A championship is the ultimate prize in sports. Every fan of every team wants what is best for the team in order to put their team in the best position to compete for a championship. Sometimes, though, winning sometimes isn’t always the answer to success; and in the Lakers current situation that can’t be overstated.

The Lakers and their fans are hoping to see another title parade soon after a few hard seasons.

For the Lakers organization and its fans, the 2013-14 season is one of the darkest and hardest to watch in the past 30-plus years. In the end, though, it might not be so bad.

After losing out on the Dwight Howard sweepstakes in the off-season and while waiting on Kobe Bryant to return from injury, the Lakers knew the season would be a long one. Countless injuries and poor play have made exacerbated the situation. Currently, at the All Star Break, the Lakers sit with a record of 18-35 and are tied for the worst record in the Western Conference with the Sacramento Kings. So, the question is where do the Lakers go from here?

As the Lakers continue to lose, it all adds up to one step closer to a great lottery pick in the upcoming draft. The 2014 draft class looks to be one of the deepest and strongest draft classes since the 2003, when players such as LeBron James, Dwayne Wade, Carmelo Anthony and Chris Bosh entered the league. It looks like the Lakers may even have a good chance to get a top-5 pick in the draft, which would greatly improve the team. Combine the good draft pick with all the cap space the Lakers will have this off-season and the Lakers should be back in contention for a title within a year or two.

What makes people skeptical about the future state of the Lakers is the fact that Jerry Buss and Jerry West are no longer with the team and that it is being run by Jim Buss, a man criticized for his poor decisions pertaining to the team. He is accompanied by general manager Mitch Kupchak, who is a fan favorite for his-out of-nowhere great moves. I understand why Laker fans like myself are worried about the future but we have to just trust in management and hope for the best. I mean after all it’s the Lakers right? Whoever is managing the team, I have to believe they will figure it out and bring this historic franchise back to the place it was always meant to be.

Kobe took the shoot and scored, about sums up the irresistible edge the NBA possesses in today’s sports market.  It came from two, jet black haired Armenian boys, speaking broken English from a curling bench in the gymnasium. And before I could correct their grammar, I paused, and took in the oddity of what NBA basketball now means to the rest of the world.

Staples Center is still where Los Angeles’ sports heart beats. By Daniel Lobo (Staples Center Uploaded by JoeJohnson2) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

How David Stern has continued to underwhelm the outrageous, with a worldwide marketing attack, building riotous fan bases, is miraculous and genially creative. Turn the channel to a Spanish network playing a sensationalized love affair between Carlos and Olga, and your certain to run into a high flying commercial production starring the Hollywood five.

Who are the Hollywood five? A five pronged attack of super humans.

Uncanny in their heroes names, “the Mamba,” “Superman Part Deux,” “Snaggle Tooth Spaniard,” “Meta World,” and “Nash,” conjoin a makeup of champion potential. Endorsing these five is a perfectly unapologetic front forging a final blaze for the older fans(our fathers and grandfathers) who split after the first lockout in 1999.

A sinister 1-4 start didn’t help things much. But after last night’s crushing continuum of victories (now 4 of their last 5), 119-108 over the Houston Rockets, the perennial powerhouse is hosing their way through mite-sized foes and reminding the more mature fan of former “share the ball” star fronts of the 80’s: the Boston Celtics, Showtime Lakers and Bad Boy Pistons.

If jumbled together randomly, David Stern fell into one mighty miracle when Dwight Howard and Steve Nash both said yes to the next blockbuster dubbed The Mamba’s Revenge. Currently the story line is fitting: Five stars align, experience sudden failure, overcome and conquer. They battle their way through valiant foes, but ultimately face off against the megadeath machine, the Miami Heat. The Old and the New: Kobe Bryant verses LeBron James. Television numbers soar, world dominance elongates, David Stern earns himself a star on the walk of fame.

Which is why saying nothing at all to two teen Armenian cats pointing and hollering in a small, humble gym at a Hilton hotel was the right thing to do. The mind numbing reality that the NBA is not only stable but more popular since its second lockout is a force unfazed by my incessant needs to correct grammar and put sentence malfunctions in their place. I may even start using Kobe took the shoot, if it means I can join the club.

And while Mitch Kupchak bluffs his way through media montages on “foreseen” megadeals on the “near” horizon, the league moves on without Hollyweird and the boy wonder, Bryant.

Last season, clearly his worst in years, Bryant looked human.

His 25.0 points per game were impressive enough to encourage the kingdom to think he’s got another two or three years in the tank. But his paltry 33.2 minutes per game were his lowest since his sophomore season, begging whether or not the heir apparent’s brittle knees can withstand another 164 to 246.

In a recent interview at the Lakers media day, the brash guard admitted his disappointments with the team’s direction. A day or two since the sudden brush off of reigning sixth man of the year, Lamar Odom to Dallas, Bryant clamored, “I don’t like it.”

He continued with a small jab to Kupchak, acknowledging Odom’s worth: “He played lights out. I don’t understand the criticism of reality shows and this, that and the other. I don’t get it. I don’t understand that. He had his best season last season, clearly wasn’t a distraction, and he played his ass off. I don’t get where that comes from.”

