The House that Boom Built

Well, seeing as how I am now a fully naturalized citizen (sworn in on a picture of Will Leitch) of the blogging community I have been descending deeper and deeper into the bowels of the blogging monster that is out there on the world wide web. A couple of my favorites are in the links section, but that no where near resembles the amount of solid, in depth, well thought out, well written, and most of the time hilarious blogs that there are out there.

One favorite target of opportunity that has been out there marinating in the blogging stratosphere is the whole Paul Pierce incident. Granted I already put in my two cents about the injury in a previous post, but I came across a little snippet on an AOL sports page that just got me thinking. And on a night of a summer in which I’m steadily progressing into the 14th year in my NBA 2k8 dynasty, I thought there was probably something better for me to do be doing.

Heres the quote: “Once I heard the knee pop and I couldn’t move it at first, I thought that was it,” Pierce said.

That’s when Rivers gathered the Celtics in a huddle during a timeout and reminded them of Nelson Mandela and South African struggles with apartheid, something the team has studied to inspire and motivate during this season.

‘I reminded them of ‘Cheetah’, the guy from South Africa who told us there will be adversity and you have got to overcome it,” Rivers said. “I was really proud of our team. We could have easily felt sorry for ourselves.’”

Yeah, thats right. Doc Rivers inspired his guys by comparing the struggle they faced with Paul Pierce out of the game to South African struggles during apartheid. Now I don’t have a degree in African American studies nor was I alive during the 60s, but I have read Cry, the Beloved Country and I think these two “struggles” are slightly different.

When did basketball player, athletes, and sports media personalities in general get such an inflated idea of sports and its importance or do they just draw these ridiculous contextual comparisons for lack of better material?

I can understand watching 300 with your players to get them pumped up even throwing in some inspirational words from some great leaders, but apartheid and the civil rights movement, really?…

A couple of months ago before the NCAA Finals, John Calipari printed out copies of Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech and handed it out to players. The Reverend Al Sharpton was even there to meet them after practice. I can almost excuse this because he is a college coach and part of what a college coach is supposed to do is to be a something of a teacher to his players, seeing as how they are “student athletes”. Its really too bad that this had to be done all too coincidentally before the biggest games of their young lives.

It gets even more amusing when these sports figures refer to some higher power tuning into watch these Finals Games and whats more suggesting that they are taking a little time away from minding the universe to intervene in a basketball game. Now usually I am okay with the occasional point to the heavens by athletes as they trot into the endzone or throw it down on someone’s head, but this quote by Paul Pierce is skirting the border between acceptable and absurd.

“I think God sent an angel down and said, ‘Hey you’re going to be all right. You need to get back out there’,” Pierce said.”

I hadn’t read the recap from Game 1 so perhaps this is already stale in the pile of still relevant topics. People say this hearkens memories of Willis Reed, from this quote I am willing to concede that it does in fact hearken some memories. Except for me this is what this event ultimately reminded me of. Thats right, remember that one scene where the boy looks over and sees the Angel massaging that one player who was injured and that player ends up going out and playing the game of his life.

I just never really pictured Danny Glover playing Doc Rivers.

Anyways, as much as I love sports, people in sports need to get over themselves. In the end this is just another brand of entertainment. Sure there are those moments that “transcend” the sport, but stop looking for them. I love one of those moments when an entire stadium of 20,000+ people rise to their feet and gets behind their team in a moment of adversity as much as the next guy, but lets not make it more than it really is. Lets not force some kind of greater importance to the struggle of competition within a game or attempt to reach for an overarching social significance in a greater societal context.

This is a game between two teams of athletes who, lets be honest, in the end, whether they win or lose, will still make and waste more money than any of us will ever probably even see through the length of our lives.

Sports are awesome enough with all this manufactured sap.

Finals so far haven’t been that great, but I might just be getting cynical. Here’s hoping for a rocking Staples Center and a great Game 2.

-E