What We Root for When We Root for (or against) Another

In preparation for the finals, I wanted to speak to you a little about the process of rooting for another team, other than your home team. My view of sports is that your home team is pretty much your team for life. The roster can change, the coaching staff can change, the stadium can change, the owner can express infuriatingly stupid political views you disagree with, your former star players can do horrible stuff (no just kidding, here), but you will still support the franchise. And I expect to keep doing so well into adulthood. There are a few reasons for doing this, none of them are perfect. Rooting for your home team (or the team you've always rooted for) connects you to your love of sports in childhood. It also allows you to follow events going on in the whole league, as you can pay attention to things from a single constant vantage point. Without looking through one team's journey, I think things get too confusing, and you get lost in too many details (much more true of all sports but football). For a lot of people, I think rooting for their team is a way to bond with their fathers. That's why Californians will root for New York teams and so on. And it is, in the end, a way to express loyalty to something and to feel part of a community.

Rooting for another team is a different kettle of fish entirely. It usually occurs, in basketball at least, only after your team has ended their season. Since '07 I have happily been rooting for the Celtics as my second team. But my rooting for them has only really become whole-hearted after the Jazz have been eliminated from the playoffs. It pays, I think, to root for a team that's in a different division than yours. Last year I rooted for the Nuggets in their battle to defeat the Lakers (they were much closer than the Suns). That team was fun to root for: they had a great story. A rag-tag bunch of talented athletes who had all been a little aloof, a little un-team like, coming together under the experienced guidance of Chauncey Billups (a great guy), having Carmello begin to blossom under his tutelage, and making a run at The Finals. I didn't, however, let myself fall too deeply in love with them. And this was wise and it allowed me to disassociate with my past, as the Jazz played them in the playoffs this year.

When rooting for another team besides your own I don't think you can ever root for a franchise. You have to root for good sports stories. You have to root for players and coaches. And you have to root for the team that can exact revenge on your behalf. This Celtics team has not disappointed. They have a great come back story, having been counted down and out in every round and having effectively chopped the heads off of increasingly "difficult" and "the best" teams, starting with the Wades in Miami, then attacking the Lebrons, moving on to their complete dismantling of the Howards (the funny thing is, these last two teams were the Cavs and the Magic, respectively, until they met the Celtics in the playoffs and largely resorted to their superstars and a collection of others), only to culminate (?) in their mirthless and professional destruction of Kobe Bryant and his over sexed lifeless zombie entourage. It's a very kill bill thing, they're working their way up the ladder and leaving piles of bodies at each step. These Celtics also have a plethora of personal stories. Garnett's return, Rondo's coming out party, and the slow and steady professionalism and heart of team captain Paul Pierce are all worth chattering on. Not to mention secondary stories like Nate Robinson's acceleration to the stratosphere, Doc Rivers' quiet gift at coaching personalities, and Rasheed Wallace's ability to turn it off one last time in the playoffs. That last comment on Rasheed capture's this team's larger arc rather nicely I think. I think of this team like the prospective experts in a Heist movie. Many are old and battered, but they've come together one last time for total domination. We will see if this is Rififi, a heist noir tragedy in which their flaws (or the Greek fates) lead to their downfall in the end. I'm starting to get the feeling, however, that this is Ocean's 14: Ocean's Beach Party the plot of which isn't too clear, but it ends with LA blowing up and everyone rich (Rondo is Damon).