And while media members continued to push Bryant in a defensive corner in regards to the sometimes aloof and silly minded forward, Kobe shot back, ” Now I’m just getting pissed off.”

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmYKB5S3nlE

And so should you.

If you find yourself in the thrust of Laker’ fandom, get really pissed off. Lose the admiration and begin your own occupy Staples movement, calling for the heads of upper management. Because either Jerry Buss is losing his mind, or Mitch Kupchak is the modern day Brutus, aiming to ax Bryant’s career into oblivion.

Without Odom you can kiss a shot at Dwight Howard or Chris Paul goodbye.

Odom’s 14 points and 11 rebounds last season off the bench were his cleanest numbers in his decade-long career. And for the first time the do-it-all swing man played with passion on both sides of the ball.

He seemed to be clicking. His becoming attitude was a motivator for the young Andrew Bynum, whose burgeoning attitude and work ethic are constantly in question.

Without Lamar Odom, the Lakers lack that invaluable one-of-a-kind trade chip to tack on the back end of a blockbuster trade with either Pau Gasol or Andrew Bynum. And now, as the team collects their paltry 2nd round draft choice and $8.9 million chunk of change in exchange for Odom, the rest of the league moves proactively forward.

Currently, talks for CP3 have re-landed in Los Angeles, this time with the Clippers. Dwight Howard has turned his attentions back onto a New Jersey- Orlando deal. Even former spark plug Shannon Brown opted for the sunny hot gunning country of Phoenix, Arizona.

Back on the Odom deal, Kobe smarted, “I’m sure Mark Cuban isn’t nixing that trade,” with his usual head nod.

The deal to get rid of Odom was a trade that ultimately made the Lakers worse, stunted their growth in the near future and strengthened the Mavericks with “the best forward trio in the league,” according to Mavs head coach Rick Carlisle.

It makes you wonder what this season will look like.

Remember, it was just four days ago that Pau Gasol’s name was typed out in a three-way deal sending him to Houston.

Whether or not the soft-tempered Spaniard can bounce back is yet to be seen as well. “This is a league that’s becoming more of a business than a sport unfortunately,” Gasol said shyly in a camera interview (below). His beard and baby face averting the obvious insecurity: Where is this team heading?

For Kobe Bryant it is quickly moving backwards while everyone else, including past teammate Lamar Odom, move at least step or two in a positive direction.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqWDrZbMg8E

Everyone is at fault and fans are punished.

Read the newspapers, online articles, and blog posts and you’ll find differing opinions — nothing really unexpected. Players are glad to be back. Here is what has to happen between now and December 9th blah blah blah.

And then something caught my eye.

In the LA Times, with a story about the NBA, there is a picture of NBA Players Association President Derek Fisher in a press conference. Look at it. Take it in for a minute.

As always, Fisher exudes classiness. In his conservative suit and tie, it is clear that Fisher knows something about impressions, business, and dealing with people in business.

Flanking Fisher in the picture are former all-stars Chauncy Billups and Russell Westbrook. A veteran and an “up and comer.” Two players who are, by now, used to being in the spotlight. Two guys who went to (for at least a few years) very respectable institutions of higher learning – the University of Colorado and UCLA.

And the both of them are in red hoodies.

No Regard for Human Life also posted some pictures and noted the hoodies.

I guess the negotiations are over. And as long as they aren’t on their way to a game, the NBA players can wear whatever they want. But after a long “negotiation” during which the players had to make a lot of concessions, dudes front and center at a press conference in sweats and hoodies makes a pretty clear statement.

The job of an NBA player is to play basketball, but isn’t it about projecting an image too? Don’t they get paid because fans get excited and watch the game. Isn’t that why David Stern implemented a dress code for players?

Maybe Westbrook and Billups were taking a shot at Stern. Many of the players there were well dressed.

Maybe they just didn’t have any of their nice clothes to wear. Whatever the reason, they should have been more buttoned up. After all the talk about how everything is about business, wearing sweats and hoodies sends the completely wrong message.

It is evidence that clearly the NBA still has a long, long way to go.

Addition note: Luke Johnson *********

As it is true that the red hoodies worn by Chauncey Billups and Russell Westbrook at an important NBA meeting is a sign of blatant disrespect from casually disparate professionals, we must understand an even larger more pertinent fact regarding today’s audacious athletes.

In the above article by my friend Owen Main at fansmanship.com, the writer unknowingly anointed the issue when he poignantly postured, “dudes front and center at a press conference in sweats and hoodies makes a pretty clear statement,” and then later, “after all the talk about how everything is about business, wearing sweats and hoodies sends the completely wrong message.”

And thought it does send a message of immaturity, both from an up and coming inconsiderate and a fox-eyed champion, it also sends a much needed image front and center for a society that glorifies this type of me-first, give-it-to-me, athletic celebrity.

