Everybody Hates Joakim

Ahhh, April. So many amazing things seem to be happening this month. The weather's getting warmer, people are coming out of their seasonal depression, baseball season is underway (The Tribe is 6-7, not great but better than most people thought), I've begun drinking frozen coffee again (which is okay because I burn the calories by not riding the bus), and, of course, the NBA playoffs. So far, the first round hasn't had too many surprises. Seven of the eight favorites dominated game one, which led me to believe that the Portland/Phoenix matchup might be the most interesting of round one. That was until last night's OKC/LA thriller. I was at work for the beginning of it and decided to quit trying to pay attention. When I got home and checked my Twitter, I saw that OKC somehow managed to rally and were up by one. I was in disbelief, but I was seriously pulling for some miracle. I would love to see a Cavs/Lakers matchup in the finals, but LA needs a reality check. It is far too often that these powerhouse teams reach the top and begin to develop these egotistic complexes, which I shall call egoitis (pronounced ego-Itis). The Lakers have a dynasty of championships and they have a huge fan base that consists of celebrities, and all kinds of rich people that know nothing about basketball and only like them because they are good. They even marry celebrities. What a life. But I feel it wasn't until last year that the glory of winning has caught up with them.

Let me bring up the date December 25, 2009, a day that will live in infamy. As one can recall, the Cavs came to LA as the projected losers. They left as the true winners, which was more of a surprise than finding out what exactly is in fruit cake. It's not just that it's the Cavs that I bring this up. It's the fact that LA was on a high horse and treated Cleveland like a mediocre team and let their guard down. And once they were losing, their fans brought out their arrogant side and decided to commence all-out warfare with the deadliest of weapons: water bottles and foam fingers.

This is actually a pretty good strategy: throw foam finger at target, target dodges foam finger, while target is worried about the foam finger, immediately launch a full $10 bottle of Aquafina at 70 mph at target's head, causing them to lose consciousness.

The flaw in the plan: these fans had no strategy, they just went into guerilla mode, trying to take out anyone they could, because that's what many privileged people do when things don't go their way, engage in irrational temper tantrums. I'm not trying to single out the entire LA fanbase, just the ones at the game. I'm sure there are many LA fans who wouldn't have acted out in this behavior, but they also were not the ones that could be fortunate to get tickets to such a high profile game on a holiday. That being said, I really think this event was a wake up call for the Lakers, at least for awhile. Yes, the Cavs beat them again a month later, but in that game they knew how much of a threat the Wine and Gold really is and were far, far, away from their home army. Now, they are coming into this post-season trying to defend the title, yet, the ego-itis is back like the plague. My prime example from the team: Ron Artest and his gold hair.

You know you have an ego problem if you think imitating Dennis Rodman is cool.

Another athlete with an ego issue that I find very amusing is Joakim Noah. (You must be thinking, yes, she finally gets to the point of today's nonsense). Most Cavs fans will admit that they do not hate Noah as much as Kevin Garnett of the Celtics (a team which might arguably suffer from egoitis more than the Lakers) but when you start attacking an entire CITY, not just its basketball team, you are just asking for it.

Let's go back to the beginning of the beef with Noah, and I'm not talking about the incident back in December when Noah was mad because LeBron was having fun with his team while his was losing so he started yelling stuff, blah, blah, blah. This may have been the start of Noah's beef with LeBron but not Cavs' fans beef with Noah. The real source of this hatred goes back to 2007 when Florida's basketball team beat Ohio State in the National Championship just months after it's football team stunned the Buckeyes in Tempe. People who are fans of OSU hate Noah for the same reason as they hate Tim Tebow: we lost to them. While I personally do not see Tebow as extremely cocky, at least not yet, I have always seen this cockiness in Noah. Since many fans of OSU are also fans of Cleveland sports, it only makes sense that this hatred for him has carried over to his professional career. So, I have decided to take the liberty of writing up the thoughts of many Cleveland fans into a little snipet I've cleverly titled "Everybody Hates Joakim":