I'm not rooting for the Celtics because Bill Russell once played for them (though my grandparents living in the area doesn't hurt). Similarly, I'm not rooting against these Lakers because of a longstanding grudge. I liked the team alright as recently as when Shaq played for them, and have come to hate them for their individuals not for their history. Kobe Bryant is obviously, if not a uniquely hateable guy in sports, the biggest asshole playing basketball today. He is surrounded by a crew of talented, but personality-less people. A further post will further elucidate this point. Suffice it to say, Lamar Odum used to be someone semi-interesting. Now he's married to a Kardashian. Fisher has become a smug dude, he's in commercials, and acts singularly relaxed with a pretentious air of having earned his place as a great (way to be on Kobe's team). Fisher also wants to have it both ways. He acts like a statesman, an ambassador to other players, an advertisement about sportsmanship and being a team leader. Then he makes the cheap tackle fouls. There's nothing wrong with those fouls. Rodman did them, the only difference is Rodman didn't claim to be doing them for his daughter. Pau Gasol is a hard case. He's extremely talented, a very good big man, but he's also a huge bitch. A dude who is quite tall and athletic, but who can not really throw down against other good big man. He's frequently soft when it counts, and hard when it doesn't (like when Boozer is lying on the ground and Gasol's yelling at him). There's the junk squad. And, or course, Phil Jackson. The man who took one of the world's great religions and improved it by applying its principles to a game with a ball. A guy who smugly tries to intimidate refs every game. And who is oft sighted as the best coach ever in the world for his ability to win with Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, and Shaquille O'Neal. All and all they're a bunch of smug, human refuse, pieces of garbage that only the soulless money culture of LA could support. I like Magic Johnson and Pat Reilly. It is this particular group of Lakers, the one that knocked my team out of the playoffs for the past three years, that I hate so much. My hatred for the team is even more than the sum of its parts.

I hope that come Thursday, Garnett whipes the fancy floor with Gasol's chicken ass. That Fisher tries to foul Rondo and overextends his arm. That Phil Jackson gets fired. That Ron Artest gets confused and bites Jack Nicholson. That Kobe gets mad, goes all out, and still looses. When you're still watching sports after your franchise has lost, it gets personal. And personally, I completely hate one team, and completely love the other. If the Celtics lose it'll be worse than any other possible outcome (Magic, Cavs, Suns, someone else losing). But if they win, I won't have to live up to my pledge of spitting in Gasol's face should I ever meet him. He'll already have spat in it himself.

Have A Great Summer

Hey Dwight Howard. See you next year. Here's hoping you elbow your way into a good, meaningful relationship. But I fucking doubt it because you suck.

First Annual All Dinosaur Team: Pt. 2 Ankylosaur

Well, it's been awhile since the last post in our incredibly exciting All Dinosaur Team series. This has, in part, been due to laziness. But the last post in this series also led to a heated discussion in which racism was brought up. That led to a retort in which I called Steve Nash and Manu Ginobili assholes. I stand by hating Manu Ginobili, but to disparage this guy as an asshole no matter how much he increasingly looks like an alien as a game wears on is wrong. My apologies. After such an embarrassing mistake on my part, I didn't know how I could return to the All Dino Team. Then a certain someone with a certain writing style that makes several nonsensical references to his own in-jokes, expecting you to infer what he's talking about, all while hedging his bets and a) either saying nothing or b) failing to say what he really means, because his writing isn't strong enough or his thoughts aren't clear enough, so he settles for a muddled mess that could have been interesting but just... anyway, that guy recently came up with a very similar post. This put the fear of god in me and I realized our Dino team needed some work. So without further a-do, I bring you a-part 2.

Unfortunately, I don't have too much to say, as our 2 guard is our weakest position. In an attempt to make the best of several imperfect candidates we have decided to go with the Ankylosaurus as our shooting guard. While slightly bigger than a normal shooting guard at 30' x 6' x 4', the Ankylosaurus is still plenty small on a team of dinosaurs. While a Compsognathus would destroy an Ankylosaurus in a race, the Ankylosaurus more than makes up for his loss of speed with his almost entirely impenetrable armor. Who around the Association could play the part? The answer may shock you. Why, Jason "Old Man" Kidd, of course. The two are built eerily similarly. They are both relatively peaceful herbivores, who do not, however, lack a vicious ability to clobber. Something that you would never guess from looking at their bewildered, bovine eyes. While scientists think that Ankylosaurai probably shot similarly to Kidd from beyond the arc, most doubt they had anything like his ball handling skills (for the record, most scientists don't think that's the best Kidd video, they maintain, however, that it is the most dinoish, plus they think that Nas song is fillmatic). While the Ankylosaurus' actual ball handling skills may have left something to be desired, one might argue that the ball on the end of his giant club is symbolically like a basketball and, I assure you, he was quite fluid at handling that ball. After all, one must admit, it often seems like the basketball is just another appendage for Kidd. Then there's the fact that Ankylosaurai balled in the days of Tyranousaurai. They survived because of the aforementioned armor and its toughness. Unless they were flipped on their bellies. Then they were totally T-Rex meat. So congratulations Old Man-Kidd, you made the cut.

