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.