Thanks a lot David Stern
David Stern is the commisioner of the National Basketball Association....we'll call it the NBA for short. Stern pretty much has complete power over the league, though his power has wilted some this season, what the controversey around the new ball the league tried to introduce and they ended up switching back to the old ball. At any rate, Stern has made me mad recently for suspending Lakers star Kobe Bryant for a game.
In case you're not familiar with why Bryant was suspended, I'll lay it out for you. In a game against the San Antonio Spurs, Bryant attempted a shot at the end of regulation that would have won the game for his team, the Los Angeles Lakers. Bryant was being defended by Manu Ginobili of the Spurs. Bryant's shot missed and the game went to overtime. In the course of his shot though, Bryant flung his right arm (shooting arm) to his side where Ginobili was in hopes of creating contact and bilking the officials into whistling Ginobili for a foul. Well, Bryant did make contact with Ginobili, but there was no foul called and quite honestly one could have been called, it should have been on Bryant. He cracked Manu across his face, giving him a hell of a whack to his nose and across one of his eyes. Ginobili had cotton stuffed up his nose to stop the bleeding and had to ice down around his eye to reduce the swelling.
So there's the situation. No foul called either way, probably a good no call. Game went to overtime and the Spurs ended up winning. The Lakers then embarked to the east coast to start an eight game road trip. Well, before their first game in New York word came down from the league (Stern) that Bryant was suspended for one game for his actions in the Spurs game (the whole making Manu bleed thing). When I heard that Bryant was suspended I quickly became worried.
So why would I worry about this you ask? It was simple really. The first team the Lakers would play on their trip was the Knicks, the game Bryant would have to sit out. Their second game was against my beloved Boston Celtics who were in the midst of a twelve game losing streak, one loss away from tying the franchise record for consecutive losses.
I knew that Bryant wasn't going to be happy that he was suspended and so if he had to sit out the Knick game that he could come back with a vengence and torch the Celtics. Plus, if the Lakers were playing the Celtics sans Kobe, Boston actually stood a chance to win. With Bryant in the line-up for the purple and gold though, chances of a win for the Green decreased dramatically.
Well, it didn't work out that way. Kobe appealed his suspension and it was denied in like record time, so it would have to be the Knick game he would have to sit out. So he sat it out and the Lakers ended up losing and then the next game against the Celtics he was back and guess what happened? If you said he scored 43 points in the Lakers 111-98 over the Celtics then you either saw the game, the highlights or checked a box score to ruin the surprise. But yeah, Kobe came out and torched the Celtics, just as I had feared. He started off slow, but he got hot as the game went on; hitting shots from 24 feet away while being closely defended, you know that kind of hot.
So the Celtics tied a franchise record with 13 consecutive losses (and would set a new record two nights later with a loss against LA's other team, the Clippers) and yet somehow that wasn't the worst thing that happened that night.
You must understand that I despise the Lakers, I loathe them. I started watching the Celtics when I was very young, around the time I was 4 1/2, 5 years old. At that time the Celtics and Lakers had quite a rivalry. If your rooting interests lied with one team then you despised the other it was that simple. Nothing was more fun than hating the Lakers. Well after Bird and Magic retired and the Celtics and Lakers descended from great to mediocre the lust wore off the rivalry. Well, the Lakers got good again and the Celtics, well they didn't. Kind of hard to rekindle the old passion.
Still I thought there were enough people who carried the distaste for the Lakers, I was wrong. Watching the game, the crowd in Boston was littered with people wearing th purple and gold of the Lakers, most of it Bryant jerseys. Never in the past would those people have worn such a thing into the Garden becuase they knew they wouldn't make it out alive. But this wasn't the case. In fact as the game went on and Bryant kept making ridiculous shot after ridiculous shot cheers were resonating from the Boston crwod. Initially most of them came from the Lakers fans in the building, but the cheers became to loud and it was evident that Celtics fans were rooting for Bryant and well that drove me to the edge.