The Takeover (take 5)

Speaking of Jay-Z and washed up empire-building, here come the Celtics. Fresh off of 2 dominating playoff series against 2 of the 3 best players in the league, they came into Orlando and cruised to victory. In a way, the Magic share an inverse relationship with the Cavaliers: a commitment to team over any one star player (Dwight Howard is definitely a top 10 player in the league, but he needs too much offensive help for me to consider him a member of the all-God team), a pretty clever coach compared with the real "Big Baby", Mike Brown, and a different color scheme that focuses on whites and silvers over reds and blues. After game 1, it seems to not make a bit of difference to Boston who their opponent is or what their philosophy may be. More importantly, it appears that wherever the Celtics now lounge is their stomping ground. Although this game was close in the end, it should not have been. Rondo and Garnett shot a combined 8-24. Rondo has demonstrated, at least to me, that he is one of the premiere playoff performers in the league. Garnett has looked healthier than awful organic grains from Trader Joe's. Don't expect a repeat in mediocrity from these guys. If all goes well, we will have a great rematch that should have happened last season as well between Los Angelos and Boston. This is still probably a long shot (I now give the Magic a 50% chance of winning this series), but it is more likely than it was all season. In conclusion, the Celtics are possibly in the process of coming back to take what has rightfully been theirs for the past 3 years. And Kobe may have to explain to you-know-who just how you-know-what tastes.

The Shape of Rings to Come

Like every earth-shattering sporting event, it came as a surprise. I wasn't shocked that Lebron James lost to the Celtics; I was shocked how pathetically he made his exit. He wasn't hustling. He played sloppy. He lacked aggression and settled for difficult jump shots. He reduced his best-record Cavaliers to a shell of themselves, a one-star flash in the pan like Reggie Miller's Pacers or Allen Iverson's Sixers. Lebron didn't look like the king - he looked liked a mid-level player on a small market team, not ready for the moment. Boston looked like they had ten times as much talent - they remind me of that Payton-Bryant-Malone-O'Neal mutant Laker team, only with chemistry.

Full disclosure: I don't know much about basketball, especially it's history. Saying that, last night was a watershed moment, on par with the Yankees loss of the 1964 World Series, or Dwight Clark's "The Catch" in the 1981 NFC Championship. King James is off his throne - call it the Glorious Revolution. As crazy as this summer was going to be anyway, throw in the fact that we now know Lebron will play in different colors next year, and it's off the charts. Over the next 10 years, the four best players in the NBA will be Kevin Durant, Dwayne Wade, Lebron James and Derek Rose. Two of those players will change teams this summer, along with Joe Johnson, Chris Bosh and, in all likelihood, Amare Stoudemire. And believe this: no one's moving an inch til the King decides.

Nobody better think for an instant this guy is staying in Northeast Ohio. He's lived there his whole life - he probably wants to see the world, the ocean, the piles of money, the fans like Spike Lee and Jay-Z who know about building empires. He does not need more of this:

Lebron James structured his contract to create this bidding war. And now his time has come. Be careful what you wish for, because you just might be playing in a steel cage for a Russian madman. And James Bond always save chicks before dicks.

Chop Dwight Howard's Fucking Head Off!

Hats off to the Celtics. I saw the Cavs going all the way this year, but I was wrong. This Celtics team is a different kind of basketball featuring nine guys who can give you 18 points. LeBronless they may be, but they are literally the Wu-Tang Clan.



As Zuckerman put it in two separate texts, "k (text one) fucking g (text two)." Let's hope Superman and whatever Kobe calls himself are next. Beat your own fucking skulls America!

Hi Readers! Lebron Sucks and Always Will

It's time for a change on True Greatness - someone not named Johnston is gonna drop some blanket statements that have little or no information to back them up. Gotta get this out in the ether before tonight's game 5, which no one will watch because LOST is on.

