Author's Note: The Boston Celtics recently beat the Detroit Pistons in what many experts are calling an Eastern Conference Finals Preview. Frankly, I don't give a fuck. I'd rather get a prostate exam than talk about that game. That's a bad example. I love prostate exams!
You can be what you want to be. You can do what you want to do. These heavy adages have hung in the air around America's youth serving as both an inspiration and a burden. (A burdspiration?) I will argue that these words are true. True as the withered hands I deign to type with. (It's true. They are both calloused and covered in some sort of primordial goop.) However young I am there is a limit on my horizon. There are several things that I will always be, and other things that I am drastically incapable of becoming. For better for worse I this for the long haul, unless of course I manage to find God and become the Vicar of Christ on Earth.
Case in point: I tried to grow a garden of herbs and grasses but no vegetation decided to grow. In lieu of earthly delights I was shocked to find that the only thing growing was a gaggle of old term papers. I thought I could lose myself in this new hobby. Poor naive me. My old bullshit haunts the new me.
In the most recent incarnation of the NBA, I have seen so many people attempt to move on to bigger and better things. I have seen Shaq go to Phoenix and pretend he can still move. I have seen Pau Gasol make the trek to LA and fancy himself as "The Coast Nowitzki". Above all else, these paragons of the game have found new life or crashed and burned badly. However good or great (in a fat way) they are, nothing can take away from the sad truth that these men are what they are.
Mr. Gasol, I can see your thoughts. I know that in the last moments of a close game that the desire to throw up an ill advised finger roll is close at hand. So close it bubbles slightly beneath the surface.
In the terrible city of Boston, the luster of basketball revival has blocked out the personas of Ray Allen, Kevin Garnett, and Paul Pierce. Seeing the Celtics record and the cohesive play of these paper champions, most hoops disciples have bargained away the nagging thoughts and embraced this Celtic team as a potential champion and a reinvention of everything we have come to understand about these players.
That's bullshit. Despite the record and smiles, these men are losers through and through. Cursed by the heavens like James and Jumaine Jones they are forever doomed to walk about in the shadows of basketball legendary. Two of the Celtics Three are great and one has a great jumpshot, which is enough to be classified as "almost great". However great or almost great these men might be, however successful their season has been, nothing can make up for the fact that fate isn't on their side.
Kevin Garnett. You were born a loser. You solidified this fact by jumping straight from High School to the NBA. Duke could have changed your path. You think being intense can mask that deep laying insecurity? The fact that deep down you just aren't good enough? It doesn't. You toiled in the hinterlands of Minnesota becoming a sympathetic figure due to the exploits of Sprees, McHales, and Scissorbiaks. Along the way we have heard these others become derided and maligned by not being good enough for you Mr. Garnett. While that may be true, the thing is, you are not good enough to be good. I will not deny your greatness as a ball player but your ceiling exists solely at the brink of "Utterly Disappointing".
You should have been great. Their should have been championships, but there weren't/ Even if you win one now, it's too late. You've already been defined. The whole lot of you are losers.
Now that Dean Garrett, he's a winner.
Go Pistons!
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