For a moment it seemed the league could re-route itself after a lockout in 1999. The lockout eliminated many of its fringe fans who historically college lovers, found enough at times in the pro game to watch it also. Yet after the lockout and the wavering beef of Shawn Kemp’s belly, the NBA fell from grace; from 1 to 3 in the power rankings of the big three: NFL, MLB & NBA.

Though time has a way of healing past wounds, we’re entirely incorrect in thinking people ever really forget. The NBA has shown us nothing that would make us think things might be changing. And despite celebrating the league’s highest ratings for an NBA Finals series in the last ten years, once again things are decomposing with idiocy.

While an NFL athlete works under realistic conditional contracts, deals both lucrative and yet conditioned under performance expectations, the NBA athlete has reveled in the scott free nature of a contract conditioned around nothing.

Take a look at Warriors starting center Andris Beidrins. Since signing a 6-year $63-million dollar deal, the Latvian has periled in a quandary of make-shift injuries. His uninspired play has not only bankrupt a franchise in need of locking up other athletes, but questions the validity of the NBA system as a whole.

Since the deal Beidrins has played in just 46.0 games per season with numbers of 5.0 points and 7.4 rebounds.  Both numbers are his lowest since his rookie year. And while the Warriors continue to form a team around Stephan Curry and David Lee, they wade in deep water with the Western Conference’s version of Eddy Curry.

His unconditional contract is a burden on many fronts, most notably on his trade value. The Warriors must either match a portion of Biedrins contract in order to move him, or find a team willing to take a risk on him.

As implausible as option two is, the Warriors will be either stuck with him for another three-years, or as I said, paying a former employee a portion of his contract while he services elsewhere.

Yet, despite this, how can we morally fault the type of athletes we’ve created?

Today’s NBA athletes are celebrities because we said so. They are byproducts of million dollar PR agents, corporate greed and the lust for entertainment. Their gift to play a game has suspended into the stratosphere like gods, while other noble professions, most infamously teachers, lament in the cellar. While a fourth grade teacher collects his or her 42,000 dollars a year and fights yearly for their professional life, Kobe Bryant collects 6-times that during a 48-minute strap.

And though I understand a pro athlete can play an ominous role in our society as a figure head for cultural unification and national pride, I can’t help but question our societal values.

Without teachers we devolve into back country snake charmers believing in witchery. Without athletes we pay attention to world events more and read at a higher level.

Instead of a presidential address, music or a creatively sound book, we opt for momentary high flying enticement, something ultimately leaving us numb and disenfranchised from the world around us.

While World War 3 breaks lose, the Lakers lose.  An atom ball rips through our town while the Heat run off a red hot run. Our twitter accounts’ are hacked with identity thieves, but blowing up with Kevin Durant’s favorite Mexican restaurant. And while LeBron James just posed in GQ wearing a checkered long sleeve shirt, skinny jeans and a poet’s cap, the world says goodbye to literary legend, Hunter S. Thompson.

All in all it has been an average day: Kobe dropped 30 and the Knicks didn’t play any defense.

And while Americans go unemployed, our education system fails, the blue collar working class shrinks to an all-time low, corporate corruption arises and world famine steals the lives of children, most Americans are notably content with a sixty-six game NBA schedule starting on Christmas day.
We’re fawning over the wrong things. Our love of celebrity has taken us to the edge of stupidity and we’re cliff hanging, holding on, scratching just to remain intellectually relevant.

While China trumps us in every major educational category, outperforms us in productivity and continues to set the bar in the fields of medicine and technology, we’re doling out wads of money to greedy self-centered sets of hands.

The point then is this: the men wear red hoodies at a press conference because they’re allowed to wear red hoodies. It’s cool and they’re larger than life, and have been silver spoon fed this crap of praise since they stepped on the scene.

Until putting a ball in a hoop can save lives it is a meaningless game and the men and women who play it, like you and like me, are average citizens with an average calling.

Kim Kardashian: nothing more than an average rich girl currently ranks fourth above the likes of Barack Obama on the twitter account list with 11,591,704 fans.  She’s best known for making a fortune on a leaked sex tape starring her and Brandy’s brother Ray J. Besides that she’s dated Dolphins running back Reggie Bush and was married to starting Nets forward, Kris Humphries.

The girl’s fame is as fake as a tissue enhancement in a school girl’s bra. And yet she garners praise for no other reason other than she has a nice behind, a way of starring in “leaked” sex tapes, and most importantly, because of her relations with celebrity athletes.

Kardashian’s last tweet was as follows: “ooooh do I understand this urge! LOL RT @KhloeKardashian -The things that I wish I could tweet LOL.”

Huh? Can I get a copy of Rosetta Stone?

There is only one man who can answer these pondering’s, that being “Big Shot Bob,” otherwise known as Robert Horry, who made a living with the Rockets, Lakers, and Spurs, en route to seven rings by nailing the clutch shot.

Why does this matter? He was never a star, but he has rings galore bronzed on his swish- svelte fingers. 

In today’s NBA we judge  all-time greats by how many rings they’ve won and whether or not they led their teams to title town. But is this a fair assessment, considering a life-long bench guy like Horry can be carried to seven?