Maybe I've been listening to Ric Bucher on the B.S. Report too much (who knows? Maybe that's the only source of basketball knowledge I have), or Maybe Lebron James is the Peyton Manning of Basketball. Yeah, he's great, and stuff, but ultimately he's a pure finesse player with none of the intangibles necessary to climb the mountain. I was discussing this with one of the other contributors to this site, who seemed to think Manning had won three or four rings. An outside observer of basketball might think something similar about Lebron, what with all the puppets and commercials that splice him with the likes of Bird, Magic and KG.

Remember that speech? It was informative - it informed us that Michael Jordan was an asshole. Not just any asshole, the biggest asshole of all time - such a huge asshole he couldn't enjoy himself for a minute - unless he was gambling or whoring. Does that sound like Lebron James to you? Not at all. Lebron James might stay in Cleveland because he is "beloved"(more beloved than this guy?). You know who was beloved? Shaq in Orlando. You know who wasn't surrounded by good players in Orlando (except the immortal Horace Grant)? Shaq in Orlando. Now he's got four rings. Unfortunately, I don't see a fifth in the near future.

And don't give me this "he's still young" song and dance. Lebron has been in the Association for 7 years - that should have been long enough to wax Dwight Howard and Hedo Terkoglu (or whatever) last year. The problem is, unlike many superstars across the major sports, Lebron doesn't make anybody around him better. In this way, he isn't even Manning. In 2006, Dwayne Wade took a ragtag bunch with an aging O'Neal to the promised land. You tell me who the better 2010 free agent is.

Stern'n

When I read stories like this, I find it all the more likely that we will soon see the day when Stern starts fining Allen Iverson and Dwayne Wade for being mentioned in Jay-Z songs. Then he'll fine me for having predicted it, and, in no time at all, he'll have fined basketball past football in the ratings/popularity race. To retaliate, the NFL will suspend one of its players for 2 seasons for having eaten a family, but let him back in early when it's discovered that he ate them for charity/prays to Christ. Mark my words!

Cs Section

Cavaliers-Celtics:

Finally, we're down to some actual teams in the East instead of... well, you know, the East. And we get what promised to be, before Garnett went down in SLC last year, the real finals for the years of 2009-2012: C vs C, Le-Bron vs. Three, a new rivalry to challlenge those of old, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame against Harvard. That's all ruined, but we still have what promises to be, short of the Eastern Conference Finals and actual Finals, one of this playoff season's best matchups.

Of course Boston is not what it used to be. Garnett went down and is no longer the monster that even McHale couldn't destroy. Pierce may or may not still be the not false. And Rasheed Wallace has taken the place of House, Powe, and Cassell. And Cleveland is not what it once was either. Since losing in 7 games to the Cs during their ascendent 2007-08 season, Cleveland has acquired 2 trophys for its King (and yours), 2 best records of the year, 1 ill-advised COY award, and the contracts of an aging, but still good center (some irish guy) as well as Antawn Jamison.

All these factors plus a LeBron that everyone says really wants it have conventional wisdom placing this series at 5 games. I think that that's a little to hard on the Celtics. First of all, although not capable of what they once were they can play defense better than most, a trait that tends to frustrate the Cavs, forcing them to rely too heavily on LeBron (as was seen in last year's Eastern Conference Finals). The Celtics are probably slightly underrated, too. People saw the Heat putting up much more of a fight, but the Celtics, like the Lakers in the West, still seem able to play hard and win in the playoffs, quickly quieting naysayers. The Celtics are tough, and the Cavaliers can be effected a little by toughness. Garnett knows how to talk shit and did so to great effect last time these two teams met (causing the Real LBJ to miss a three to win). Both teams do not like their opponents, but while the Cavs seem to shrug off this kind of hatred (or at worst, get rattled by it) the Celtics thrive on it. The type of gritty, grinding series these factors predict would seem to favor the Celtics over the Cavaliers. Of course, sloppy, solipsistic, sports psychology is a much worse determiner than points diferential, record, home-court, and having won the first game, so I still expect the Cs (Cavs) to win, but I expect them to get bruised, frustrated, and occasionally humiliated along the way.

Interesting Stories:

Last time these teams played in the playoffs the final game was a shootout between LeBron and Paul Pierce. While the King scored more points, the Truth's team won, and the man went on to be Finals MVP. I think that he will likely be a big factor in this series. So far he's been pretty quiet in the playoffs. If he can deliver in a few of these games, he might be able to dismantle the calm, cool, Cavs and force them to revert to their previous form, the LeBrons.

