate New York we knew that LA was the place. So there we ended up. We had front row seats for the end of Showtime and all of Shaq & Kobe. And we loved every minute of it.
Now that Lebron has moved the family into the Brentwood mansion full-time, registered little Bronny in the hot, private school, and set up shop with all his production, multi-media enterprises, the Lakers will be hated even more. That’s what we want. We revel in it. We expect it. Yesterday, just for s*#ts and giggles I watched game 7 of the 2010 NBA Finals between the Celtics and Lakers. Oh it was a hideous, wretched game. One of the worst shooting games in Finals history. But it was still the Lakers pulling off yet another championship. A sweet beautiful championship at the hands of the Celtics. That’s the last time we saw the Lakers. That’s the last time Kobe and Pau were young enough to carry their team all the way. Lebron is not young. He’s older than Kobe was in that 2010 season. But Lebron is still a monster on the court. He does something only the super greats do. He improves every year. I saw MJ do it and Jason Kidd do it and of course Kobe do it. Somehow they got better each year. Last year Lebron shot the ball better from 3 land than I’ve ever seen before. He has that crazy gene. The one that won’t let him stop improving.
The rest of the NBA knows it. Maybe they can’t put their finger on it, but they know there’s something weird about Lebron. Kobe-weird, MJ-weird. And they’re getting ready to take out their Laker Hater banners because of it. It’s already started. On the heels of the Lebron announcement, the Lakers signed Lance “Romance” Stephenson. Sorry, anybody who’s blowing in ears on the court is getting called that. They followed that up with even stranger signings… Javale “Shaqtin-a-Fool star” McGee and Rajon “worst-shooting point guard I’ve ever seen” Rondo. You think that’s not going to be the oddest, strangest free agent signings in recent memory? The Lakers are back and they’re going to do it the only way they know how. By signing, trading for, or stealing the superstars of the game. Then sprinkling the supporting cast with zanies, cast-offs, and former all-stars. The Lakers once even sent one of their very own legends to play GM for another team. That’s how they got Pau Gasol. From Memphis GM Jerry West. I think West was the Grizzlies GM for all of 10 minutes. Just enough to get in town and trade the super-skilled big man to the Lake Show. Oh, and the primary player the Grizzlies got in return… Kwame Brown.
You wonder why the rest of the sportsworld hates the Lakers? Imagine how funny Lebron is going to look in those purple and gold uniforms. Running around with Stephenson, McGee, Rondo. Talk about Yuck! But you know when it’s going to stop looking funny and start looking normal? When Bron and associates are running deep in the playoffs again. And knocking off the Portlands, San Antons, and eventually the Bostons and Phillys of the world. The hate fest is back on and Lakers Nation is loving every minute of it. Now the earth can start spinning in its normal direction again.
-OMIS
“PREACHING SPORTS KNOWLEDGE FOR A LIFETIME!”