Never was Horry the franchise guy. In fact, as great as he seemed in closing minutes, Robert Horry never became the player we expected him to be after his timely three point shooting for Houston’s 2nd title run.

Horry’s brief stint in Phoenix after a trade in 1996, proved he was not endowed with a star motor. A hot tempered, dramatic and aloof head case, Bob languished averaging 6.9 points at a career low shooting clip: 41.8%. A trade by mid-season to the L.A. Lakers–a team filled with Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O’Neal, Nick Van Exel, Eddie Jones, Elden Campbell, and Cedric Ceballos changed the trajectory of his failing career.

So why then is Bob a champion? Why not franchise guys like Barkley, Malone, Stockton, Dominique, Ewing, or Reggie Miller?

Each of those listed above were worthy of winning gold, were they not? All of them were respective franchise pieces with the heart, skills, and late game heroics to hold the O’Brien.

The answer to their problems was Michael Jordan’s Bulls: a team of role guys surrounding the king of the sport with that IT factor needed to win it all. Something today’s critics use to gauge greatness and rank the all time elites.

So what is the issue then with the tautness of this old-time equation? Why not turn a blind eye and allow this to be the answer to everything?

Simply because it just does not add up. It does not offer enough answers. If Big Shot Bob has seven, or the likes of Jack Haley–former twelfth man for Jordan’s final three peat has three, the equation’s a bit off. We need something else, a new perspective when thinking of the greats and why and how they never hung the O’Brien.

And I believe individual luck IS the partly the answer, luck, a maddening machine random like the California Lottery. Historians prefer the term historical happenings–a notion that choices are made for no other reason except that they were made, and the dominoes re-arrange the cosmos of a world more closely inter-connected than we might wish it to be (think guy who smells like farts at the movies, or the swine flu victim winding a cough onto the back nape of the neck.)

Luck.

To think Michael Jordan fell to number three in the 1984 draft could be easily overlooked for a variety of reasons: Sam Bowie, the number two pick before MJ, was a  college superstar and a big man compared at the time to the greats. The Blazers already had a gifted wingman in Clyde Drexler andat the time the league was built around bigs: Kareem, Sampson and Olajuwan, Robert Parish, Patrick Ewing, and Moses Malone.

But that doesn’t make things less ludicrous.  Look at how the draft shaped the NBA forever. MJ goes to an ordinary Bulls team built in perhaps the greatest city in America, where he wins ROY, ultimately five MVP’s, slam dunk contests, becomes the games biggest mogul, and wins six titles. Alongside Oprah, MJ is easily the greatest name in Chicago history and can be attributed for an economical explosion that saved the lower West side of the city once run with crime: drug abuse, gang wars, and prostitution.

Bowie, in the annals of the NBA, is known as ‘the bust.’ He never won a thing in the pros: no all star games, no shoe deals, thus injuring the once bright ideal the Blazers had in trading their franchise Center Bill Walton to Boston.

This, my friends, is the Sam Bowie, a supernatural element that cannot be ignored.

Luck.

Yet like so many children born into inner city poverty without the tools necessary to change their lives, we cannot judge the stars through the a similar bias, because not all players are born lucky into a posh franchise. The gift of playing in Los Angeles or Boston does not come to everyone. Not every player is born into a showtime era, a team so deep they make the ocean look like a kids pool.

For some, seeking a new home is like divorcing an abusive wife. In order for Mitch Richmond to adorn gold, the talented and true shooting guard had to eventually break ties in the perils of Sacramento. Karl Malone found it necessary to join with Kobe and Shaq in 04′ after a long tenure in Utah. And even the humble Clyde Drexlerleft a hell of a situation in Portland to win it Houston. All three of which were great with or without (Sing it Bono) a championship.

The reality of the situation is heart breaking for most. We as childish dreamers wish our favorite player could be greater than the others, but this is not real. Embracing a pragmatic approach to the sport tied less to your heart strings will allow you to see greatness wrapped in many different packages. 

Reality 1: Great players DO NOT win championships, great TEAMS win championships. The 2004 Detroit Pistons are a perfect example of this. A team of role guys without a future hall of famer, the Pistons had the momentary IT. Call it faith, hard work, purity, and any other beautiful thing you want, but to explain why they won a title over an L.A. Laker team stocked with four future hall of famers would be absurd.

Reality 2: Like the stars in the sky, NBA STARS need other STARS. Think for a moment about the teams who’ve won championships the last thirty years. All of them have one thing in common: team depth and stars surrounding stars. Magic had Kareem and Worthy; Bird–Mchale and Parish; Dr.J–Moses Malone; Isaiah–Dumars and Rodman; MJ–Pippen; Hakeem–Clyde; Shaq–Kobe and Wade; Duncan–Robinson, Parker, and Ginobili; Pierce–KG and Allen.

Reality 3:  Winning titles does mean a lot, but it does not mean everything for a myriad of reasons. If the 1919 Chicago Blacksox or dirty referees like Tim Donaghy can throw World Series and playoff games, then how serious can we take this thing? Not very. Take everything with a grain of salt and learn other decided facets when it comes to judging all-time greats: MVP’s, All Star appearances, Career Totals, Game Winners, Ability to close, Athleticism, Re-defining the sport, dominance-ometer, and sociological affects.

