I usually like to write things on this blog, but there’s just nothing to be said after watching this ukelele choir cover “Kids” than this: “I want to hug every member of the ukelele army.”
Props to Alex Lee for bringing it to my attention.
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Having never been able to cheer for a hometown team (recap: New York, Florida, Texas, Wisconsin, Minnesota), the concept of hometown pride didn’t really register with me, except as related to college sports. Having those boys in blue play in my town, five miles from where I work, is thrilling. Reading articles praising the Thunder and especially Kevin Durant strike up a pride in me that I have never experienced, even as an ardent fan of the Green Bay Packers. Those are my boys.
But what’s special about the Oklahoma City Thunder is the fact that they are rock-solid under pressure. They conduct themselves with grace on the court and grace in the press conference that is almost unheard of in professional sports. For example, schoolyard bully Phil Jackson made it to the playoffs again with his Lakers. The man is a good coach when it comes to basketball; when it comes to PR, he’s an awful person. He tries to rattle players, teams, coaches and even referees. He gave the treatment to Kevin Durant at the beginning of the playoffs, insisting that referees were giving him preferential treatment in free throws.
Scott Brooks, the NBA coach of the year, could have ripped ol’ Phil a new one for trashing his star. There are plenty of people in professional sports (Kevin Garnett, old-school Ron Artest, all-school Mark Cuban, most of the football coaches in the world) who would have done just that. Scotty “Ice” Brooks, as I’m now calling him, instead said this:
“I have read about it,” Brooks said before the Thunder opened their first-round playoff series against the Lakers at Staples Center on Sunday. “But not one guy in our organization, players or coaches, we haven’t even talked about it. We understand that you have to play.
“There’s nothing that you can say in the paper that should affect you. Mind games to me are overrated.”
Wait. Did you just shove Phil Jackson to the section of your brain reserved for the grocery list? And get your team to do the same? Yes. That just happened.
But wait! There’s more. Kevin Durant, current NBA scoring champion and youngest scoring champion ever (yeah, at 22, I’m older than him), has humility. Yes, go back and read that sentence again. Then read these next ones:
“We don’t have guys like Kobe Bryant that can just go off for 30 points in the fourth quarter to win the game or hit a fade-away 3-pointer and win a game. We don’t have people like that.
Reminded that as the NBA scoring champ who averaged 30.1 points a game, he would be cast as that guy, Durant shook his head.
“I’m not there,” he said. “I wish, that’s where I’m trying to get to, but I’m not there yet.”
You are the best scorer in the league on the most improved team in possibly the history of sports (note: the series with the Lakers is, in fact, 2-2), and you have the humility to admit that you probably aren’t going to nail a pressure shot every time?
I think my heart glowed a little bit brighter with pride. I don’t know about Mr. Durant’s religious affiliations or lack thereof, but his amount of humility humbles me as a Christian. I, for one, would probably not be that gracious. I would probably shoot my mouth off. Because I’m awesome. Yeah. What now?!
This means that being a card-carrying Thunder fan has made me a better person. I feel kind of hokey saying it, but it’s honestly true. I am proud of the fact that the entire team works hard in the gym every practice (according to “Ice” Brooks). I am proud of the fact that they never quit playing in games, even when behind (there’s a certain defending champion basketball team that can’t say the same). I am proud of the fact that they respond to criticism graciously and don’t get rattled.
And once I realize how proud I am of that, I realize how I could be proud of those things in myself, if I had them in the same quantities.
But it’s so different when people are attacking me unjustly! I’m right! they’re wrong!
But Mr. Jackson lashed out incorrectly not only personally, but personally at Durantula in public. And Kevin Durant took it in stride. Again. I am not that good at life.
So, while I love the fact that the Thunder are underdogs (phew! avoided a thunderdogs joke!), local, talented and winning, I most love the fact that they have character. And their character challenges me. And that is very, very unusual in a team.
Go Thunder. Beat LA.
(all quotes from ESPN Los Angeles.com’s “Brooks: Durant deserves calls”)
Tags: Character, Kevin Durant, Lakers, Phil Jackson, Scott Brooks, Thunder
I am extremely interested in sports. I initially wrote “obsessed,” but that’s not exactly true. I can turn off my fandom if I have to. The number of situations that I feel it necessary to turn off my fandom is a significantly smaller number than most people, though.
This passion (I think that’s a fair term) has been invested in multiple sports. My first love was baseball: I pored over baseball box scores, meticulously researching my Mets and Marlins. My choosing methods for fandom were to shape the rest of my sports-loving career; I chose those two teams (which, much to my current chagrin, are divisional rivals – I was not aware of how sports worked at that point) because they had the worst records in baseball in 1994. I was six years old.
