Wednesday, June 18, 2008

More Mongrel Needed

























Last night the Lakers failed to win the play-offs, meaning they don't get to call themselves "World Champions" (don't even get me started on that one), or Œ"Masters of the Universe" or any other such over-achieving claptrap.

Neither do they get to call themselves a team worthy of respect in my book. They were seriously lacking in "mongrel" a wonderful term from my Aussie friend R. who uses it to describe that balls-to-the-wall kind of scrappy fight necessary for any successful athlete.

It was game six of the play-offs against the Celtics. The 110th game of the 2007-2008 season. LK is a devout Lakers fan and, barring being marooned in the north of England, he watched every single one of those games. I'm generally happy with watching the last five minutes of any game (five minutes that take about half an hour, with time-outs, commercials, and general shenanigans), but LK will watch the whole thing start to finish. That's almost two solid weeks, 24 hours a day watching the Lakers.

Hmm, I should be able to parlay that into some babysitting time I thinkŠ........

Anyway, it all came down to last night's match, sorry "game". There we were, purple and yellow bedecked, gathered at a friend's house to watch an absolute travesty unfold. You know it isn't pretty when hardened fans say Œ"if I was at home right now I'd turn this shit off". It rapidly became apparent that the Lakers were unable to stem the tide, but the fourth quarter was embarrassing. The game needed to be euthanised, particularly for the sake of any kids watching, because what were they learning, ­ - if you're not going to win don't even try? Sadly, with the exception of perhaps Kobe, our professional athlete prima donnas were just phoning it in for the last quarter. Being English, I'm no stranger to having my sporting pride handed
to me on a plate (or more frequently on the end of Predator curling a perfectly executed penalty past our dazed and confused goalie). This was shocking though because they just gave up; no pride no dignity. LK was losing it, completely oblivious to our 3 year old sponge sitting next to him who provided the only entertainment of the evening by repeating:

"Dude, you gotta dunk that shit".

Well said Anna.

5 comments:

Janet said...

I'm afraid I have no patience with American "sports," they all seem designed to fit in around commercial breaks.

Also, what's the point of supporting teams if you can't ever go to the games? I heard on the news the other night that tickets for this game were going for $60,000, and the cheap seats were $39,000. They obviously don't want Joe Public at these matches, so they don't deserve to have supporters.

Sorry for the rant, just my humble opinion. :-)

Amy said...

Yes the commercial breaks were a biatch!

Sorry for your loss, however I am a Celts fan!!! Please don't hate me, okay?

Mary said...

I'm laughing at Anna. Too funny!

Expat mum said...

That's a very un-American attitude. What happened to the fat lady singing? (Since the Bulls were nowhere near the Championships, I wasn't watching.)

Godless Sunday said...

Tickets were CRAY-SEE. It aint for the regular peeps fo sho'. I'm a CALI girl born and raised and I lost all interest once my Suns (now that I live in AZ) failed to take it to the hoop this season. Steve Nash makes me wanna do naughty things, but I digress.
I still love the Lakers. And Anna, that was some spot on commentary.