LeBron James is not a sell out because the guy wants to win, he’s a realist. A star unselfish enough to admit that NO star including himself, can win a title completely on his own.

LeBron is stuck in the the Bill Clinton Vacuum. Though he does great things, he is brushed aside because of one unlikeable decision.

But greatness is not a grade school quiz on being friendly, it is brutal giftedness. And likeability is not the twin brother to being great.

LeBron made a  decision to better his career andhis life. Leading a Cleveland Cavs team the last seven years, that never boasted anybody better than a has-been version of Antawn Jamison warrants James departure.  No it does not warrant the overdone TV cinematic’s regarding “the decision,” nor the Pat Riley blowout introduction party in South Beach. Yet neither should it foster the illogical hysteria across America attempting to deny the man’s sheer dominance and greatness.

This isn’t patty cake kids. We are talking about a production entertainment, where all titles are but a decorative decor. They might help the woman look fine, but if that woman is not fine without the jewelry or the tight fitting jeans, I say run, run as fast as you can.

Drop by the nearest bar and have a scotch on me. Look through the world with freshness and at what is truly great (it is not the girl next to you.). It is the scraggly bartender able to whip up drinks faster than the average Joe.

Once while pitching a no-hitter in the sixth grade my pants ripped through the crotch revealing the graying pickled nose of my sweaty cup. I was determined to battle through, as if my twelve year old league held a form of valor similar to that of an ancient warriors, but to no avail.  The likes of frozen nut syndrome, and the admittance of a heart crush on a certain girl staring at me with eyes of embarrassment, wide as a horse surfaced my jitters and combusted my moment of greatness into a final inning disaster: four hits (including to the eighth hitter in the lineup), three runs, plenty of walks, and a head hung low–an oversized one to say the least.

At sixteen I opened up to a pastor regarding sexuality and he told me to put tobasco sauce on my fingertips to stop me fiddling down under. He didn’t say fiddling down under, because I am sure he thought the last thing he should do is jest, and hence arise the humorist within me. If you wonder whether I tried it, I did. It doesn’t work, just warms it up a little, and besides that rather good factoid…I was a healthy boy, one whom hid posters of Kathy Ireland splayed in string bikinis under my A-Rod posters.

Nothing can stop the activity of a healthy buck.

Once asked which man I would choose to make love too (if a gun was stuck to my head), I asserted the mulleted Full House version of John Stamos. My reasons for choosing the Italian Stallion I’m sure America is to blame for, considering every and any form of media promises a perfect life, perfect body, and a rock n’ roll existence; all of which Stamos is packaged with.

Two years ago I woke my wife in the middle of the night randomly shouting “tortilla!” Now if I have an issue with sleep speaking, which means I am a sleep muser, should I fear what forms of things I am dreaming about? Not if food continues to assert its dominance over other meaningless dreamscapes: embodying Snake Eyes, living life as a merman, and fathering pinkie size children.

Like labyrinths without an exit we all concede sanity: meanings, definitions, those manicured mathematics that theorize everything and butter our world with the blood of care bears. Sets of religioius rules and values– things like morals should never be ingested into macro environments. Macro morals foreshadow hysterical immorality, and concede an acceptance for equality and diversity.

The problem? America IS diversity and equality. We are the segway to continuity and progression; rationality and spirituality; division and equality. All that IS can be found in US, not a political invention, nor the modern motor model for human thinking. A is not to B, as B is not to C. Rather ABC are to Z as Z is to variable X.

State of mind X governs you and I, like light and darkness, food and water. We NEED our state of being like children incessantly seeking the truths to the universe: the magic of breathing in oxygen only to blow carbon dioxide out the fleshy greenhouse of the lungs, or the oxidation complex in our vein constructs, that without the immersion of water in a ninety-six hour period of time will fail and cause us cardiac arrest.

These NEEDS we cannot live without. Attempting to do so is death, and death seems to hold no regard for stature or faith. Our states of mind fill our rather skeletal longings with wonderment and hope–love, lust, passion, and desire. There is no other explanation when it comes to our definitive stance on the difference between entertainment and athletics. Once a fine line drawn in the sand has become muddied and spilled over–a loss of interpretive elements with no grid in which to define the two.

I once saw a kid strain so hard during a math quiz, that I questioned my definition of athletics. I am certain many of our interpretations are drawn from historiography: things like the Roman Olympics which safe-guarded the athlete from the philosopher with varied themes of quest, champion, and bodily strain, overrun by a will to beat-out adversity.

This in Roman days the Philosopher did not do. Though incredibly respected, the philosopher had no peril to overcome. And to today’s Roman thinker, the fork between intellectual achievements and athletic accomplishments are grounded in the same theory.

But how ridiculous! I lost my now hitter because I did not have the intellectual where-with-all to steady the body. The boy who strained during his math quiz flexed his forehead and scribbled with his pen. His intellect directed the achievement, and the achievement left him physically exhausted.

