Tuesday, October 15, 2019

Enes Kanter

I have given up the NBA as of last week.  It hurts, because I have enjoyed learning more these last few years, as pro basketball is a subject known extremely well by my son Ben and I have enjoyed interacting with him about it. As three of his other subjects are baseball, movies, and TV, which I am not much interested in, it makes it hard to give up.  I have been a Celtics fan since the 1960s and this year was going to be interesting.  But really, this isn't getting into the category of plucking out an eye or cutting off a hand, now is it? It's a hobby, and I elect to embrace a pointless boycott.  Pointless because I don't buy shirts or tickets or cable packages. I unsubscribed from some free podcasts that I enjoyed.

Yet I still get news when it makes the news.  I didn't bother to follow it when coaches Greg Popovich and Steve Kerr made anti-Trump comments because I know what they are going to say and it's just banal, knee-jerk stuff.  I was not even surprised when LeBron James, that ferocious intellect and foreign-policy expert, explained that MIT grad and sports statistics guru Daryl Morey was uninformed, nor that LBJ is declining to comment further after being taken apart by pretty much everyone who doesn't make money off the NBA or isn't a fanboy of A) NBA players or B) black celebrities.

I was deeply pleased that Enes Kanter tweeted what he tweeted in response to LeBron. You should know that this was not reported by ESPN, Yahoo Sports, or Fox Sports.  Barstool Sports covered it. (If you want politically incorrect sports, they are the place to start.) USA Today covered it.  I don't know who else.

That Kanter is now a Celtic (not a Seljuk, a Celtic) is less a joy to me than a temptation to follow them after all.  I must avert my eyes.

2 comments:

james said...

There are a lot of things I'd like to be able to have some influence on. Not happening, though, unless I try breaking things--and sometimes even that's not possible.

BTW, are you familiar with Better Angels? Thoughts?

Galen said...

Me too. Wait, is that taken? This lifelong Celtics fan wishes them well, but won't be watching.