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.

I idolize/d Byron Scott and Magic Johnson. Loved the 39-win team in 1993 that nearly knocked off the all-mighty Charles Barkley-led Suns. At the age of 12, I loved Sedale Threatt. Embraced Cedric “the Garbage Man” Ceballos as the most underrated swing man of the 90’s and still root for the grinning spin doctor of humor with a dominate unrelenting game and a personality to match it: Shaquille O’Neal.

You see….I like me some Lakers. But I just don’t love the maniacally self obsessed Kobe Bryant. That’s it.   

That was in my opinion (key word there…pay attention), the worst move in franchise history, when the team opted to send Shaq packing to Miami in favor of Kobe. It set a precedent that anyone and everyone was/is recyclable. And Shaq, the man who made Kobe Bryant Kobe Bryant is not ever, for one second, recyclable. 

So I began asking the question: Why do I have to go down with the ship if I hate the captain? Why don’t I get to be a free agent with my fansmanship? Why do I have to keep rooting for a team whose face I no longer support? Little did I know just how common my Central-Coast -swing-state perspective was.

A perfect example of this was documented by our own Owen Main in the Spring of 2011. Main asked the question in this article: Is the Central Coast a Giants or Dodgers country? And the answer was neither. What we discovered about ourselves was that we just don’t take sports that serious here. We have beautiful women, concerts in the plaza, an electric farmers market, beautiful downtown’s, stunning antique architecture, award-winning wine country, great bars, rolling Irish-like hillsides, hiking, rugged beaches, pines by the sea, clean air, low crime, abundance of restaurants, wonderful school systems, plentiful tourism, fishing, lakes and according to Oprah, one of the happiest environments in the world. 

Hakuna Matata.

Here, we embrace the many shades of grey and not the childish infatuations or irrelevant loyalty to organizations that have no grip whatsoever on our SLO life.

So here is my short opinion on the Dwight Howard landing in Los Angeles:

I think the move to land Dwight Howard was the second worst decision in team history. He’s a malcontent disconnected character with a lust for Hollywood stardom. And though I agree that Andrew Bynum was a glass kneed fool with a cheap and uninspired heart, he was, for the time-being locked up longer than one freaking year.

One year. 

In the Summer of 2013 when Howard is an unrestricted free agent, he will do as he’s promised all along by signing an enormous contract with the Brooklyn Nets to become the billboard face of Jay-Z’s franchise. And then what? Steve Nash is 40, Bryant a crippled 35 and Meta World is off in India learning to braid hair and meditate. 

The Lakers now have one year to win Bryant his sixth ring and are still only the third best team in the Western Conference. Not to mention I give them only a smidgen of a shot against the deep defensive minded Bulls and no shot whatsoever against the steam-rolling, LeBron-led Heat. I can name four teams right now with a deeper rotation: the Thunder, Spurs, Bulls and Heat.  And the upstart Pacers are on the fringes.    

So just remember this article when Dwight Howard is an underachieving underwear model with his low seeded Nets teams and you’re stuck watching pick and rolls between Steve Blake and Jordan Hill.  Learn to stop throwing rocks and sticking your tongue out at pragmatic realists with a fair take on things. It’s getting tiring and old and I would like to have a mature conversation.