Both worked in unison.

We all have columns of W’s and L’s in our lives: some unfortunately more victorious others. This alone sets us on quest larger than the Lakers, LeBron James, or Dirk Nowitiski. Our states of mind are stuck in a never-ending dog fight ( I am not referencing Mike Vick), and we are called upon daily, hourly, and momentarily, to overcome adversity and make something of ourselves.

With time running out at work, our relationships, our health,  and our family, we grow accustomed to taking the last shots. We alone are our very own last-minute closer in the sports of our lives. Rest in peace Macho Man.

The man sobbing at the front looks like GW with two lazy eyes and elfish shaped ears. Woman to the left: Palin with a mustache. We are all self confessed a-hole’s in need of rose colored glasses.

Honestly, I hate crowds, OC tans, mini foo foo dogs (side note: I was forcibly led to love one name Mindy, a “Morkie”. And over time this petite Falcore looking ragamuffin has worn on me with her shag cuteness and constant barrage of licks.) and think the tea party was written by the deaf and blind.

But I learned a good lesson this last Friday at the nearby Judaic Worship and Cultural Center, listening to Holocaust survivor Helena Weinrauch speak about her horrendous experience with calm, insight, honesty, and yet still, an appreciation for humanity. Read her story here.

It is evident, Sir’ Paul McCartney and Lennon were prophetically clear and righteously on to something, when they wrote their harpischord ballad, “all you need is love.”

Yes the intangible of love–a boundless entity without shape or size. The fleck of feeling that with it’s heart-like tempo, can turn a grainy sun scorched and expression-less skyline, to a swirling majesty; an art painting of the surreal; a smeary energetic dream; a dozen wind waifed butterflies bobbing like yo-yo’s over a fist of emerald grass.

The older I get, now approaching a pre-midlife crisis at twenty-nine, seven months and counting, I come into agreement with love and its power to transform the lens in which I view things. The American culture is built on a white and black paradigm of belief structure. Right or wrong dominate our upbringings. But they now lilt in the exposure generations x, y, and z have had with the riverine nature of relativity. Nothing is black, nothing is white. Grey is the chic’ fashion forward.  

And i’m wearing it: the cloth of Love. Not guns, racism, greed, but love.

The bond shared between my cousin and I as we shoot text back and forth in regards to Kobe Bryant and the Lakers. He is a believer, and I, a cynical realist jab through stereophonic air waves.

Laker hater. You just hate it when the Lakers win–Cousin Chad

No! I don’tare when the Lakers win. I am not a Laker hater because Pau saved Kobe’s career. If that makes me a Laker hater, than so be it.–Me

The seam that ties together unity, bonds the sinner to the saint, christens society with an infatuate need for universal brother and sisterhood, is love.

I think Kobe Bryant is a phenomenal player.

And an un-phenomenal person.

Do I wish him any harm? Absolutely not. Is losing harmful? No. How about jumping a car, only to clip your feet, flip in a circle, land on your back, and get paralyzed? Is that harmful?

I love him.

God that’s gross.

So I try like this, re-enacting the famous scene in Jerry Maguire when I, Renee Zelweger, confess my need for Kobe, Tom Cruise.

After Kobe’s deep serenading poem of appreciation, I pause. My eyes crystal over, and my lower lip begins to twitch erratically (which means love is overwhelming my feminine bosom) and I whisper, “you had me at hello.”

It is the fakest job done in Hollyweird. I sound like a mumbling Vin Diesel.

Which is why you met me at A-hole’s Anonymous in the first place. I want to get over this thing.

Step one) Admit your are an a-hole. Check. Step two) Make a mends with those whom you’ve harmed. Che…..ck.

When you found me, I was wallowing in another Laker grind it out victory. No matter how cutely Chris Paul sliced and diced the Laker defense, Kobe found ways to win with his classicaly killer instinct. This according to Seahawks running back Marshawn Lynch, is going into beas’ mo’. Which if translated into correct English, means beast mode.

I am giving up on the a-hole way of living. It is cold hearted and cruel. The very man I love to see lose, got swept by a Mark Cuban Mavs team built from the ground up.

But it did not make me feel any better.

This time I languished in my childish banter. I am turning over a new leaf. I care about sports, but obviously not enough any longer.

From this day forward you will never (never say never) hear another anti-Kobe statement from me. In fact mark this down: dude is top fifteen of all-time. No, make that twelve.

I need to get back to church: drink wine and fill myself with the charity of their crackers. Oops, scratch that.

That is not a typo, and I am sure you are now hyperventilating. Someone call the paramedics!

In fact, that number is so outrageous, you probably think you are reading an article written by Jerry Springer. And maybe Jerry is to blame. Springer and the baby-face of Zac Efron have gotten to the Lakers heads. Add in some saucy Justin Beiber, and the half-naked, Megan Fox, and the Lakers have gone down in the flames of Hollyweird.

Weird, is the perfect word.