I couldn't believe peole at a Celtics home game were cheering for a Laker. When these two teams used to play it was said you could feel the anger in the building. All of Boston used to hate the Lakers. In the 1982 Eastern Confernce finals, with the Philadelphia 76ers on their way to beating the C's and facing the Lakers in the finals a chant of "Beat LA" resonated through the Boston Garden. That's right, instead of being depressed that their team lost a chance to go to the finals, they made sure to try and lift up the Sixers and make them aware they had a more important task at hand. For any true Celtics fan the most recent game against the Lakers should have been torture. There should have been no cheering for a Laker, at all.
Honestly, I've learned to live with the losing the Celtics are going through. I'm older than half of their current roster, they don't have much experience or depth and they can't seem to play consistently. I don't like the losing, but I've learned to live with it. I just simply can't live with Celtics "fans" cheering for a guy on a team we're supposed to despise. Red Auerbach, long time Celtics coach and GM, the patriarch of franchise passed away just before the season started and it was probably a good thing because if he had been alive to see the day when a Laker was being cheered in Boston, well he just might have killed some one and no I'm not joking about that.
So now I roll everything back to David Stern. He is a very smart man, much smarter than I am. Surely if I could see the pain this suspension was going to bring the Celtics, once one of the leagues signature franchises and a reason why the NBA was able to make itself and establish league, then he could have seen it. So why Mr. Commisioner did you make me go through all that? How could you have let that happen? Well the answer is simple conspiracy theory boy and girls.
Stern is a Knicks fan. Suspend Bryant for the Knicks game, Knicks have a chance to win. Make Bryant angry for being suspended, he comes out and set the game on fire for his next game, that being against the Celtics. The Celtics of course being a major rival to the Knicks over the years. So Stern's team wins, the team he quietly and deep down and secretly resents loses and causes its fans pain by tying a record for consecutive losses and setting everything up for a new record.
So thanks again Mr. Stern, really it was quite a treat to see a team I despise pound the team I love into the ground while the team I despise star player has a game that makes people in the home crowd cheer for him and make the loss that much more worse. Really that was great. So you and I commish are no longer on speaking terms, until weigh down some of those ping pong balls the Celtics have in the draft lottery to give them the number one overall pick.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to cheer myself up by going to the Barbaro message board and reading tributes and bible verses dedicated a race horse.....if you can't find humor in that, then where can you find it?
In case you're not familiar with why Bryant was suspended, I'll lay it out for you. In a game against the San Antonio Spurs, Bryant attempted a shot at the end of regulation that would have won the game for his team, the Los Angeles Lakers. Bryant was being defended by Manu Ginobili of the Spurs. Bryant's shot missed and the game went to overtime. In the course of his shot though, Bryant flung his right arm (shooting arm) to his side where Ginobili was in hopes of creating contact and bilking the officials into whistling Ginobili for a foul. Well, Bryant did make contact with Ginobili, but there was no foul called and quite honestly one could have been called, it should have been on Bryant. He cracked Manu across his face, giving him a hell of a whack to his nose and across one of his eyes. Ginobili had cotton stuffed up his nose to stop the bleeding and had to ice down around his eye to reduce the swelling.
So there's the situation. No foul called either way, probably a good no call. Game went to overtime and the Spurs ended up winning. The Lakers then embarked to the east coast to start an eight game road trip. Well, before their first game in New York word came down from the league (Stern) that Bryant was suspended for one game for his actions in the Spurs game (the whole making Manu bleed thing). When I heard that Bryant was suspended I quickly became worried.
So why would I worry about this you ask? It was simple really. The first team the Lakers would play on their trip was the Knicks, the game Bryant would have to sit out. Their second game was against my beloved Boston Celtics who were in the midst of a twelve game losing streak, one loss away from tying the franchise record for consecutive losses.
I knew that Bryant wasn't going to be happy that he was suspended and so if he had to sit out the Knick game that he could come back with a vengence and torch the Celtics. Plus, if the Lakers were playing the Celtics sans Kobe, Boston actually stood a chance to win. With Bryant in the line-up for the purple and gold though, chances of a win for the Green decreased dramatically.