Not-Interesting Stories:

LeBron's elbow.

Prediction:

Cavaliers in 7 (Game 1, Game 3, Game 5, Game 7)

Lake City

Lakers-Jazz
It's the matchup of the century! The one that we have all been waiting for! We have never seen anything like it! Sadly, it is none of these and is instead the normal farewell party for the Utah Jazz as their pleasantly exciting season comes to a close. As previously stated, this team has nothing to hang its collective heads about. The Jazz shocked a lot of people by simply outworking a talented Denver team and made a success out of this season by improving over last year. Unfortunately, Utah is not quite a championship team, whereas LA certainly is. Then again, you never know. Check predictions from the first round in previous posts and you'll quickly notice that two were wrong. Sports are full of surprises and that is why they must be played out.

Interesting stories:
This is a series of which we are all too familiar. The 6 arms of Gasol, Bynum, and Odom sneak into Boozer's and Milsap's unknowing arms and fields of vision. Kobe cannot be guarded by Utah's best defender let alone 'shoot 'em up' Miles. Deron cannot carry this team all alone, despite his enormously green attitude. It seems like a forgone conclusion. On closer look, things are somewhat different. That Jazz are shorthanded and this has made them play with a defensive intensity rarely approached in the regular season. Bynum has an injury, for once. Kobe is older, more banged up, and really deserves to be humiliated more than usual (this is simply based on the fact that he didn't get his annual dose last year; tell me how my ass tastes). Williams has ascended to and currently beyond the debate of best point-guard around. I would love it if the Jazz were the team to handle the pesky Lakers, but in the end I don't see it happening. Hopefully in the meantime, we'll get to see some grade-A bball and enjoy the ride.

Prediction:
Lakers in 6 (Game 1, Game 3 [Utah pulls the game 2 upset!], Game 5, Game 6)

Hooray, NBA

With the exception of the classically boring Eastern Conference style series between the Hawks and Bucks, we now know which teams have advanced and which will be left behind to talk it over. Out West, we were 2-2 in series predictions. Out East, we are 3-0. Some of the things we learned from round 1:

Point-differentials matter:
The Jazz had a great pd while the Mavericks were a meager 12th best in the league. This blog has never supported Dallas, so it is somehow not shocking to us. Utah, on the other hand, was. Without two of their finest Eastern Europeans, things did not look good. Thankfully, another Eastern European stepped up to carry weight of his fallen comrades as ugliest NBA starter (oh and Deron Williams became the best point guard around, at least for now.)

The Lakers are beatable, but not that beatable:
LA certainly looked old against those young, flashy OKC fellas. Were some of the Western teams at full health (San Antonio, Denver, Utah), I would pick the Lakers to lose before the finals. Denver is now out (get well soon GC), Utah matches up poorly (even more so without aforementioned Europeans) and San Antonio's Tony "Foudre" Parker is still coming off the bench. This may LA's last time to ride around shining with this batch of players, but after the 1st round, they are still yet to be nauseous (see: Yuuggch).

Old rivalries still burn hot:
After the Texas brawl that was game 4 between the Mavs and the Spurs, we saw that a lot of these organizations still, to quote Mark Cuban, "hate" each other. That is good for us as fans. I'm sure Nash has not forgotten how the Spurs punished him physically, and emotionally :(, for a few years. IF the Jazz can continue to execute (yes, it's a big if) then the Beat LA and the Utah Sucks chants will be more venomous than usual.

The East is still the East:
The two best teams in the NBA right now are both East of the Mississippi: the Cavaliers and the Magic. The Celtics are an old team that will certainly compete but are not championship caliber. The Hawks are soft; Joe Johnson does not deserve a max deal, but he certainly will get one with (spoiler alert!) only Bosh leaving this season. The Bucks had a spark when they started to crush, but they appear to now be garbage, like Rush. Hollinger wrote on the notion that all 4 Western series could have ended in upsets. The East is still a long way off from this type of competition.

In conclusion, it is safe to conclude that Zuckerman sucks and that the Jazz have had a mighty fine 2009-2010 season. Jazz 1, my expectations about them 0. On to the next round!