Clippersteve wrote an interesting post on the mavericks yesterday. I encourage you to read it for yourself, but in a nutshell it kinda delves into what Mavs coach Avery Johnson’s motivations may have been for playing not his B, not his C, but his Z team against the warriors, when in two other games since clinching the #1 spot, he was playing his big guns what approximated normal minutes. The comments run the gamut from valid ideas (the home games the stars played, the road games, they didn’t. Makes sense, give the fans what they’re paying for), to maverick trolls saying clips fans have no right to bitch (true, although the logic of said troll is quite a bit off, cuz steve does start off the post with the proviso that that the clips have no one to blame but themselves), to, finally, high comedy backlash of clips nation to said trollage, capped by this gem from “Skip”:

I was at the Warriors v. Mavs game (I'm a W's fan)and I'm hear to report that Dirk sat right next to Cuban the whole time, holding hands and on a leash. Cuban may even have breast fed him at one point.

That legitimately put the first NBA related smile on my face since fast forwarding through and finally turning off in disgust that still stomach churning experience that occurred at staples center last night. More on that later, because it’s still the morning, and coffee mixed with excess stomach acid may equal projectile vomiting. You already know, the Warriors blew out Portland, what the clippers did didn’t end up mattering anyway, and those present had to watch them go through the motions and flail around for a while before barely losing to NOOCH.

(Jesus here I go talking about it anyway.) I was able to make it through the whole first quarter and the first 3 minutes of the 2nd before I started on the serious fast forwarding. The warriors game was slipping further & further out of reach for Portland, and as I blasted through half time and the the third & fourth, watching bits and pieces, stopping to see what Ralph & Mike were talking about, I realized the game against the Blazers must be just about over when I noticed that Mike & Ralph weren’t talking about THIS season anymore, but the OFF season and what moves the suddenly (well, not that suddenly, the last couple years, but suddenly is relative, especially when you’ve done essentially NOTHING but work the draft as your team’s GM for 10 plus years and then you’re one of the league’s perennial wheeler dealers, even winning GM of the year) frisky Elgin Baylor might make. It was saddening, and I verified the situation, fast forwarded to the end, and really found it hard to give a shit either way about the conclusion, another clipper loss to another team with nothing to play for, a sad capper to an ultimately frustrating season. Is it just me that had lost any zing for the moment? Was there a general sense of apathy in the building once the score up north had been announced? WAS the score announced? Even if it wasn’t, I have to think word somehow spread through the building. Who knows.

The reason I go into all this is I told my wife that I had said “screw it” and fast forwarded through the game, and she was confused, and I explained to her that the telecast was scoreboard watching for the other game, and she was still confused, she didn’t know they were gonna do that, and then I told her the clippers lost, and she said “oh, well it wouldn’t have mattered anyway, they lost” and I explained, well, who knows how the game would have ended if the clippers had heard about a warriors loss, their motivation would have been different, and she said (he said, she said, I know, I’m almost done), “but what about all the fans that paid good money to see that game? Those lazy asses, they owe it to them to try & win that game no matter what.” And she was so right, and it made me seriously wonder, what kind of bubble world have I, as a clipper fan, and more importantly, as an NBA fan, trapped my brain in when I can sit there & accept the logic of my favorite team probably mailing it in the whole 4th quarter because they’re bummed they didn’t make the playoffs, with a Staples Center full of fans that paid big bucks to watch them stink up the place? Not that they did that, like I said, I couldn’t bear to watch it, and have honestly read nothing that went into any depth about what actually happened on the court in the 2nd half, but just the fact that they could, and it wouldn’t surprise me. Nothing against the clips, it’s just, the dragging end of an NBA regular season, a pretty depressing sight from a number of different angles.

(in all fairness, after reading the game recap on yahoo, it appears the clips played to win down the stretch, and tried to give the fans a show, so, hey, that is something to be proud of. I mean, yeah, victories, or lack there of, have definitely been less phyrric, (ok, wrong use of arcane phraseology, but, hopefully you get the point), but it’s good to see that theoretically the crew was giving the faithful a semblance of what they, the fans, had been putting down hard earned cashola all year to see. Tough situation all around, but as far as I can tell, they tried to give the audience a show to the end. A WIN would have been nice, but if beggars were choosers, then skid row would be rodeo drive, salud.)

And that’s my amazingly fascinating story. The end. To this post, and the season. Not sure what’s next, as far as this here space. Probably some playoff coverage, leaning more towards the upcoming Mavs Warriors series more than anything else, likely, in equal parts me thinking of it as the series the clips might have been in, and the weird ethereal connection that clips & warriors fans have with each other as the perennial cellar dwellers of the Pacific only recently having made semi-good. If there’s a Laurel to the Clippers’ Hardy in the league, it’s mos def Golden State. Speaking of that series, you’re guaranteed to get monster coverage of it at Golden State of Mind, so keep the bat signals tuned over there if that’s your cup of tea.


Another job of mine (job, sigh). Scratch that, another privilege (hah!) of mine will be to put some kind of literary (he deludedly told himself) capper on this strange season that we just enjoyed/endured. For now, though, I’m still in mourning, at least until about noon. Aloha.