Well, it didn't work out that way. Kobe appealed his suspension and it was denied in like record time, so it would have to be the Knick game he would have to sit out. So he sat it out and the Lakers ended up losing and then the next game against the Celtics he was back and guess what happened? If you said he scored 43 points in the Lakers 111-98 over the Celtics then you either saw the game, the highlights or checked a box score to ruin the surprise. But yeah, Kobe came out and torched the Celtics, just as I had feared. He started off slow, but he got hot as the game went on; hitting shots from 24 feet away while being closely defended, you know that kind of hot.
So the Celtics tied a franchise record with 13 consecutive losses (and would set a new record two nights later with a loss against LA's other team, the Clippers) and yet somehow that wasn't the worst thing that happened that night.
You must understand that I despise the Lakers, I loathe them. I started watching the Celtics when I was very young, around the time I was 4 1/2, 5 years old. At that time the Celtics and Lakers had quite a rivalry. If your rooting interests lied with one team then you despised the other it was that simple. Nothing was more fun than hating the Lakers. Well after Bird and Magic retired and the Celtics and Lakers descended from great to mediocre the lust wore off the rivalry. Well, the Lakers got good again and the Celtics, well they didn't. Kind of hard to rekindle the old passion.
Still I thought there were enough people who carried the distaste for the Lakers, I was wrong. Watching the game, the crowd in Boston was littered with people wearing th purple and gold of the Lakers, most of it Bryant jerseys. Never in the past would those people have worn such a thing into the Garden becuase they knew they wouldn't make it out alive. But this wasn't the case. In fact as the game went on and Bryant kept making ridiculous shot after ridiculous shot cheers were resonating from the Boston crwod. Initially most of them came from the Lakers fans in the building, but the cheers became to loud and it was evident that Celtics fans were rooting for Bryant and well that drove me to the edge.
I couldn't believe peole at a Celtics home game were cheering for a Laker. When these two teams used to play it was said you could feel the anger in the building. All of Boston used to hate the Lakers. In the 1982 Eastern Confernce finals, with the Philadelphia 76ers on their way to beating the C's and facing the Lakers in the finals a chant of "Beat LA" resonated through the Boston Garden. That's right, instead of being depressed that their team lost a chance to go to the finals, they made sure to try and lift up the Sixers and make them aware they had a more important task at hand. For any true Celtics fan the most recent game against the Lakers should have been torture. There should have been no cheering for a Laker, at all.
Honestly, I've learned to live with the losing the Celtics are going through. I'm older than half of their current roster, they don't have much experience or depth and they can't seem to play consistently. I don't like the losing, but I've learned to live with it. I just simply can't live with Celtics "fans" cheering for a guy on a team we're supposed to despise. Red Auerbach, long time Celtics coach and GM, the patriarch of franchise passed away just before the season started and it was probably a good thing because if he had been alive to see the day when a Laker was being cheered in Boston, well he just might have killed some one and no I'm not joking about that.
So now I roll everything back to David Stern. He is a very smart man, much smarter than I am. Surely if I could see the pain this suspension was going to bring the Celtics, once one of the leagues signature franchises and a reason why the NBA was able to make itself and establish league, then he could have seen it. So why Mr. Commisioner did you make me go through all that? How could you have let that happen? Well the answer is simple conspiracy theory boy and girls.
Stern is a Knicks fan. Suspend Bryant for the Knicks game, Knicks have a chance to win. Make Bryant angry for being suspended, he comes out and set the game on fire for his next game, that being against the Celtics. The Celtics of course being a major rival to the Knicks over the years. So Stern's team wins, the team he quietly and deep down and secretly resents loses and causes its fans pain by tying a record for consecutive losses and setting everything up for a new record.
So thanks again Mr. Stern, really it was quite a treat to see a team I despise pound the team I love into the ground while the team I despise star player has a game that makes people in the home crowd cheer for him and make the loss that much more worse. Really that was great. So you and I commish are no longer on speaking terms, until weigh down some of those ping pong balls the Celtics have in the draft lottery to give them the number one overall pick.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to cheer myself up by going to the Barbaro message board and reading tributes and bible verses dedicated a race horse.....if you can't find humor in that, then where can you find it?
posted by MC at 1:56 PM
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