Editor’s note: Respect FreeDarko dot com everytime. This DP throwback was brought on by the comparisons of Steve Nash to John Stockton. I’m no J.S. fan, but Steve Nash couldn’t carry his jockstrap [ll].
FreeDarko Nation! What it do party people? Right now I feel like KanYe West after he won all those Emmys. I can’t believe I’m talking to the F.D. famlay. I was a little shook at first to come in over here because y’all cats are mad polysyllabic with your shit, but your boy said that I should just get in where I fit in. Hopefully there’s someone on this side to translate retahd-speak.
The 2007-2008 campaign for the Association is well underway and just like we all imagined they’d be, Boston is a beast. LeBron and the Cavletics might be able to serve up some comp if that dude Jesus Shuttlesworth can keep choking with under a minute left to play. The West is still the best. I was quietly hoping that Houston would step up something serious so that maybe we could have a repeat of one of the classic Finals’ matchups.
The Rockets and the Celtics butted heads[ll] twice for ‘Chips and both times Boston prevailed on the back of Larry Bird. The Celtics superstar forward for this tilt would be the wunderkind Kevin Garnett, while the Rockets foreign exchange center is from Africa by way of China, Ming Yao. The marketing is already in place so it makes the regular season kind of a waste of time. Sort of like the first forty-six minutes of most b-ball games.
The league can work all of its magic to engineer this matchup, but the one element that would have made this series an instant classic has been stashed away in the NBA’s closet of shame. Cocaine, you said? No, but you were close. Tightpants would be the correct answer. In the last twenty plus years since the decline of tightpants the Association itself has been foundering. The beauty of the game is now interminably lost as the players run up and down the court in Capri shorts, or are they coolots. Assists on an overall basis have been declining steadily as well as field goal percentages. Three point field goals made are up from the 1980’s numbers, but how hard is it to shoot a three pointer wearing board shorts?
Show me a professional sport, that is enjoyable, where the entire uniform can be worn as street clothing? I rue the day that Michael Jordan came into the league and altered the minimum length of the player’s shorts. This was the death knell for great basketball play. Baggy pants ruin everything they touch. Zoot suits turned gangsters into comedians. M.C. Hammer ruined rap music. Capri pants killed the NBA. Do you think Elgin Baylor would have been the Rookie of the Year if he didn’t wear tightpants? How the hell do you think Magic Johnson got his nickname? Pause[ll] to that last sentence.
Tightpants are what made an average player like Dennis Rodman into a Hall of Fame caliber player. To bad for Dennis that he was fucking crazy. Don’t blame the tightpants though. John Stockton, arguably the greatest point guard of all time wore tightpants well into the new millennium and for no other reason were the Utah Jazz still a competitive force. Let’s face it party people… Cocaine and tightpants made the Association what it is today. Provided that you don’t overdose on the former, and you don’t elongate the latter you might still have the greatest show on Earth. Word to Oscar Robertson.
