Thursday, February 07, 2008

LA MSM: Great... great sandwich

Got to watch maybe the first 3 possessions of the clips Celtics game last night before I got swept up in kids wife houseguest etcetera acres and then I wasn’t able to resist peeking at the score this morning. Yup, another loss.

A bigger loss, in my mind, is that our road weary soldier, bringing clipper nation’s woes and (occasional, yes, they did happen) joys to the plebeian masses, LA Times Staff Writer Jon Abrams, is (confirming what I suspected after seeing nothing but AP riff raff for the clips up on the LAT website since the morning of the game in Minnesota) off the beat for the Clippers (and I confirmed it via email), because, uh, it doesn’t exist anymore.

So, let me get this straight, the biggest newspaper in the southland, the venerable Los Angeles Times, has NO beat reporter for one of the area’s National Basketball Association teams. I shudder to wonder how many people are working the Lakers circuit. (which is granted, at this point, exponentially more relevant, but dammit, doesn’t the “news” have a responsibility to report all the news? Do the New York papers just STOP covering the Jets? The Knicks? How the HELL do you call yourself a newspaper and pull this crap?)

YOUR Los Angeles Clippers. Truly, TRULY, Southern California’s bastard stepchildren. Legitimately illegitimized. (cries).

update: I should probably amend this just a smidgen. Abrams confirmed via e-mail that he's not TRAVELLING to cover the team anymore. So no road game coverage, which in my puny mind means there is no beat, but I guess he'll probably provide coverage for the home games, so maybe the Times is providing a half-beat. Who knows. Still, a travesty mos def. Apparently the OC Register pulled their clipper guy off of travel duty as well. Guess there's nothing to see (at least from the LA mainstream print media's perspective) on this or any future road trip for Donald Sterling's wayward darlings the rest of the 07-08 season. Sigh. Guess it's this same mentality (that the clippers don't essentially "matter") that has everybody and his brother in national sports coverage wondering why we don't just hand Cassell over to Boston on a silver platter. (You want fries with that?)

For more on all of the above, click your way over to Clips Nation. I'll be sobbing in my soup. Aloha.