Baron's flight should wake Warriors fans from dream teams
There are few moments in sports quite like the moment when your pal the True Believer suddenly realizes that his (or her) love for the local team far exceeds that of the employees of said team.
This is the moment animation buffs remember as the moment when Wile E. Coyote runs off the cliff, turns to the camera as he hovers motionless and embarrassed in midair, turns into an all-day sucker for a moment, then returns to his original manifestation and plummets to the ground.
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| Good to know: Commissioning a painting of a player about to become a free agent, bad idea. (Getty Images) |
• The Clippers offered 5 years and $65 million to the Warriors' one year and $17.8 million.
• Los Angeles is a lot closer to Los Angeles than Oakland.
It wasn't about winning, or more playing time, or loyalty to the people who pulled him out of his difficult situation in New Orleans. It was business, pure and simple, and love had nothing to do with it.
We all understand this lesson when it's some other guy on some other team going to a new team that isn't our team. We all understand the cold, hard world when it happens to someone else, but never when we're the ones in the barrel.
While most Warrior departures over the years have gone unnoticed and unlamented over the years (the Latrell Sprewell saga notwithstanding), a lot of nonaligned basketball fans fell in love with the Warriors last year when they violated every convention of modern professional basketball and took their gloriously mutant show not only in to the postseason but past Dallas and into Utah.
There were lots of reasons -- Monta Ellis' can't-buy-booze-but-can-sing-the-blues precocity, Stephen Jackson's effervescent volatility, Matt Barnes' tattoo collection and conscienceless shooting eye, Andris Biedrins' goofy resoluteness, and of course His Diabolical Avuncularity himself, the unmade bed that is Don Nelson.
But more than anyone else, it was Baron Davis and his beekeeper's beard, his absolute competitive arrogance in the face of low percentages, his ability to bitch about every call -- even the ones that went in his favor -- and his all-around presence. He was the face of the weirdest franchise ever, a high-octane version of Gomez Addams.
And now he's a Los Angeles Clipper. Wow.
Now we have nothing against the Clippers. We rather approve of everything but their reflexive penury and their mega-bland uniforms. Next to the Warriors in 2007, the Clippers in 2006 were the oddest playoff team of the decade.
But they are lower on the Los Angeles oscilloscope than usual, because the Lakers own the town again, Southern California is preparing for another investigation-and-victory-filled football season, UCLA has Rick (Doublin' Down For Your Love) Neuheisel, the Bruins and Trojans are national players in basketball again (the Bruins way more than the Trojans), the Galaxy are showing exciting new ways to betray David Beckham's talent, and the Kings ... well, we have gone one step beyond now, haven't we?
Anyway, the Clippers ... meh. In fact, meh on meh. And Baron Davis is going to try to recreate the Warrior Experience. No wonder Warriors fans are making the Boo-Boo Kitty face, feeling betrayed, cheated, weaseled and abandoned.
And here we are, saying, "What, you think you're immune? You think one playoff appearance every 13 years or so makes you special? You think the Warriors are a destination team based on one hellacious April a year ago? What are you, nine?"
And the truth is, you probably are, at least when it comes to your fellows. The Warriors are, as of this morning, looking up at the Lakers, Spurs, Jazz, Hornets, Rockets, Suns, Mavericks, Nuggets, Trail Blazers and maybe even the Clippers now. Their magic moment is now a million years ago, and a lot of their fans are asking, "What, didn't I give you the best year of my life? Didn't I buy enough tickets? Enough team-related shmata? Wear the 'I Believe' T-shirt until it rotted from my frame? What have I done to deserve this?"
Easy. You believed. You let yourself be vulnerable. You gave them your heart knowing full well it would probably come back with Doc Martens treads and some spit trails on it, but believing otherwise because it made you so happy.
And now you're standing in the doorway with an unpaid rent invoice. You have let yourself be had, and you are what we in the urology department at Cedars Sinai call pissed.
Well, we'd like to help you here, but we can't. Your charming naïveté and heartwarming loyalty have screwed you again, and you swear you'll never be burned like that again.
And maybe you're right. But we doubt it. If you can't believe unreservedly in the unbelievable, if you can't delude yourself into thinking the people you love love what you love as much as you do, then why be a fan at all?
Now we'll leave you alone while you wrestle with that little conundrum. But maybe this will help.
You will be back. You know it. We know it. It's who you are, it's what you are, it's what you hope your kids will be. It's knowing the way the magic trick is performed but still going to the carnival again anyway, because you hope for that one time when what you know in your brain to be true turns out to be false. Like the Warriors were in 2007.
(Note to Rays fans: Your time hasn't come yet, so enjoy this moment with as much passion as you can muster. And if anyone calls you names because you're not filling up the Trop every night to worship at the feet of your newborn heroes, give them a knee in the nethers and tell them, "We know, and for the next few weeks or months, we don't have to care.")
Yours in wisdom and pure truth, Captain Buzzkill.
Ray Ratto is a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle.