• During game one of this series, I could not believe how many times Noah freaked out when a whistle was blown. Many times, the call wasn't even on him. He just assumes he's being treated unfairly all the time. Must suck to get bad calls. Remember how many bad calls were made on OSU in 07? Payback's a bitch.
• Back in the December game, I remember debating with someone about whether or not LeBron was being too cocky with his little dance moves. As a rebuttle to this person's comments, I pointed out that the dancing started BEFORE the game, not while the Cavs were ahead. I'm going to make the assumption that LeBron continued these antics with his team because he loves his team, not to personally attack or be arrogant against anyone. I remember back when I was an athlete and we used to do little dances and cheers before games and such. Everyone did it, especially in volleyball. Nobody thought we were being cocky. Why is it any different in professional sports? Maybe Noah can't dance and was so angry about it that he had to start fussing at LBJ. If this is the case, then I guess I would be a little bitter too.
• In game two, The Bulls were definitely giving the Cavs a scare. So they have the nerve to dare LeBron to keep shooting jumpers. So, as James so nicely put it, he shot them over and over and over again. Cliche lesson of the day: if you play with fire you're gonna get burned.
• Joakim Noah is what the child of a T-Rex that mated with Kirstie Alley would look like. This is mean and really strange and not my quote, but I read it on Facebook and I thought it was funny.
• And finally, the biggest case against how much people hate Joakim Noah is how he so very egotistically dogged the city of Cleveland, saying there is nothing to do and no one vacations there. I don't think I have ever heard an athlete criticize an actual city (please, correct me if this has happened before).
  

I have one big point I want to make about this: WHAT ARE YOU SERIOUSLY TRYING TO DO BEFORE A PLAYOFF GAME? Shouldn't you be worried about trying to WIN A GAME rather than finding the best shopping and dining or what club you want to pull a Ben Roethlisberger in? This might be why your team is 0-2 this series. If I was a Bulls fan I would start hating Noah just as much as Cleveland fans hate him for bringing this bad karma to my team and letting himself get stricken with a huge case of egoitis.

The final thing I want to say is this: Maybe for the Cavaliers themselves the tension towards Noah doesn't go as deep as 3 years ago, but it is clear for the fans it does, and as we can see from my Lakers example, fan backlash can turn violent. The difference between the Cavs fans and Lakers fans is that Cavs fans and their team don't have egoitis because there is nothing for them to have triggered it. They caught a slight case of the disease last year in the playoffs: they had the best record, won the first two rounds of the playoffs in four straight games, and had commercials that were certain the Finals would be Kobe vs. LeBron. This year, their team is a different team with different chemistry, and while they still have fun and dance around, they have learned from their mistakes and have the focus of a team who has the experience of winning on the big stage. But with No championships, high unemployment rate, and anything else I mentioned in my first ever post, the Cavs and their fans are still humble. I truly hope that this humility remains if Cleveland takes it all this year because the last thing we need are more Ron Artests and Joakim Noahs hurting the image of this game.

Bulldogs and Bears and Bees, oh my!

Today started week 2 of the last quarter of my college career. It was a strange day because the temperatures continue to be more than perfect for this time of year, and I wound up having strep throat and missing Hal Green's cynicism (though I probably didn't miss much of a finance lesson). Aside from remembering to pump my body with antibiotics, I really only had three things on my mind. There probably should have been a few more but it's early in the quarter and I usually don't start doing homework until later at night anyway. Ironically, I always get the best grades spring quarter even though I feel as if I put in the least effort. Maybe I should have applied that to my winter quarters too, then I probably would have a 4.0. I also should have been focusing on my job search but I decided to put that off until Thursday-ish so I can mentally prepare myself for the torture of rejection I'm about to go through. In fact, I'm doubting my ability to think about a lot for the next few weeks, at least not while walking through campus. This is because the university is now plagued with the most annoying insects on the planet: Bees.