With the champs down 3-0 to a hungry Mavericks team, one would expect the survival mechanism to kick in. These are the Los Angeles Lakers, two time defending champs, deeper than anyone in the league, with a nest of proven title warriors. But instead, the fans have been abandoned with the pretty, bop haircut of Drew Barrymore, and are left to fend off the snakes of reality–too old; Kobe not the same; Pau soft; Bynum’s glass knees; No heart; Defensively poor; Fisher needs to fish elsewhere.

Weird, weirdness, weirder, weirdest, weirdizzle.

And while I’m on the topic, Barrymore is a perfect example. One of her first films, Firestarter, an alt-classic with a cultish’ following, features the young Barrymore blazing through American streets with an ability to start fires. She doesn’t know why she does it, accept that she gets enormously pissed off, and bad things happen to really good people.

So get out the gasoline, and start this here barbecue, because a massive roast is about’ to ensue.

Kobe IS FAR passed his prime. It was obvious in today’s game, that the fifteen years on  his thin, lengthy frame, have worn his once spry knees to ancient nubs. He came out red hot, as to be expected, shooting 6-8 in the 1st quarter. But 2-12 for the remainder, with little lift or drive, beckons the question..has his window of dominance closed?

Bynum, a guy getting paid fourteen million dollars on knees of a sixty year old’s, has reasons to smile. He is the most overrated big man in the league, with an ego the size of Texas.

I vote trade his ass to the South Dakota Greg Oden’s.

Pau is shaken by a recent breakup. Wait, a BREAKUP! Can we now consider Vanessa Bryant the new Yoko?

Fisher is now officially crowned with clownsmanship. I am positive Phil had him out there as comic relief, as everytime he threw Terry, Barrea, or Kidd to the ground, he still had it in him to somehow argue the foul call.

The problem with Artest is he is now Sir’ Ronald Artest, and no longer is going by his thug name Ron Ron “Stab a Juggler Vein.”

I think the basketball God hates Steve Blake because he no longer wears a birca.

LO is also the nickname of a former star on the Teeny Bop MTV series The Hills. And we wonder why Lamar is not a star….?

Kloe Kardashian is the 2nd woman in world history to experience immaculate conception. This occured after Luke Walton used the force during a game of Star Wars.

Walton prefers the name Yoda. Kobe prefers to call him Chewy.

Bring Mark”Mad Dog” Madsen” back, and before every game have the guy dance in a tassle embroidered thong.

Maybe this will turn Jeanie Buss on. Either that, or Phil needs to enhance his libido with viagra. Dude is so impartial, he makes a mute begger look like Chatty Kathy.

Flames.

Like Dante’s hell burning up the gloried, the Heat is on, literally.

And Barrymore, who never learns how to gauge her violent skill, is burning down the house (no pun intended).

Thus, there is nothing more anti-democratic, than the Tea Party Association of Mars manipulation of the conservative-rights stance on the necessity of unions. Without question, they’ve come from the stars, probing a fair and equal system with a galactic inhumanity.

It is impossible to incur wealth without the backs of the poor. Cheap labor and ghettoization, foster reliance upon the charitable notions of the upper class. Without charity, the poor though most strong willed and industrious, are fed to a dog eat dog societal paradigm. To insight an ideology that unions should be done away with, goes against a system that ultimately, founded old lineal wealth.

It is like trying to take a breath without lungs. No lungs, no air; death my friends.

Which means Western Societies new-individual, is everything un-American. Individualism when led by a strategic understanding of checks and balances; big business and unions; and inner and outer economics, is the miracle grow to not only a healthy individual, but a healthy stag of individuals.

Therefore the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer, but at least all parties are partly represented. And the birth of true leaders are born.

I have never seen a champion of individuals arise from professional or collegiate athletics. Every team has the glue-figures, the cogs, the men or women who lead by example and draw from each and ever player their strengths.

Examples of sporting democracy, are being held in the hands of modern day Gladiators.

In 2006, Kobe Bryant was nothing more than a self-feigned scorer. A player who had piggy backed Shaq to the likes of three rings. A self-centered chick in a tight bikini more concerned with her figure, then with everyone and everything else. But in 2008, a nice gift wrapped in an ugly Spaniard face, came in the form of Pau Gasol. He was the hard working wheel washer.

Took time for Kobe to learn an ancient sporting discipline:passing. Now that he has, his twin towers have betrothed the Lakers back to back. It took a village, and Pau was the Lakers medicine man.

We must remember than in all arenas of life, it is best to not only 1) Lead by example, but 2) remember that there is strength in numbers. Too many of us live for the hollyweird spotlight like a hamster in a circus hat, spinning in our very own plastic wheel. Kobe was not far from this a few years back, when he quit a decisive game clincher against the Phoenix Suns in the first round of the playoffs.

That off-season he toyed with the brilliant (right..!) concepts of signing with teams like the Los Angeles Clippers. I think, it would be fair to say Kobe had been maddened by a me-first-gimme-gimme disease of the brain.

But as it be, the basketball gods had another idea. First, re-sign Fisher, the Billy Madison of the group. Then two year later, wrap the ugly Spaniard, in a nice facial wrap of scraggly beard, crooked teeth, and a silky smooth fall away ten footer. Every me-first-gimme-gimme disease can be combated with an honest soul willing to pee their pants too.