The Marlins won the world series in ’97; I was allowed to stay up late on a school night to watch game seven. I feel pretty gangster (although I wouldn’t have said it that way then) because the game went to extra innings, so I got to stay up even later. I distinctly remember hunching over on the couch at the very end of the game, waiting for something. I don’t remember celebrating ferociously; I’m sure I did that, though. They sold their team off after that, and I soured on them. I dropped them from my fanship, although I still rooted for them when they were on TV. Their similar post-world series antics in 2003 made them dead to me.
I still root for the Mets. That’s pretty much all there is to say about that.
Football was the next sport to take hold of my attention. I was a Cowboys fan by proximity; Dallas was the closest to Oklahoma. I dropped my affections after Michael Irvin’s 1996 drug bust. It didn’t take much to turn me in those days. I picked up the Packers, who did me well for many, many years. I only recently turned in my Packers fanship when I realized that half of OU’s draftees and my favorite football player of all time (Brett Favre is a man’s man) were on the Vikings, and I secretly wanted to cheer for them despite their avowed hatred of my “favorite” team. I put the cheeseheads in the closet (yes, my family actually owns cheeseheads) and got an Adrian Peterson jersey for Christmas.
College sports shall be addressed at another time, as my fanaticism actually does border on obsession. And even if you scraped up all the ice in Oklahoma, I’m not sure you’d have enough for a hockey rink.
But the reason for this post is that I have just now had my little heart tweaked (not broken, mind you; that’s for game four/five/six/seven) by the NBA for the first time. Because goodness gracious, I love the OKC Thunder.
Next time I’ll explain more about my love of the Thunder.
Tags: Dallas Cowboys, Florida Marlins, Green Bay Packers, Minnesota Vikings, New York Mets, Oklahoma City Thunder
The USA vs. Canada hockey game was easily the most entertaining hockey event I’ve ever seen. Second place goes to last Sunday’s match-up of the same two teams. It made a hockey fan out of this non-hockey fan. High five, Team USA. You did awesome. Maybe some more people will watch the NHL now.
But probably not. See you in four years!!
Tags: back to obscurity you go, Canada, hockey, USA, Winter Olympics
I’ve been slowly decluttering everything in my house. I think this is the optimist in me determining that if I do spring cleaning, that will force it to be spring. So far, my will has not changed the weather. Washington, DC, would know.
Either way, I’ve got my junk down to a closet and a dresser top. Almost everything else is squared away or thrown away, which I’m fairly proud of. I like trashing things. Makes me feel accomplished. I don’t, however, like it when I realized I’ve trashed some important paper (which is the inevitable outcome of spring cleaning). It’s just a matter of degrees to see how bad the damage is. I haven’t done it yet (that I know of), but I also haven’t attacked the paper monster that is the top of my dresser. Perhaps that will be this weekend’s job. Perhaps it will never get done and the paper monster and I will live a peaceful coexistence among the hills and valleys of my house’s foundation. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.
Tags: paper monster, Washington DC, Winter
There was a time in my life where I had access to not one but two free sources of Red Bull energy drink. I had assumed that this meant it was a rather unhealthy and potentially dangerous time in my life. Thankfully, I found this helpful website that makes me feel a bit better about my past energy drink consumption. Introduced to me by the fantastic Mr. Jeff Hinton (not to be confused with the Fantastic Mr. Fox, which I have sadly not seen yet), Death by Caffeine is a website which tells you exactly how many cans of that energy concoction you’re draining it would take to off you.
The creators list an astounding amount of energy drinks. Unfortunately, Drank (the semi-official drink of Stephen Carradini and the Midnight Sons) and Old Glory (the campiest energy drink to exist — the can is an American flag!) are unlisted. Even so, I was surprised to find that the average amount of drinks that would cause system overload to the point of death is about fifty. And even if I did decide to test my Red Bull mettle, I don’t know where I’d get the money to score 136.5 cans of it (death point for my weight, as reported by DbC). The math is 35 dollars per case (24 cans) times 6 cases (needed to get to 136 cans) equals 210 dollars. It also equals more than a month’s worth of gas. So unless I decide to make the worst decision ever and go on a weekend-long energy drink bender (no! sleep! till! Broooooooooklyn!!), Red Bull will not be my demise any time soon.
Thus, feel free to imbibe Monster in peace. You will (most likely) not die, unless you’re just knocking them back like so many bowling pins.
Tags: Death by Caffeine, Drank, Jeff Hinton, Monster, Old Glory, Red Bull
Average Cats, which I find just as funny as lolcats, is dedicated to de-funnying lolcats. It refutes every human-esque trait that lol’ers have assigned to cats in straightforward, so-unironic-it’s-ironic language. It’s hilarious if you think it’s ironic, or if you think it’s not ironic. And that’s a mark of really good humor. Get some average cats in your life.
Autocomplete Me: People submit screenshots of the most ridiculous autocompletes they can find. It never ceases to amuse me. Just remember: these occasionally horrible and always hilarious thoughts were actually searched. And that makes it even funnier. It’s like when you walk behind two people for a while and overhear a completely ridiculous conversation that they’re taking very seriously.
Yes. At least for today, I am autocompleted.