It's time for the Love in the Time of LeBron 2010 Season Team Previews. You know how we do. Next up, the beardiest second bananas on the West Coast, the Los Angeles Clippers
Classification
The Idea Is Better Than Reality
Why We Care
We care because they should be great. Baron Davis has all the talent in the world and could absolutely be an elite point guard in this league. Chris Kaman is a legitimate center who, if last year is any indication, is full of surprises. Eric Gordon made a name for himself in the Olympics this year, and the promise of Blake Griffin is nearly incomprehensible. Yet, they remain the Clippers: cursed and likely doomed to best-case mediocrity and worst-case apocalypse. We care because of the flashes of greatness and to watch the undoing from the inside.
Significant Beards
Baron Davis: Lush, full. Lifetime achievement award.
Rasual Butler: Light goatee. A Gentleman’s C.
Randy Foye: Miniscule goatee. Satisfactory.
Ryan Gomes: Half chin-strap. Half a barn-raising and a butter churn.
Eric Gordon: Shadow of a neard. Mild disgust.
DeAndre Jordan: Chinstrap to goatee. 7.3.
Chris Kaman: Full ginger chinstrap to goatee. An improvement, for what that's worth.
Craig Smith: Reasonable goatee. Strong.
Guiding Text
On the Beach
If They Were A Brass Instrument They Would Be...
A trombone
LeBron on the Clippers
The motorcycles revved loudly in the distance. It was hot, but it had always been hot, and there was no sense in guessing why, specifically, this instant, it felt so unbearable. The Los Angles sun had always seemed brighter than anywhere else and it beamed as insistent as ever, baking the ground and turning the asphalt into near-lava. The actual lava from the rift flowed down Rodeo and eventually into the city proper, a slow, fiery worm eating the city. The wildfires glowed day and night, but the unbearable part was the smoke, filling the air and turning the insistent sun a sickly orange at dawn and an angry red in the evening. The motorcycles were getting louder. Baron nodded.
The plaza was empty, the windows all broken, the stores thoroughly looted. After the collapse, people either responded by rioting or fleeing and by this point even most of those who had once rioted had now fled. The mansions of the wealthy stood empty or in ashes and when you walked the streets, the loudest sound was broken glass under your own feet. Most of the time. The roaring engines were nearly upon them and the others all stood ready with their Louisville sluggers and their chains and their switchblades. Someone was growling. LeBron lifted the fireman’s axe onto his shoulders, braced himself and waited for Baron’s signal.
Rosetta Stone
This pretty much explains it.
Showing posts with label clippers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label clippers. Show all posts
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
2009-10 Team Previews: Los Angeles Clippers
Welcome to another wonderful installment in the web's best NBA team previews. So wonderful that you will be filled with wonder and astonishment and wonderful wonder. To check out all the entries in the series, you can click here.
Today, we will be discussing the Los Angeles Clippers, a team that is best known for being terrible since... well forever, basically. Whether it is some sort of twisted Native American curse or simple ineptitude, these doomed losers deserve a closer look.
Classification
Team With Players That I Like and That I Could Grow To Love
What I Like
This team barely won at all last season. Years of sports movie cliches have conditioned me to look at every chronic loser as a plucky underdog deserving of my support. Basically, the Clippers owe a lot of my sympathy to the Rick Moranis film, Little Giants.
Additionaly, this team has a ton of players that I like or that I at least think are interesting. Beyond merely being interesting, they are talented and deep. Maybe most importantly, they got rid of Zach Randolph. Blake Griffin, as you might have heard, is supposedly, not a bad player, and last year, Eric Gordon was lighting it up in relative anonymity. Both are exciting and skilled players. Chris Kaman is endlessly fascinating to me, if only because his love of firearms and explosives leaves me deeply frightened. And then there is Baron Davis.
I love Baron Davis. He's skilled as all hell, plays with a goofy nonchalance, and still manages to burn people with his speed and talent. His swagger is untouchable, his beard, both gentlemanly and scholarly. On the court, he's a terror and he has the potential to be the best player on the floor on almost any given night. Off the court, he's a free-wheeling goofball who spends his spare time making and producing films. Basically, he's what I would want to be like were I a professional basketball player. Some people criticize Baron Davis for his poor decision-making and laziness, and that just makes me relate to the guy more: I too an often taken to task or my bad personal judgment and laziness! He's just like us, ya'll, inconsequential faults and all.