Welcome to the art of sporting socialism.

Thank God for Laker fans the peeing stopped. And for Kobe, thank God Jim Rome had nothing more to harp about.

It takes a village. Be un-American and throw off this individualism. Embrace the guys in the high water corduroys, without the sour stench of urine dripping from his/her crotch. He might have a name of something like Thedore Stizenfeiker, have a bad case of Halitosis, but he is real. And those whom make things wholly honest, are few and far between.

She is simple: bran cereal, TV, nap, sandwich, nap, garden gallivant, piss off grandpa, sleep.

Her life reminds me of a famous ecclesiastical quote, “Vanity!Vanity! Everything is chasing after the wind.” You see, my Nana’s cotton candy face froze like ice with an eternal half-cracked smirk, is the emblem of what it means to live a long and happy life. In 2001, my aunt took her then peppy seventy-four year old body on a three week excursion into the motherland–France.

Seeing the land of her heritage completed my Nana’s short bucket list. À bientôt. Her life is now one gossip mag after another, a bag of low-fat Orville Redenbacher popcorn, and a fizzy off-brand diet coke.

Last she joked of sexual intimacy, it was followed with such a far and away sense of self, that she spoke of it in third person and in the past-tense.  Life is a game of remembering–finding the story within the story–laughing at the detail she missed oh so long ago.

Like a story about my grandfather, her first husband. We sat at the Madonna Inn in 2005, re-establishing a familiar tradition of hot cocoa.  It was there my Nana’s world turned to momentary magic, as then alive owner, Alex Madonna, greeted us with his icy cool lingua. Before you knew it, a quick hello turned into a fifteen minute conversation. Upon arrival, my Nana asked Mr. Madonna whether he remembered talking business with Walter Lerette. His face lit like birthday candles. “Why yes, of course I remember Walt.” Seeing her partly foggy eyes turn crystal clear for a half-hour or so could turn any pessimistic thinker into a Jesus believing optimist.

The story line? Find the details. Pay attention to the best supporting, supporting actresses. Step back a bit. Take life less serious. View all things like a layered Picasso painting: disjointed till proven otherwise. When stepping back, find the hidden brushstroke between the larger ones. Pause. Document. Revel wildly.

My new game is called name-that-animal. It came to fruition on my twenty-fifth birthday, when I decided it was best to have personal, moral, and worldly responsibilities. Perhaps more focus on starvation in Africa, or the poor educational institutions in the under-funded inner city should take precedence over ultimately, meaningless sporting events.

Which is why comedy is the way in which I watch sports now.

For instance, Michael Jordan is no longer the king of the world–but a prostitute and money is his pimp. Bret Favre is no longer an award winning good-ol’-boy, but an artistic genital exhibitionist.

I think David Stern and Kobe Bryant have been having a gay affair since the split from Michael in 2001. On the other hand, Dennis Rodman is not a crazed lunatic, but a traveling art convention, and a man who Lady GaGa robbed.

Through this abnormal lens,  a new normal is founded: folly. Yes, folly. The grandfather to stupidity. Everything is dumb.  The sporting apocalypse has come through an NBA of montage- twas. Excitement, done. Donzo. Buh Bye.

The game is simple, and makes your world far more fun. Watch any sporting event with me, myself and I, and one up each other comparing each athlete to their animal relative. I thought of selling this game to Mattel, but since I am full of folly, free became the new price tag.

Kurt Rambis is….(give it your best shot)

If a fraggle rock made passionate love to the literary character Waldo, a new breed would be born: a fragaldo. Kurt Rambis is the genetic mutation of such a beast as this.

Most of us ogle over former Laker great, Magic Johnson. But what about the mid-90’s Laker point guard Sedale Threatt?

Threatt had that sloping back neck with a beautifully round and bald scalp. He is clearly a Desert Sand Boa.

A teammate of Threatt’s, and part of a dangerous duo with Shaq in the nineties, Elden Campbell was better known for this animal.

A giraffe. Yep, the long and thin Campbell with those drooping eyes, and a slothful looking face, ambles like a giraffe.

Kobe Bryant may be better known as the black mamba, but homie resembles something way different than that, with his thin face, and extended lower jaw when he gets angry and pouty…

If he baptized D-How, it was with the claws on his wings. Kobe looks just like a carniverous Pterodactyl.

It seems the older I get, the more disappointed I become with humanity. I assumed that every person had a revelation as I did on their twenty-fifth birthdays about life and the importance of worldly things. Boy was I wrong. Does my revelation regarding the ultimate meaningless nature of sports make me a fair weather fan? Maybe, if it means I don’t cry or breakdown when my beloved Angels fall. I oblige all of you to take it easy. Chill on the n0-care pill when it comes to sports, and play a round of name-that-animal. Laugh a little more about things. Brush your shoulders off. Purposely sit in-between a crowd of immature Laker fans and root for the opposite team all night. Promise, by night-end, you will be chuckling with a real kind of story to go to the grave with.