Quick Edit. Since writing this article, Warriors Coach, and worlds greatest person Steve Kerr has been attacked by Clippers Coach Doc Rivers. When you pick a fight with Steve, you are no longer someone I can root for. I love Steve and I can never root against him in any game I am watching, but it might take me some time before I can fully become a fan of a NorCal sports team. Other than that the general principals of this article still stand.
I have been a Laker fan for as long as I can remember. I am forever grateful to the Lakers for not only bringing home five championships during my lifetime, but also for making me into a huge basketball fan. Sadly it is this same love of the game that I garnered from watching Laker games that prompts me to write this next statement: I have learned to stop worrying about the Lakers and love the Clippers. As you can assertain by the image above, my last statement is an homage to Stanley Kubrick's classic dark comedy about the Cold War. In a lot of ways this film is a metaphor for the Lakers's current season. At times, watching the team can be exciting and funny; with great comedic actors like Swaggy P, Jeremy Lin and Jordan Hill, playing the roles of Peter Sellers, George C. Scott and James Earl Jones. But after the laughter ends you wind up feeling the same deep, morbid fear about the state of the franchise that Doctor Stranglove made people feel about a nuclear holocaust. It seems to me that we as Laker fans have two options: go into a Larry Sanders state of isolation, or embrace our Staples Center neighbors.
Every time I bring up the fact that I am rooting for the Clippers this season, my friends treat me like a traitor. I can see their point of view, but I don't share their animosity towards the Clips. I actually have decent memories of the Clippers. My dad loved how cheap the tickets were, and back in the day we could get great seats to see them play good teams. My dad is a big Laker fan, and we never went to see the Clippers as fans, we just wanted to see professional basketball, no matter how bad the Elton Brand-led squads were. There is something endearing about the Clippers finally getting it going. Is that so much of a crime?
Nothing makes me angrier than when everyone asks the same question: "why would you root for the Lakers's rival?" I never understood why people think the Lakers and Clippers are rivals. Obviously I know that sharing an arena should be a source of tension, but proximity doesn't constitute a rivalry. Real rivalries are born from competition. As much as I want to google the definition of the word "rival;" that just seems like an obnoxious cop-out to a complicated question. That being said Webster's Dictionary defines the word rival as, "a person or thing that equals another in quality." Simply put, the Lakers and Clippers have never been equals. For the vast majority of their meetings the Lakers were much better than the Clippers (Officially 98-38 all-time), and now that the Clippers have been good for a couple years, the Lakers have sucked. To me the Lakers's rivals are The Spurs, Kings and Celtics, you know teams that they have played meaningful games against in the past. How can you argue that the Lakers have played meaningful games against the Clippers when the two team have never even played in the playoffs.
Perhaps the most important reason for enjoying the Clippers right now is how much fun it is. Admit, if the Clipper's roster was on the Lakers we would all be talking about the second coming of Showtime. DeAndre Jordan and Blake Griffin are the league's best in-game dunkers, and Chris Paul is the best two-way point guard in LA since Magic. They also have the most entertaining bench guy in Jamal Crawford. Crawford is one of the few examples in the league of an actual street baller, who is legitimately given free reign of an offense for at least 10-15 minutes a game. Also very low-key, Spencer Hawes was one of the first heads on the man bun move. But the bottom line is that the Clippers have a bunch of incredibly entertaining players. That being said I will admit that Paul and Griffin have two of the most polarizing personalities in the NBA. To me they are way more fun to love than hate. Why spend your time getting angry at Paul's antics, when you can embrace his competitiveness. It feels so good to enjoy Blake's freakish athleticism guilt-free, despite the fact that the rest of the league's big men hate him. Also props to Blake for smacking Justin Bieber, which is a fact that is often forgotten by his those who assassinate his character.
Obviously Laker fans will never forgive Stern for not allowing us to get Paul, (the possibility of a Paul-Kobe-Dwight trifecta would have been beyond great) but are we just supposed to pout for the next decade. David Stern fucked up, no one is denying that, but that shit is in the past. I choose to think about Stern's decision as analogous to the way Amy Pascal handled the Steve Jobs Biopic. Two executives with absolute power trying to salvage huge mistakes, while on their way out of their jobs. Pascal was just like, "I'm sorry about blowing up the Fincher-Bale Jobs movie, here's a Danny Boyle-Michael Fassbender thing I threw together." OF COURSE Fincher is perhaps the best director ever at tackling the not-so-distant-past biopic. YOU ARE FUCKING RIGHT that Christian Bale is a genius actor, and bears a staggering resemblance to Jobs.. But at this very moment, both David Stern and Amy Pascal are sitting at home right now, thinking that their fuck ups might not be as bad as people think. Fassbender (Blake Griffin in this super obscure analogy) is young and dynamic with huge potential; and Boyle (CP3) has a proven track record of great work, but he is often left off of the list of the best at his position. Bottom line is that we can all dream of what could have been, or just celebrate the fact that Hollywood is producing relevant films, and that Staples still has relevant basketball.
My final point tends to go over the best when arguing with my friends from home. This final defense plays into most Angelenos's pride about their home city, and it is simply: "This is LA, why shouldn't we always have great basketball." We have the beach, we have the mountains, it is beautiful all year (yes this is a live link, I am confident that no matter when you click this link something good will show up). There is no reason for LA people to not have a horse in the NBA playoff race. Think of the Clippers like the LA Kings. No one gave two shits about the Kings before 2012, then they started going deep in the playoffs, and all of a sudden everyone is a fucking hockey fan. No one from LA has ever played hockey, its not really a thing at all. Low and behold in 2012, everyone is a huge hockey fan. I started hearing things like "it's actually one of the best sports to watch" and "wait, what is the blue-line again." If we can hop on board the hockey bandwagon just because we finally have a good squad, why cant we saddle up with the Clips FOR THE TIME BEING. Angelenos's aren't true fans of the Kings, the vast majority of LA people didn't care at all about the Kings when they were mediocre. AND THAT'S FINE, because that's what LA does. LA doesn't wait around for good to happen, there is always another great thing around the corner here. The Clippers are that great thing around the corner for us right now, the Clippers are Big Bear when it is raining for a couple days at the beach, the Clippers are Fat Sal's when the line is too long at In-N-Out, the Clippers are the immediate fix to our constant appetite for enjoyment.