Every spring students are forced to walk through the trails of sidewalks all over campus and be greeted with the buzzing sounds of these obnoxious creatures. I don't know where they all come from or where they put their hives but they just come flying out of the woodworks during the first few weeks of the quarter. I understand that they serve a huge purpose in keeping the flowers and other plants fertilized so they can make campus beautiful, but I cannot understand why they have to swarm so close like they're going to attack at any moment. I'm probably the only one that looks like a monkey when I walk past them, though, because everyone else seems to pretend they aren't there. But I will go into a two-foot sprint, then walk, pattern everytime one gets near me and I shake my arms in a way that makes me look like I'm going to drop to the ground and have a seizure at any moment. I also do not understand which ones of these things are classified as bees and which are classified as yellow jackets. Below, I have inserted a picture of a yellow jacket (on the left) and a bee (on the right). They may have noticeable differences up close but how am I supposed to know what these are when I'm passing them by? All I really care about is that they could both sting me and potentially ruin my day. I've only been stung once so I know I'm not allergic but if it happens again I don't think I will be very happy about it.











One woman's basketball player that could probably punch me and it would undoubtedly hurt more than 100 bee stings is Baylor's freshman dunking sensation Brittney Griner. Though her team fell short of gettin the to the championship game, she is the reason why the Baylor Lady Bears were the second thing I thought about today.

After watching last night's game, I wasn't really left in shock about anything. In fact, this entire women's tournament was lacking in shock value. Almost everyone predicted UConn and Stanford to fight for the 2010 title and almost everyone got it right. A huge difference to the madness that took place in the men's tournament. The only thing I had to look twice at on the women's end is that Ohio State lost to Mississippi State in the second round.

Sidenote: I would like to give a shout-out to my freshman roommate Shavelle Little, who just finished up her senior season with the Buckeyes. She is one of the most interesting people I've ever met at OSU (I mean this in a good way) and I'm glad she did big things in her college career and I know she'll continue to do them in the future.

Anyway, back to Baylor and Griner. I knew that Baylor was not going to beat UConn but watching Griner play left me wondering "how does she do that?". Granted, I can't even play HORSE let alone a full game of ball, but she is going to be a powerhouse for the Lady Bears in the next three seasons. This girl is scary, if I went to high school with her I probably would have walked on the other side of the hall. And, since her team is only losing one senior, the odds might be in their favor to make it all the way in the next few years.

One team that the odds are not in favor for is the Butler Bulldogs, who are set to face the Duke Blue Devils in the 2010 NCAA men's basketball championship tonight. As this unlikely pairing gets ready to commence on the national stage, I sit here and think to myself how glad I am that I didn't fill out a bracket this year. All it would have done was lead me into utter frustration, just like everyone else. In fact, if there is anyone out there who predicted this be the Butler/Duke match-up to be for all the marbles I really want to see their bracket for proof. It's bad enough that Ohio State lost to Tennessee in the sweet 16, which was a total rejection of Ohio University's kind gesture of beating Georgetown in the first round. Most brackets showed OSU losing to GTown but since that game never got the chance, fans and media members alike were certain the Buckeyes would at least go to the Elite 8. However, that didn't happen either and somehow Michigan State weasled its way into the Final Four only to add to the embarrassments of the Big Ten on the big stage. Now, this 2010 Butler squad is doing something that no Bulldog from any previous year has managed to do before. It started in the Sweet 16 when the they knocked off Syracuse. After that, the Bulldogs made sure their bites were larger than their barks.

Though many people are angry about this, we can't forget that this was a top-25 team the entire season and was 10th in the preseason polls, so in this respect it can't be THAT big of an upset when they win. But because the team has never crowned itself king, unlike Duke which has done so 3 times, it becomes one of those teams that Hollywood decides to make a sports movie about in about 20 years after they win the title (if they win the title). Though my Buckeyes, or any other team that was supposed to go all the way, aren't in it, I'm not exactly angry about this game. In sports we must remember how meaningful it is for an underdog to rise to the top, even if they weren't "the best" all season. I am a fan of the underdog. Case in point, the Indians just got shut-out by the White Sox in the season opener, the Cavs have yet to win a title, Ohio State is always having ups and downs on the big stage and I really don't need to say anything about the Browns. So, if the Bulldogs win I will be happy because that restores the faith in underdogs everywhere, much like the New Orleans Saints did back in February. Just because people doubt a team does not mean its ability to win is lacking. It just takes a little effort in the game and a whole lot of ignoring the skepticism of the outsiders.