What I Don't Like
The Clippers losing ways go beyond bad luck. Aside from the addition of Blake Griffin and the subtraction of Zach Randolph (not to undersell this giant upgrade), the roster pretty much stayed the same. These are the same Clippers who spent the past season fighting it out for worst team in the league. How is that possible with so many talented players? Terrible coaching, terrible management, terrible chemistry, and a special case of what must be divine spite. This team must be cursed. There is no other explanation for how so many good players can play so poorly together and lose so many games: intense divine disfavor. The Clippers have drawn the ire of the Old Ones and will continue to pay the penalty until all Clippers fans are driven to insanity in face of the terrible, despairing madness they are forced to watch night in and night out. The Clippers aren't plucky underdogs- they are the cursed scions of some fell and eldritch power.
Mythology
Baron Davis actually does hold the title of Baron in a small section of Flanders. You will notice many of the European players will greet him in a respectful, if somewhat old-fashioned manner. He also, technically, holds the title of Jarl in a region of Sweden near Gothenburg. This mark of honor bestows on him the right to wear a saber denoting his station during NBA games, which he did during a single season at Charlotte. He has since discontinued the practice.
Prophecy
Mike Dunleavy will be driven mad by the unspeakable and terrible truth of the forbidden power of the abominable madness that governs this twisted planet. Baron Davis's fate, for good or for ill, will be tied to the fate of his beard.
Relevant Media
Verdict
Watch them until it's painful. This team has so much potential and is filled with fun and interesting players. Still, they are the Clippers, so bad to mediocre seems so much more likely
Today, we will be discussing the Los Angeles Clippers, a team that is best known for being terrible since... well forever, basically. Whether it is some sort of twisted Native American curse or simple ineptitude, these doomed losers deserve a closer look.
Classification
Team With Players That I Like and That I Could Grow To Love
What I Like
This team barely won at all last season. Years of sports movie cliches have conditioned me to look at every chronic loser as a plucky underdog deserving of my support. Basically, the Clippers owe a lot of my sympathy to the Rick Moranis film, Little Giants.
Additionaly, this team has a ton of players that I like or that I at least think are interesting. Beyond merely being interesting, they are talented and deep. Maybe most importantly, they got rid of Zach Randolph. Blake Griffin, as you might have heard, is supposedly, not a bad player, and last year, Eric Gordon was lighting it up in relative anonymity. Both are exciting and skilled players. Chris Kaman is endlessly fascinating to me, if only because his love of firearms and explosives leaves me deeply frightened. And then there is Baron Davis.
I love Baron Davis. He's skilled as all hell, plays with a goofy nonchalance, and still manages to burn people with his speed and talent. His swagger is untouchable, his beard, both gentlemanly and scholarly. On the court, he's a terror and he has the potential to be the best player on the floor on almost any given night. Off the court, he's a free-wheeling goofball who spends his spare time making and producing films. Basically, he's what I would want to be like were I a professional basketball player. Some people criticize Baron Davis for his poor decision-making and laziness, and that just makes me relate to the guy more: I too an often taken to task or my bad personal judgment and laziness! He's just like us, ya'll, inconsequential faults and all.
What I Don't Like
The Clippers losing ways go beyond bad luck. Aside from the addition of Blake Griffin and the subtraction of Zach Randolph (not to undersell this giant upgrade), the roster pretty much stayed the same. These are the same Clippers who spent the past season fighting it out for worst team in the league. How is that possible with so many talented players? Terrible coaching, terrible management, terrible chemistry, and a special case of what must be divine spite. This team must be cursed. There is no other explanation for how so many good players can play so poorly together and lose so many games: intense divine disfavor. The Clippers have drawn the ire of the Old Ones and will continue to pay the penalty until all Clippers fans are driven to insanity in face of the terrible, despairing madness they are forced to watch night in and night out. The Clippers aren't plucky underdogs- they are the cursed scions of some fell and eldritch power.
Mythology
Baron Davis actually does hold the title of Baron in a small section of Flanders. You will notice many of the European players will greet him in a respectful, if somewhat old-fashioned manner. He also, technically, holds the title of Jarl in a region of Sweden near Gothenburg. This mark of honor bestows on him the right to wear a saber denoting his station during NBA games, which he did during a single season at Charlotte. He has since discontinued the practice.
Prophecy
Mike Dunleavy will be driven mad by the unspeakable and terrible truth of the forbidden power of the abominable madness that governs this twisted planet. Baron Davis's fate, for good or for ill, will be tied to the fate of his beard.
Relevant Media
Verdict
Watch them until it's painful. This team has so much potential and is filled with fun and interesting players. Still, they are the Clippers, so bad to mediocre seems so much more likely
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