One of the strangers encounters that I’ve ever had with a sh*t-talking sports fan came after the Miami Heat defeated the Orlando Magic last season, and a gentleman in a Cleveland Cavaliers LeBron James jersey and Heat hat was shouting to the Amway Center crowd, “That’s how he do it! That’s how he do it!” And I didn’t need to ask him why he was wearing one team’s jersey and another’s hat, because as I have become a big NBA fan in recent years, I have ultimately learned that, unlike other professional sports leagues, the NBA is a place where fans hitching their trailers to the superstars instead of teams happens.
And yesterday, as if it was the plot of a new Alien movie written and directed by social media managers, we watched the fanboy monsters and the equally terrifying outraged Twitter activists mate and give birth to a brand new breed of worthless, misdirected Internet fury. All because LeBron James wasn’t unanimously voted the NBA’s MVP for the 2012-13 season.
One person, Boston Globe writer Gary Washburn, voted for Carmelo Anthony as the league’s MVP instead of James, and that set the Twitterverse into one of the most obnoxious 24-hour-and-counting tizzies I can remember. If you think that Justin Bieber or Chris Brown fans are the most shamelessly obnoxious and reprehensible creatures in existence, then you either don’t know any sports fans or, more likely, you are one.
If you really care – like really, really, really, REALLY care – that LeBron did not receive every last vote, then I admire you. If that is truly the greatest problem in your life today, that means that every other facet of your life is in order and you have absolutely nothing else bothering you other than “LeBron’s legacy”, which apparently demands 100% validation from every sports writer with a vote. Oh, and maybe also Dan LeBatard, who was initially accused of being the lone blasphemer before people even bothered to check if he had a vote or not. He doesn’t, of course, but Twitter outrage waits for no man or fact-checking, which is why he chose to egg the mindless mob on.
So if you’re sitting in front of your computer today, shaking your fist(s) in rage at the ultimately meaningless notion that Washburn either chose to vote on the literal interpretation of Most Valuable Player – in that the New York Knicks were hopelessly lost without their star player – or that Washburn is just another sports writer troll, who somehow predicted that he’d be the only writer to stand in opposition to the tanks of the People’s Republic of LeBron, and you’re unencumbered by worries like debt, unemployment, murder, crime, poverty, disease, war, famine, or anything else that the average person loses sleep over, then I’ve found some headlines that you can perhaps lend anger and rage to next.
Where does this story rank on a scale of 1 to LeBron not getting every vote? Probably a 4.
They should be horrified that LeBron didn’t get every vote!
Our planet’s future? Meh, let LeBron’s kids worry about it.
PETA is pissed off? What else is new?
Yeah, but can those gay Catholics win four MVPs?
Please, LeBron isn’t paid enough for all of those non-profit dunks. This lady should donate her salary to him.
The U.S. should send troops to occupy Washburn’s brain. Am I right?
These guys should have been disqualified for not praying to LeBron.
Russia’s flying bombers close to America again? I hope they’re near Washburn’s house!
Who cares if we’re going to be taxed for all online purchases soon? We should be taxed for watching LeBron play.
I’d rather use a 3D printer to make another LeBron James so I could watch him play basketball for ever and ever.
So when you’re done solving all of those global issues by insulting and threatening people on Twitter, let me know and I’ll find some more for you. Thanks to LeBron James and his fans’ perfect lives, we should have this world fixed in no time.
